It hosted the first three-ring circus and John Lennon\'s last time on stage, and now Madison Square Garden will open its doors to a Republican gala aimed at sending George W. Bush back to the White House.
The New York arena has a long and colourful history in sport, politics and scandal, growing from a humble collection of railroad sheds into one of the most famous stadiums in the United States.
When Marilyn Monroe sang a sexy \"Happy Birthday\" to her lover President John F. Kennedy -- and when Nazis rallied thousands of Americans to support new leader Adolf Hitler -- it happened at the place New Yorkers call The Garden.
Entrepreneur P.
T. Barnum, who quipped \"Every crowd has a silver lining,\" was the first to see the value of the place, turning the rail sheds into The Great Roman Hippodrome to cash in on a mid-19th century craze for bicycle races.
Within a few years, the wily showman turned his attention to another new fad, using the site to create what would become the Barnum and Bailey Circus that still exists today.
The site was turned into the first proper Madison Square Garden in 1879 with the establishment of the world\'s first artificial ice rink. The world\'s first auto show followed in 1900.
In between, renowned architect Stanford White, whose firm designed many of the East Coast mansions of America\'s emerging industrial barons, built a new Garden in 1890 that featured an 8,000-seat arena.
White was murdered on the roof of the building in 1906, slain by a jealous husband who claimed the architect had seduced his wife when she was 16 years old. The scandal rocked US high society.
Famed anarchist Emma Goldman hosted a massive rally at the Garden to protest the US entry into World War I in 1917.
Within two decades, the Nazis staged a meeting there to try to drum up US support.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the Garden became the undisputed mecca for professional boxing, generating so much money that promoters routinely handed out thick envelopes of cash to journalists just for covering a fight.
The Garden moved to its current location in 1968, with a new 13-storey structure that was then at the cutting edge of stadium design -- it featured its own restaurant, theatre, bar and bowling alley.
George Harrison of the Beatles chose the arena when he staged what is now called the Concert for Bangladesh, a fund-raiser that almost cost the life of Eric Clapton when he took a bad batch of heroin before going on stage.
Another Beatle, John Lennon, last performed in public at the Garden in 1974 as a surprise walk-on guest with a rising English pop star of the time called Elton John.
Five years later, Pope John Paul II stopped by on his first visit to the United States as pontiff, taking the Garden stage in a specific appearance aimed at speaking to American youth and turning them toward Jesus Christ.
Quite another religious figure took the spotlight in 1982, when 2,000 couples married en masse under Korean-born Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who has laid claims to be the new Messiah.
The Republican party of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney will formally anoint the ticket at Madison Square Garden this week, hoping that history repeats itself.
Bill Clinton and Al Gore won the US election after the rival Democrats held their national convention at the Garden in 1992.
News RSS