What happened to the old Madison Square Garden building and where was it located?

Answer 1

There happened to be 4 arenas named Madison Square Garden in NYC. The latest one is built at 33rd St and 7th Ave, while the one before it was built at 50th St and 8th Ave. The first two buildings were arenas that became best known for holding fighting matches located at Madison Square hence its name. Madison Square Garden was originally The Hippodrome, a sports facility built by P.T. Barnum in 1884. It received the name of Madison Square Garden after it was acquired by William Vanderbilt in 1879. He started to lose money on it though, and razed the structure in 1889. The Horse Show Association acquired the site and commissioned Stanford White to replace it with a grand Moorish structure with the same name. Costing $3 million, it was the second-tallest structure in New York city, and it had the largest auditorium in the United States, seating 8,000. Despite all this, the place still lost money. It was sold to a real estate company in 1911 that went bankrupt in 1916, when the New York Life Insurance company foreclosed. They leased it to Tex Rickard, who did make it a going concern, but who also decided to move the facility to 50th and 8th Avenue. That facility lasted until 1968, when it was closed for the current MSG, on 33rd & 8th Ave. (This one replace the old Penn Station.) Eventually, the 50th St. building was torn down to make way for the Worldwide Plaza (1989).