Madison Square

This collection of six photographs shows Madison Square and its iconic landmarks.

In the 1890s, Madison Square stood at the center of fashionable New York, where the hotel, theater, and restaurant districts converged. Stanford White’s Madison Square Garden, completed in 1890, dominated the northeast corner with its tower modeled on the Giralda at Seville and Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s gilded Diana above it, while Delmonico’s, on the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 26th Street, represented the square’s equally potent claims to social and culinary prestige.  

The collection includes:

John S. Johnston. Madison Square, N.Y., 1893. 

John S. Johnston. Madison Square, N.Y., 1894.  

Unidentified photographer. Delmonico’s, Fifth Avenue and 26th Street, c. 1890s. 

Johnston’s two elevated photographs of 1893 and 1894 look northeast across the park from slightly different positions, recording the square as a space of trees, winding paths, streetcars, carriages, and constant movement, with the Garden tower rising over the surrounding cityscape as its unmistakable landmark. The later view gives greater prominence to the tower and also makes legible the painted sign of the Meriden Britannia Company on a nearby building, a reminder that commerce pressed in at every edge of this refined urban stage.  

The street-level view of Delmonico’s completes the picture by bringing one of the square’s most celebrated establishments into close focus: its cast-iron canopy, polished frontage, and line of carriages embody the world of display, dining, and sociability that made Madison Square a symbolic center of Gilded Age Manhattan. Much of that world has since disappeared. Delmonico’s moved north as fashionable life migrated uptown, and Madison Square Garden itself, despite its grandeur, was demolished in 1925 to make way for Cass Gilbert’s New York Life Building, completed in 1928. 

A full description and inventory are available on request.

$4,000