Lost New York City: Madison Square Garden II

Madison Square Garden, despite sitting at 33rd Street and 8th Avenue today, got its name from the first Garden which sat on Madison Square where Broadway and Fifth Avenue collide. The Garden pictured above, designed by Stanford White, was the second and the most famous and elaborate. Like something out of Moorish Venice, the bulk of the building resembled the Doge's Palace, with its lavish arcade and series of turrets. The tower was a stunner, based on the Giralda Tower of Seville Cathedral in Spain. Topped with a statue of Diana, the Goddess of the Hunt, designed by America's most celebrated sculptor, Auguste Saint-Gaudens, it added an unmistakable element to the burgeoning NYC skyline. P.T. Barnum often used the interior's enormous stadium to stage his spectacles. In perhaps the most scandalous event at the Garden, on the rooftop restaurant, Mr. White was entertaining the otherwise married actress Evelyn Nesbitt, whose husband got wind and promptly arrived at the Garden, went to the rooftop, and shot America's most famous architect to death.