Madison Square Garden (1925)

Madison Square Garden (MSG III) was an indoor arena in New York City, the third bearing that name. Built in 1925 and closed in 1968, it was located on the west side of Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th streets in Manhattan, on the site of the city's trolley-car barns. It was the first Garden that was not located near Madison Square. MSG III was the home of the New York Rangers of the National Hockey League and the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association, and also hosted numerous boxing matches, the Millrose Games, the National Invitation Tournament, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, concerts, and other events. In 1968 it was demolished and its role and name passed to the fourth Madison Square Garden, which stands at the site of the original Penn Station. One Worldwide Plaza was built on the arena's former 50th Street location.
Groundbreaking on the third Madison Square Garden took place on January 9, 1925. Designed by the theater architect Thomas W. Lamb, it was built at the cost of $4.75 million in 349 days by boxing promoter Tex Rickard, who assembled backers he called his "600 millionaires" to fund the project. The new arena was dubbed "The House That Tex Built." In contrast to the ornate towers of Stanford White's second Garden, the exterior of MSG III was a simple box. Its most distinctive feature was the ornate marquee above the main entrance, with seemingly endless abbreviations (Tomw., V/S, Rgrs, Tonite, Thru, etc.) Even the name of the arena was abbreviated, to "Madison Sq. Garden".
The arena, which opened on December 15, 1925, was 200 feet (61 m) by 375 feet (114 m), with seating on three levels, and a maximum capacity of 18,496 spectators for boxing. It had poor sight lines, especially for hockey, and fans sitting virtually anywhere behind the first row of the side balcony could count on having some portion of the ice obstructed. The poor ventilation and allowed smoking often caused haze in the upper portions of the Garden.
Madison Square Garden III was managed by Rickard, John S. Hammond, William F. Carey, General John Reed Kilpatrick, Ned Irish and Irving Mitchell Felt. It was eventually replaced by the fourth Madison Square Garden.
Boxing was Madison Square Garden III's principal claim to fame. The first bout took place on December 8, 1925, a week before its official opening. On January 17, 1941, 23,190 people witnessed Fritzie Zivic's successful welterweight title defense against Henry Armstrong, still the largest crowd at any of the Gardens.
The New York Rangers, owned by the Garden's owner Tex Rickard, got their name from a play on words involving his name: Tex's Rangers. However, the Rangers were not the first NHL team to play at the Garden; the New York Americans had begun play in 1925 – and officially opened the Garden in front of 17,000 by losing to the Montreal Canadiens, 3-1 – Shorty Green of the Americans was the first player to score a goal in the arena. The Americans were so tremendously successful that Rickard wanted his own team. The Rangers were founded in 1926 and played their first game in the Garden on November 16, 1926. Both teams played at the Garden until the Americans suspended operations in 1942 due to World War II. In the meantime, the Rangers had usurped the Americans with their own success, winning three Stanley Cups between 1928 and 1940. The refusal of the Garden's management to allow the postwar resurrection of the Americans team was one popular theory underlying the Curse of 1940, which supposedly prevented the Rangers from winning another Stanley Cup until 1994. Another alleged cause of "The Curse" stemmed from manager Kilpatrick burning the Garden's mortgage papers in the bowl of the Stanley Cup, made possible by receipts from the 1940 Cup run. Hockey purists believed that the trophy had been "defiled", leading to the Rangers' woes.
The New York Rovers, a farm team of the Rangers, played in the Garden on Sunday afternoons, while the Rangers played on Wednesday and Sunday nights. Tommy Lockhart managed the Rovers games and introduced on-ice promotions such as racing model aircraft and bicycles around the arena, figure skating acts Shipstads & Johnson Ice Follies and Sonja Henie, and a skating grizzly bear. The fourth floor of the Garden had a second sheet of ice, used for public skating, recreational hockey, and as the Rangers' practice facility.
The first professional basketball game was played in the 50th Street Garden on December 6, 1925, nine days before the arena officially opened. It pitted the Original Celtics against the Washington Palace Five. The Celtics won 35–31. The New York Knicks debuted there in 1946, although if there was an important college game, they played in the 69th Regiment Armory. Due to other event bookings in the arena, all their home games during the 1951, 1952 and 1953 NBA Finals were played at the Armory; thus MSG III never hosted an NBA Finals game. MSG III hosted the NBA All-Star Game in 1954, 1955 and 1968.
