Madison Square - The Park Opens

The Park Opens

On May 10, 1847, the 6.8 acre (2.8 ha) Madison Square Park opened to the public. Within a few years, the tide of residential development, which was relentlessly moving uptown, had reached the Madison Square area, and through the 1870s, the neighborhood became an aristocratic one of brownstone row houses and mansions where the elite of the city lived; Theodore Roosevelt, Edith Wharton and Winston Churchill's mother, Jennie Jerome, were all born here. In 1853, plans had been made to build the Crystal Palace there, but strong public opposition and protests caused the palace to be relocated to Bryant Park.

The Fifth Avenue Hotel, a luxury hotel built by developer Amos Eno, and initially known as "Eno's Folly" because it was so far away from the hotel district, stood on the west side of Madison Square from 1859 to 1908. The first hotel in the city with elevators, which were steam-operated and known as the "vertical railroad", it had fireplaces in every bedroom, private bathrooms, and public rooms which saw many elegant events. Notable visitors to the hotel included Mark Twain, famed Swedish singer Jenny Lind, U.S. Presidents Chester A. Arthur and Ulysses S. Grant and the Prince of Wales.

With the success of the hotel, which could house 800 guests, other grand hotels such as the Hoffman House, the Brunswick and the Victoria, opened in the surrounding area, as did entertainment venues such as the Madison Square Theatre and Chickering Hall and many private clubs. When the center of the expanding city moved north by the turn of the century, and the neighborhood had become a commercial district and was no longer fashionable, the hotel was closed and demolished. A plaque on the building currently on the site, the Toy Center, commemorates the hotel.

When the Draft Riots hit New York in 1863, ten thousand Federal troops brought in to control the rioters were bivouacked in Madison Square and Washington Square, as well as Stuyvesant Square. Madison Square was also the site in November 1864 of a political rally, complete with torchlight parade and fireworks, in support of the Presidential candidacy of Democrat General George B. McClellan, who was running against his old boss, Abraham Lincoln. It was larger than the Republican parade the night before, which had marched from Madison Square to Union Square to rally there.