INFINITE CITY #7: Mansions, Murder and Monoliths

(12 reviews)

New York City audio tour: INFINITE CITY #7: Mansions, Murder and Monoliths

This is a 0.5mi walking tour

It takes an average of 25 mins to complete.

New York City

The United States

Archived

This tour isn’t available for download. We’ve preserved the script and audio as a record of its moment in time, but we don’t recommend doing the tour. It was published in May 2017.

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About the Tour

INFINITE CITY is a series of walking tours exploring New York City in endless detail. This is the seventh tour in the series.

On this thirty-minute tour, we’ll walk two loops around a single block in the Flatiron District. Each successive trip reveals another layer of information about the people and buildings. On the first loop, you’ll learn about the events that unfolded on this block, including the development of the city’s main transportation depot, the construction of an extravagant mansion, and the rooftop murder of an architect. Then, on the second loop, you’ll hear about the architectural history that’s hidden within the buildings on this block, past and present.

Join us on a walking tour unlike any other where, by putting this city block under a microscope, you’ll learn about:

The paupers’ grave beneath the park
Massive insurance empires
The New York and Harlem Railroad Depot
Herman Melville’s last home
The original Madison Square Garden
Tiffany’s ascension

Each tour in the INFINITE CITY series is an accumulation of a particular place’s memories and an obsessive compendium of its often overlooked minutiae. Keep a look out for more tours in the series on VoiceMap’s app soon!

Tour Producer

Akiva Saunders

0 tours

Akiva Saunders is a New York City teacher who uses technology and software to explore the frontiers of education. He is the chair of Latin at the Latin/Greek Institute, a teacher in the NYC public school system and a founder of Spectacle Theater, a microcinema in Brooklyn now celebrating its 10th anniversary.

Preview Location

Location 4

Original Madison Square Garden

Stop here and look to your left.

150 years ago, the former train depot stood abandoned. Over the next few decades, ambitious entertainers filled this block with everything imaginable: dog shows, religious revivals, beauty contests, temperance meetings, walking marathons, c... Stop here and look to your left.

150 years ago, the former train depot stood abandoned. Over the next few decades, ambitious entertainers filled this block with everything imaginable: dog shows, religious revivals, beauty contests, temperance meetings, walking marathons, chariot races, wild west shows, a museum of freaks, illegal boxing matches, and the 1924 Democratic National Convention.

The first to fill this space was a renowned showman – P.T. Barnum. He turned the abandoned depot into an oval arena which he called The Great Roman Hippodrome. Barnum soon took his show on the road and would go on to create the most famous circus in the world. Meanwhile, the arena remained, changing name and ownership for a few years until a man named William Kissam Vanderbilt came along. He made an important contribution to the world of entertainment by renaming the venue Madison Square Garden.

By 1890, a group including J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie owned the arena. They wanted a New York entertainment centerpiece in the Beaux-Arts Style. The old arena was torn down, and a new building was constructed -- a combination arena, theater, restaurant and roof garden. It was designed by the architecture firm of McKim, Mead, and White, one of the most significant and prolific of the time.

At its top was a nude female form, a statue of Diana by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Moral indignation ensued.

In 1906, there was another scandal on the roof. It involved one of the architects of the building, the now infamous Stanford White.

White was a notorious womanizer and one of his victims was a 16-year-old chorus girl named Evelyn Nesbitt, whom he assaulted while she was unconscious. He moved on to other targets and she married a millionaire named Harry Kendall Thaw. Her new husband became obsessed with the famous architect. One evening, they both happened to be dining on the rooftop garden. Thaw walked over with a gun hidden in his coat, said “you’ve ruined my wife” and killed the architect. In the news accounts, the scandalous details were enhanced by the irony of an architect being murdered in one of his own buildings.

Let’s get going. Continue walking towards the corner while I tell you more of the story.

White’s version of Madison Square Garden was demolished in 1925, and the arena was rebuilt twice elsewhere. Today’s structure stands far from here, but still retains both the name of Madison Square Garden and the nickname of “the world’s most famous arena.” To add a bit more irony to the story, the current version took the place of McKim, Mead and White’s original Pennsylvania Station building, which was demolished. Read More

View locations and route

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Major Landmarks

Madison Square Park
The Flatiron Building
Appellate Division Courthouse of the New York State Supreme Court

Getting There

Route Overview

VoiceMap tours follow a route from a set starting point. It’s how we give turn-by-turn directions and tell a story greater than the sum of its parts.

Start location
11 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10010, USA
Total distance

762m
Final location
352 Park Ave S, New York, NY 10010, USA
Distance back to start location

91.68m

Directions to Starting Point

The tour begins across the street from the North Eastern side of Madison Square Park. Stand facing the park, you'll see a playground in the park a little to your right. You’ll be at the North East corner of Madison Avenue and East 25th Street. Nearby subways include the F, N, R and 6 lines.

Show Directions

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Tips

Places to stop along the way

Madison Square Park, Shake Shack, Mexicue

Best time of day

Daytime

Precautions

Stay aware of traffic, especially bicyclists who can come from both directions.

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“This app has become my go-to app for audio tours. I pretty much use it for every trip and it works wonderfully. I highly recommend VoiceMap for travelers to truly experience cities.”

App Store Review

“Great app. walk around at your own pace, stop where you want, move on or speed up when you want. Read the script before you go or during the commentary, speed it up or replay it. Repeat the tour whenever you like.”

Google Play Store

Questions and Reviews

4.1 / 5

12 Ratings

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