| Contents |
List of illustrations -- Acknowledgments. Prologue: November 2, 1891. Part 1 On Madison Square: July 1887 : The "red-haired trial" -- On Madison Square -- A practical education -- Enter Augustus Saint-Gaudens -- Women, horses, and a curse? Part 2 Building a palace of pleasure: August 1889 : The walls come down -- Continental influences -- Laying plans -- In the office and out -- The walls go up -- Diana defrocked -- Baked earth -- An irksome spring -- Opening night -- More of the pieces. Part 3 The virgin and the tower: March 1891 : On the model stand -- The tower rises -- Diana, doing and making -- Oriental fantasies -- The virgin installed -- Diana reigns -- Up under the stars -- A home in the white city -- A second Diana -- Within the tower. Part 4 Epilogue: the last of the story : Diana redux -- A murder at the garden -- The tower falls -- The last of the story. Notes -- Selected bibliography -- Index. |
| Abstract |
November 1891, the heart of Gilded Age Manhattan. Thousands filled the streets surrounding Madison Square, fingers pointing, mouths agape. After countless struggles, Stanford White - the country's most celebrated architect - was about to dedicate America's tallest tower, the final cap set atop his Madison Square Garden, the country's grandest new palace of pleasure. Amid a flood of electric light and fireworks, the gilded figure topping the tower was suddenly revealed - an eighteenth-foot nude sculpture of Diana, the Roman Virgin Goddess of the Hunt, created by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the country's finest sculptor and White's dearest pal. This book tells the remarkable story behind the construction of the 1890 Madison Square Garden and the controversial sculpture that crowned it. Set amid the magnificent achievements of nineteenth-century American art and architecture, the book delves into the fascinating private lives of the era's most prominent architect and sculptor and the nature of their intimate relationship. The author shows how both men pushed the boundaries of America's parochial aesthetic, ushering in an era of art that embraced European styles with American vitality. Situating the Garden's seminal place in the history of New York City and the entire country, this book brings to life a tale of architecture, art, and spectacle amid the elegant yet scandal-ridden culture of Gotham's decadent era. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Issued in other form | Online version: Hinman, Suzanne, author. Grandest Madison Square Garden. First edition. Syracuse, New York : Syracuse University Press, 2019. 9780815654858 |
| Genre/form | History. |
| LCCN | 2019004384 |
| ISBN | 9780815611103 (hardcover ; alk. paper) |
| ISBN | 0815611102 (hardcover ; alk. paper) |
| ISBN | (ebook) |
