Stanford White and Madison Square Garden

“I met Stanford White at a supper party. He had a friend in the chorus, who invited me to meet him. It was no novel thing to meet new people.” – Evelyn Nesbit

Of all the great cities in the world, few personify their country like New York City. As America’s largest city and best known immigration gateway into the country, the Big Apple represents the beauty, diversity and sheer strength of the United States, a global financial center that has enticed people chasing the “American Dream” for centuries. As such, it’s only fitting that Madison Square Garden, the stadium that bills itself as the world’s most famous arena, resides in the heart of Manhattan. Just blocks away from the Empire State Building and situated atop Penn Station, the Garden is always bustling, whether it’s for special events or as the home of the NBA’s New York Knicks and NHL’s New York Rangers, and all the while, performing in the Garden has been a career benchmark for artists as varied as Elvis Presley, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, and Michael Jackson. As Billie Joel put it, “Madison Square Garden is the center of the universe as far as I'm concerned. It has the best acoustics, the best audiences, the best reputation, and the best history of great artists who have played there. It is the iconic, holy temple of Rock and Roll for most touring acts and, being a New Yorker, it holds a special significance to me.”

The Garden is now nearly 50 years old, making it one of the oldest sporting venues used in professional sports, but the current arena was not the first Madison Square Garden, and the area has a history as an entertainment center dating back to the 19th century. Ironically, its location on the less crowded fringes of Manhattan in the 19th century helped establish it as a place for hucksters like P.T. Barnum to hold events. In fact, a previous Garden was one of New York City’s tallest buildings in the early 20th century, and it was bankrolled by business titans like J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie.

This iteration of Madison Square Garden was also ushered in by one of the most notorious crimes of the 20th century. When Cornelius Vanderbilt sold his stake in Madison Square Garden to J.P. Morgan, Morgan subsequently hired Stanford White to construct a new arena in its place. At the time he was commissioned to draw up plans for the new Garden, White was a partner with McKim, Mead & White, a firm that had designed some of New York’s most beautiful mansions, including the Fifth Avenue homes of the Vanderbilt’s and the Astor’s. In writing about White, to whom much of the credit belongs for the current Madison Square Garden’s beauty, L.E. Curtis, author of “Madison Square Garden’s Major Role in the Life and Traditions of New York City,” described him as “a young man of thirty-six, who had already been heralded as a great architect. To him was entrusted the commission of designing New York's great play palace.”

At the time, however, Curtis did not know the whole story about White, because in addition to designing the Garden and other similar spaces, White also designed a secret hideaway in his own home where an aspiring young dancer, 16 year old Evelyn Nesbit, would entertain him during sexually inappropriate meetings. Years later, on a warm evening in late June 1906, millionaire Harry K. Thaw, who had by that time married Nesbit, approached White while he watched the show Mam’zelle Champagne in the roof garden theater on top of Madison Square Garden. Pulling out a pistol, he shot White three times in the head at point blank range. At first, those in the theater thought it was a prank, but when the smoke cleared and White’s wounds became visible, they knew they had just witnessed something horrific. From the beginning, the murder of Madison Square Garden’s chief designer had everything, including lurid sex, a shocking murder, and an insanity plea, and as a result, both Thaw and White were put on trial in the papers and the court.