Madison Square and Madison Square Park
Madison Square is a public square formed by the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway at 23rd Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The square was named for Founding Father James Madison, the fourth president of the United States. The focus of the square is Madison Square Park, a public park, which is bounded on the east by Madison Avenue ; on the south by 23rd Street; on the north by 26th Street; and on the west by Fifth Avenue and Broadway as they cross.
The park and the square are at the northern end of the Flatiron District neighborhood of Manhattan. The neighborhood to the north and west of the park is NoMad and to the north and east is Rose Hill.
Madison Square is probably best known around the world for providing the name of a sports arena called Madison Square Garden. The original arena and its successor were located just northeast of the park for 47 years, until 1925. The current Madison Square Garden, the fourth such building, is not in the area. Notable buildings around Madison Square include the Flatiron Building, the Toy Center, the New York Life Building, the New York Merchandise Mart, the Appellate Division Courthouse, the Met Life Tower, and One Madison, a 50-story condominium tower.
Early history of the area
The area where Madison Square is now had been a swampy hunting ground crossed by Cedar Creek - which was later renamed Madison Creek - from east to west, and first came into use as a public space in 1686. It was used as a potter's field in the 1700s. In 1807, "The Parade", a tract of about from 23rd to 34th Streets and Third to Seventh Avenues, was designated for use as an arsenal, a barracks, and a drilling area. There was a United States Army arsenal there from 1811 until 1825 when it became the New York House of Refuge for the Society for the Protection of Juvenile Delinquents, for children under sixteen committed by the courts for indefinite periods. In 1839 the building was destroyed by fire. The size of the tract was reduced in 1814 to, and it received its current name.In 1839, a farmhouse located at what is now Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street was turned into a roadhouse under the direction of William "Corporal" Thompson, who later renamed it "Madison Cottage", after the former president. The roadhouse was the last stop for people traveling northward out of the city, or the first stop for those arriving from the north; visitors were encouraged not to sleep more than five to a bed. Though Madison Cottage itself was razed in 1852, it ultimately gave rise to the names for the adjacent avenue and park, which are therefore only indirectly named after President James Madison.
The roots of the New York Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, one of the first organized baseball teams, are in Madison Square. Amateur players began in 1842 to use a vacant sandlot at 27th and Madison for their games and, eventually, Alexander Cartwright suggested they draw up rules for the game and start an organized team. When they lost their sandlot to development, they moved across the Hudson River to Hoboken, New Jersey, where they played their first game in 1846.
Opening of the park
On May 10, 1847, the Madison Square Park, indirectly named after President James Madison, opened to the public. Within a few years, the tide of residential development, which was relentlessly moving uptown, had reached the Madison Square area. Initially, the houses around the park were narrow, crowded and dark brownstone rowhouses with small rooms easily subject to becoming cluttered. Today, the only remnant of these brownstones is a single building at 14 East 23rd Street.Despite this beginning, through the 1870s, the neighborhood became an aristocratic one of brownstone row houses and mansions where the elite of the city lived; Theodore Roosevelt, Edith Wharton and Winston Churchill's mother, Jennie Jerome, were all born here.
Madison Cottage was torn down in 1852 to make way for Franconi's Hippodrome, which lasted only for two years. It was an arena which seated 10,000 customers, and presented chariot races on its wide track, as well as exotic animals such as elephants and camels. A money-loser, it would be razed so that the Fifth Avenue Hotel could be built on the site.
In 1853, plans had been made to build the Crystal Palace there, but strong public opposition and protests caused the palace to be relocated by the Board of Aldermen to the site of present-day Bryant Park.
During the 1863 New York City draft riots, 10,000 Federal troops brought in to control the rioters encamped in Madison Square and Washington Square, as well as Stuyvesant Square. Madison Square was also the site in November 1864 of a political rally, complete with torchlight parade and fireworks, in support of the presidential candidacy of Democrat General George B. McClellan, who was running against his old boss, Abraham Lincoln. It was larger than the Republican parade the night before, which had marched from Madison Square to Union Square to rally there.
