Friday, July 15, 2016

A different Madison Square Garden, many moons ago


This old postcard, mailed in 1910, features the second of four iterations of New York City's Madison Square Garden.

If you're keeping score, those four structures are:


This second version of MSG was a thriving cultural and entertainment center that hosted orchestras, operas, circuses, boxing matches, indoor football, the Westminster Kennel Club dog show, and the 1924 Democratic National Convention.

This postcard was postmarked on July 12, 1910 — the very date that the poem best known as "Tinker to Evers to Chance" was first published in the New York Evening Mail. It was mailed to Master Herbert Hall in "So. Windham." The short message from A.E. Brennan states: "New York Missed but not forgotten."

I miss New York a little bit, too. It's been four years, to the month, since I was there for the premiere of I'm Fine, Thanks (and photographed some graffiti/artwork). There are still so many museums and historic sights I want to check out there. And it would be a dandy spot for Instagramming. Also, while the famed Book Row is long gone in Manhattan, there's a fresh upsurge in used-book stores in Gotham, according to this article in The Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

I'll leave you with a look at the full back of this postcard, something I don't post often enough.

1 comment:

  1. "Herbert Hall picked a blue violet in South Windham [Vermont] Oct. 10 [1917]."

    Source (top of the middle column, below "About the State"): http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn91066782/1917-10-20/ed-1/seq-3.pdf

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