Madison Square Garden

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Template:Infobox Stadium Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG, known colloquially simply as The Garden, has been the name of four arenas in New York City, United States. It is also the name of the entity which owns the arena, and several of the professional sports franchises which play there. There have been four incarnations of the arena. The first two were located at Madison Square, thus the name. Subsequently a new 20,000-seat Garden was built at 50th Street and 8th Avenue, and the current Garden is at 7th Avenue between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station. The present arena is informally known to some by its advertising slogan, "The World's Most Famous Arena".

The arena lends its name to the Madison Square Garden Network, a cable television network that broadcasts most sporting events that are held in the Garden.

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History

The site of the first Madison Square Garden was formerly the passenger depot of the New York and Harlem Railroad. When the depot was moved to the current site of Grand Central Terminal in 1871 the depot was sold to P.T. Barnum and converted into a hippodrome called "Barnum's Monster Classical and Geological Hippodrome." In 1876 it was renamed "Gilmore's Garden."

William Henry Vanderbilt officially renamed Gilmore's Garden "Madison Square Garden" and reopened the facility to the public on May 30, 1879 at 26th Street and Madison Avenue. The first arena was originally built for the sport of track cycling, which is still remembered in the name of the Madison event. Image:Madison Square Garden ad.jpg The second Madison Square Garden, designed by Stanford White, who would later be killed there, opened at this site in 1890 and remained until the third Garden opened in 1925. It hosted the 1924 Democratic National Convention, which nominated John W. Davis after 103 ballots. It also hosted the only indoor bout in the career of Jack Dempsey. The third Madison Square Garden opened in 1925 and cost $4.75 million to build; this one hosted seven NCAA men's basketball championships between 1943 and 1950. It also hosted the NBA All-Star Game in 1954 and 1955.

On February 11, 1968 the third Madison Square Garden closed and the fourth Madison Square Garden opened. The current Garden is the hub of Madison Square Garden Center in the office and entertainment complex known as Pennsylvania Plaza, for the railroad station atop which the complex is located. It hosted the 1968 and 1998 NBA All-Star Games. Madison Square Garden III has since been replaced by the large mixed-use complex World Wide Plaza, which was designed by the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and completed in 1989.

As of September 2005, the Garden's current owners, Cablevision, has plans to build a fifth Garden. If the project moves forward, a new Garden would be built at the western end of the James Farley Post Office across the street, which is also eyed for a western expansion of Pennsylvania Station. The new Garden, which would remain home to the Rangers and the Knicks, would feature wide concourses with stores and restaurants, luxury boxes with better sight lines for basketball and hockey games, a museum, and a hall of fame.

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Present operations

The present Garden is best known as the home of the New York Knicks of the NBA and New York Rangers of the NHL. The aforementioned professional sports teams play their home matches in the arena and are owned by the Garden itself. It also hosts New York Liberty (WNBA) home games, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus when it comes to New York City, home games for the St. John's Red Storm (college basketball), the annual pre and postseason NIT tournaments, the NBA Draft, and almost any other kind of indoor activity that draws large audiences, such as the 2004 Republican National Convention. It has previously hosted the 1976, 1980 and 1992 Democratic National Conventions. World Wrestling Entertainment considers it its home arena as well, hosting three WrestleManias, three Summerslams, two Survivor Series, and the 2000 Royal Rumble. However, in 2005, World Wrestling Entertainment temorarily broke off their relationship with 'The Garden' due to the fact that WWE felt that since rental costs for the building have gone up, they could no longer make a profit in the building. However, a year later, World Wrestling Entertainment patched things up with MSG, and have agreed to host the 2007 edition of Summerslam in the venue. The Garden hosts 320 events a year.

MSG is also known for its place in the history of boxing. Many of boxing's biggest fights were held at Madison Square Garden, including many of Joe Louis, the Roberto Duran-Ken Buchanan affair, and the first and second Joe Frazier-Muhammad Ali bouts. Before promoters such as Don King and Bob Arum moved boxing to Las Vegas, Madison Square Garden was considered the mecca of boxing.

Most large popular-music concerts in New York City take place in Madison Square Garden. Particularly famous ones include The Concert for New York City following the September 11 attacks and John Lennon's final concert before his murder in 1980.

