Madison Square is at Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street. The present-day Garden is at 50th and Eighth. A new and larger one is to be built at Columbus Circle.
Long before the huge brick and concrete building you now see was conceived by Tex Rickard, there was the original, memorable Madison Square Garden at 26th Street, on the northeast corner of Madison Square. Its huge arena, like its current relative, housed championship fights, political conventions and auto shows.
Its chief claim to inclusion in any history of New York lies in the fact that its roof garden contained a supper club which, to the New Yorkers of the first decade of the 20th century, was a combination of the Stork and El Morocco of today.
Stanford White, leading artist and architect, had designed it. His glass-ceilinged apartments were in the building's tower.
One night, 40 years ago, while the popping of champagne corks blended with the soft music of an expensive band, Stanford White was shot to death in the restaurant.
His killer was Harry Thaw, heir of an immensely wealthy Pittsburgh family. Thaw, married to Evelyn Nesbit, most beautiful of the Florodora fillies and immortalized as the Gibson Girl, alleged that White had seduced his bride before their marriage.
The court battles which followed were classics, and the story of them is still considered by newspapermen as the top reporter's assignment of all time.
Evelyn opens and closes, still, at forlorn little cafés. There are yet traces of her loveliness—only traces.
Thaw died recently. Before his death he lived on a farm in Virginia and came occasionally to the city he thrilled, shocked and scandalized. His hair was snow white. His face was brown as a nut.