The current Garden opened February 11, 1968 atop the old Penn Station site, the fourth arena to carry the name since 1879, and seats 19,812 for Knicks games and 18,006 for the Rangers.
Built directly above Penn Station, the Garden gives fans direct access to the A, C, E, 1, 2, and 3 subway lines plus Amtrak, LIRR, and NJ Transit without stepping outside.
The name has outlived its address twice over. The first two Gardens stood at Madison Avenue and 26th Street, the second of them Stanford White's ornate tower of 1890. The third opened in 1925 on Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th, took in boxing, the Rangers and the circus for four decades, and closed in February 1968 as the fourth opened down Eighth Avenue.
That fourth building cost the city Pennsylvania Station. McKim, Mead and White's 1910 terminal was demolished between 1963 and 1966 to clear the site, a loss that pushed the city into creating its Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1965 and drew Vincent Scully's verdict that one used to enter the city like a god and now scuttles in like a rat. The tracks stayed. Charles Luckman set a concrete drum with a cable-suspended roof directly over the platforms of a working railroad, and the station was rebuilt underneath as low-ceilinged concourse.
The bowl that resulted is small and steep by modern standards — 19,812 for basketball, 18,006 for hockey — and its virtue is the compression. Seats are stacked vertically rather than spread backward, so the upper rings hang over the floor instead of retreating from it. The 2011–2013 rebuild, done over three consecutive off-seasons while the arena kept its schedule, hung two narrow bridge decks from the ceiling along the side lines, seating a few hundred people directly above the play. Below the arena sits the theater that opened as the Felt Forum, about 5,600 seats, since renamed several times by sponsors.
The Garden operates on a special permit rather than by right, an unusual condition for a building of its size. The City Council granted ten years in 2013 and only five more in 2023, deliberately binding the arena's future to the long-argued reconstruction of the station beneath it. The Knicks and Rangers have played here since 1968; the Liberty from 1997 to 2017; St John's and the Big East tournament remain fixtures.
4 Pennsylvania Plaza, New York, NY 10001 · Official site ↗
Madison Square Garden, colloquially known as the Garden or by its initials MSG, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, U.S. The arena is located between Seventh and Eighth avenues, extending from 31st to 33rd streets, atop Pennsylvania Station. The current site hosts the fourth venue to bear the name "Madison Square Garden"; the first two, opened in 1879 and 1890, were situated in Madison Square, on East 26th Street and Madison Avenue, with the third Madison Square Garden (1925) farther uptown at Eighth Avenue and 50th Street.
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