Commercialization of the neighborhood
The Fifth Avenue Hotel, a luxury hotel built by developer Amos Eno, and initially known as "Eno's Folly" because it was so far away from the hotel district, stood on the west side of Madison Square from 1859 to 1908. It was the first hotel in the nation with elevators, which were steam powered and known as the "vertical railroad", which had the effect of making the upper floors more desirable as they no longer had to be reached by climbing stairs. It had fireplaces in every bedroom, private bathrooms, and public rooms which saw many elegant events. Notable visitors to the hotel included Mark Twain, Swedish singer Jenny Lind, railroad tycoon Jay Gould, financier "Big Jim" Fisk, the Prince of Wales and U.S. Presidents James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison and William McKinley. Theodore Roosevelt's campaign headquarters for his unsuccessful campaign for mayor in 1886, and his likewise failed campaign for governor in 1898 were located in the hotel. The hotel, which was noted for its "Amen Corner" where Republican political boss Thomas Collier Platt held court in the 1890s, was closed and demolished in 1908. It is reported that patrons of the hotel's bar spent $7.000 on drinks on its last day of operation. A plaque on the Toy Center, the building currently on the site, commemorates the hotel.With the success of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, which could house 800 guests, other grand hotels such as the Hoffman House, the Brunswick and the Victoria, opened in the surrounding area, as did entertainment venues such as the Madison Square Theatre and Chickering Hall. Upscale restaurants such a Delmonico's and high-end retail shops opened up along Fifth Avenue and Broadway, in addition, nearby exclusive private clubs such as the Union, Athenaeum and Lotos clubs, began to open. But also, "concert-saloons", like "The Luovre", full of waitresses in provocative short skirts who served drinks and provided music-hall entertainment for the customers, began to appear as well; the waitresses were often willing to take the male customers upstairs to private rooms, or to one of the many nearby brothels which had also started to pop up.
With the center of the expanding city moving north by the turn of the century, and the neighborhood becoming commercialized, elite residents moved farther uptown, away from Madison Square, enabling more restaurants, theatres and clubs to open up in the neighborhood, creating an entertainment district, albeit an upscale one where society balls and banquets were held in restaurants such as Delmonico's. Nearby, huge dry-goods emporia such as Siegel-Cooper in the Ladies' Mile district brought daytime crowds of shoppers. No longer primarily residential, Madison Square was still a thriving area.
Worth Square
At the western side of Madison Square Park, on an island bordered by Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and 25th Street, stands an obelisk, designed by James Goodwin Batterson which was erected in 1857 over the tomb of General William Jenkins Worth, who served in the Seminole Wars and the Mexican War, and for whom Fort Worth, Texas, was named, as well as Worth Street in lower Manhattan. The city's Parks Department designated the area immediately around the monument as a parklet called General Worth Square.Renewal
Madison Square Park lost some acreage in 1870 when the west side was reduced so that Broadway could be widened and parking provided for hansom cabs, but it was also re-landscaped by William Grant and Ignatz Pilat, a former assistant to Frederick Law Olmsted. The current park maintains their overall design.New features
The new design brought in the sculptures that now reside in the park. One notable sculpture is the seated bronze portrait of Secretary of State William H. Seward, by Randolph Rogers, which sits at the southwest entrance to the park. Seward, who is best remembered for purchasing Alaska from Russia, was the first New Yorker to have a monument erected in his honor.Other statues in the park depict Roscoe Conkling, who served in Congress in both the House and the Senate, and who collapsed at that spot in the park while walking home from his office during the Blizzard of 1888 and died five weeks later, after refusing to pay a cab $50 for the ride; Chester Alan Arthur, the 21st President of the United States; and David Farragut, who is supposed to have said "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" in the Battle of Mobile Bay during the Civil War. The Farragut Memorial, which was first erected at Fifth Avenue and 26th Street and moved to the Square's northern end in 1935, was designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and architect Stanford White.
Along the south edge of the park is the Eternal Light Flagstaff, dedicated on Armistice Day 1923 and restored in 2002, which commemorates the return of American soldiers and sailors from World War I.
Another park highlight is the granite Southern Fountain, a modern reproduction of the original fountain, which was first located on the site of the Old Post Office. It was completed in 1843, before being rededicated in the park in 1867. The modern replacement was installed in 1990, and renovated in 2015.
Jemmy's Dog Run is located beside the park's entrance from West 25th Street. It was expanded in 2022.