In 1931, a highly successful college basketball triple header raised money for Mayor Jimmy Walker's Unemployment Relief Fund. In 1934, Ned Irish began promoting a successful series of college basketball double headers at the Garden featuring a mix of local and national teams. MSG III began hosting the National Invitation Tournament annually in 1938, and hosted seven NCAA men's basketball championship finals between 1943 and 1950. On February 28, 1940, Madison Square Garden hosted the first televised basketball games in a Fordham-Pitt and Georgetown-NYU doubleheader. A point shaving scandal involving games played at the Garden led the NCAA to reduce its use of the Garden, and caused some schools, including 1950 NCAA and NIT Champion City College of New York (CCNY), to be banned from playing there.
Capitol Wrestling Corporation—along with its successor, the World Wide Wrestling Federation—promoted professional wrestling at the Garden during its last two decades. Toots Mondt and Jess McMahon owned CWC, which initially promoted tag team wrestling. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Mondt and McMahon were successful at promoting ethnic heroes of Puerto Rican or Italian descent.
Two historic wrestling events took place at MSG III. On May 17, 1963, Bruno Sammartino defeated "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers, via submission, in 48 seconds, to become the second ever WWWF World Heavyweight Champion. On November 19, 1957, the Dr. Jerry Graham & Dick the Bruiser vs. Edouard Carpentier & Argentina Rocca main event led to a race riot involving Italian and Puerto Rican fans of Carpentier and Rocca. After the riot, New York City nearly banned professional wrestling and children under the age of 14 were prohibited from attending.
From 1925 until 1961, Madison Square Garden hosted the Six Days of New York, an annual six-day racing event of track cycling. Upon its final running, it was the longest-running series in the world with 73 editions.
The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus debuted at the second Garden in 1919, and moved to the third Garden in 1926 where it opened each spring for about a four-week engagement. The circus was so important to the Garden that for the 1928 Stanley Cup Finals, the Rangers were forced to play all their games on the road, but they still won the series. The circus performed as often as three times daily throughout the life of the third Garden, repeatedly knocking the Rangers out of the Garden at playoff time.
The circus acrobatics included acts in the rings, on the high wire, and trapeze. In the early 1930s wild animal trainer Clyde Beatty was a featured performer during the circus engagements in New York and Boston before returning to the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus for a tour under canvas. Many of the most famous clowns in America appeared each year before hundreds of thousands of fans. Among the most famous were sad-faced clown Emmett Kelly as well as Felix Adler and Lou Jacobs.
The Garden continued to host The Westminster Kennel Club's annual dog show. This championship is the third-longest continuously running U.S. sporting event (behind only the Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks).
On November 3, 1960, Penn Station's owners Pennsylvania Railroad announced they had sold their air rights to the Madison Square Garden Corporation to build a new arena replacing Penn Station's original building. Previously, the corporation had sought to replace the arena as early as 1946 due to poor sight lines from the upper decks and expanding attendance. Even though the Rangers played poorly during this time, they still sold out every game; added to the rising popularity of the Knicks, the demand for a new arena grew. Demolition of Penn Station commenced in 1963 with major controversy surrounding the demolition of a historic architectural landmark and the new Madison Square Garden was completed in 1968 with its first event being held on February 12, 1968. Originally the third Garden was planned to close at the end of the summer of 1967 but construction delays pushed the opening to February 1968. Their final Knicks game in Madison Square Garden was on February 10, a 115–97 win against the Philadelphia 76ers, just weeks after the 1968 NBA All-Star Game which was originally supposed to be held in the new Garden. The final Rangers game was held on February 11, 1968, resulting in a 3–3 tie against the Detroit Red Wings. Jean Ratelle was the last player to score a goal in the arena with 19:15 remaining in the third. After the game, former Ranger greats along with players representing other NHL teams over the previous 43 years, including New York Americans players Lorne Carr and Eddie Shore skated on the ice in a closure ceremony. Two days later, the last event in the Garden was the Westminster Dog Show.
There were no plans to keep the old Madison Square Garden and demolition commenced in the summer of 1968, finishing in early 1969. After the third Madison Square Garden was torn down, there was a proposal to build the world's tallest building on the site, prompting a major battle in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood where it was located. Ultimately, the debate resulted in strict height restrictions in the area. The space remained a parking lot until 1989 when Worldwide Plaza, designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, opened on the site of the old Garden.