Many musical acts released seminal live albums recorded at MSG, including Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen, Frank Sinatra, Billy Joel, Phish, and Elvis Presley. Pearl Jam released a DVD of a concert at the Garden.

The arena is also used for other special events, including Tennis, Circus, and Wrestling events. The New York Police Academy also holds its annual graduation ceremony for new officers at Madison Square Garden. It has become the New York site of the annual Grammy Awards, (which are normally held in Los Angeles) and hosted the 2005 Country Music Association Awards (normally held in Nashville).

The Big East Conference men's basketball tournament has been held at MSG every year since 1983.

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Seating

Seating in the present Madison Square Garden is arranged in five ascending levels. The lowest one is referred to as "rink-side" for hockey games or "court-side" for basketball games next above this is the First Promenade, followed by the Second Promenade, First Balcony and Second Balcony. The seats of these five levels originally bore the colors red, orange, yellow, green, and blue, respectively; however, this color scheme has since been changed, mainly because the "blue seats" had become synonymous with rowdy behavior by fans, particularly those attending New York Rangers hockey games. It was a common sight for Rangers fans to set fire to the jerseys of fans from visiting teams, especially those from the New York Islanders and the Philadelphia Flyers. Rangers fans in the blue seats would defend their turf from invading visiting teams' fans at all costs. For hockey, the Garden seats 18,200; for basketball, 19,763; and for concerts 20,000 center stage, 19,522 end-stage. The arena features 20,976 square feet (1949 m²) of arena floor space. Image:IMG 0501.JPG

Because all of the seats are in one monolithic grandstand, distance from the court/rink is significant from the upper sections. Also, the rows rise much more gradually than other North American arenas, which can cause impaired sightlines, especially when sitting behind tall spectators or one of the concourses.

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Other venues

Today's Madison Square Garden is more than just the arena. Other venues at the Garden include:

  • The Theater at Madison Square Garden, which seats between 2,000 to 5,600 for concerts and can also be used for meetings, stage shows, and graduation ceremonies. No seat is more than 177 feet (54 m) from the 30-foot-by-64-foot stage. There is an 8,000-square-foot lobby at the theater. When the current Garden opened in 1968, the Theater was known as the Felt Forum, in honor of Garden President Irving Mitchell Felt. In the early 1990s, it was renamed the Paramount, after Paramount Communications, which then owned the Garden (and which had previously been known as Gulf & Western.) The theater received its current name in the mid-90s.
  • The 36,000-square-foot Expo Center,(formerly known as "The Rotunda") is used for trade shows, cat show, often in combination with the arena, banquets, and receptions.
  • A 9,500-square-foot terrace and two restaurants: the Garden Club and the Play-by-Play.
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Other corporate operations

In addition to the Garden itself, Madison Square Garden, L.P. also operates two major sports venues in Connecticut.

The Hartford Civic Center, an indoor arena in Hartford, is home to the Hartford Wolf Pack, a minor-league hockey team also owned by MSG, and also serves as the part-time home of the men's and women's basketball teams of the University of Connecticut.

Rentschler Field, a stadium in East Hartford, hosts UConn's football team.

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Notable events

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Notable firsts

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Other notable events

  • June 7, 1943 - Former Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie leads 20,000 African-Americans, the largest Civil Rights rally of its time, in demanding equal rights and victory in the war against Hitler.
  • March 20, 1994 - WWE's WrestleMania X is held, celebrating the 10th edition of the company's grandest event that started in 1985.
  • October 20, 2001 - "The Concert for New York City" is held at the Garden to benefit the city and the victims of the 9/11 terrorist disaster.
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Madison Square Garden in Motion Pictures

Madison Square Garden was the "nest" for the carnivorous Godzilla babies and was later destroyed by F-18 bombers in the Americanized version of Godzilla (1998)

Madison Square was featured in the film Glitter (2001) as it is where Billie Frank (Mariah Carey) sings to a sell out crowd.


The Garden was also seen in Finding Forrester (2001), and the Adam Sandler remake of Mr. Deeds (2002).

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Madison Square Garden in Television

In Futurama, the 'Garden' is known as Madison Cube Garden.

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References

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External links

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