madisonsquare

Philadelphia Jack O'Brien In December 1920 Tex Rickard announced he was building the world's largest gym in Madison Square Garden (including, in the summer, the world's largest pool) and that Philadelphia Jack O'Brien would be the "physical director". The 1/5th mile track ran around the roof of the old MSG.

Seuss. Thank you for the information on O'Brien and Rickard. Would you have a source that shows the construction date of the track as 1920? I'm able to confirm everything else for the catalog record, but that would allow us to establish a better date for the photograph.

This photo appeared in the Boston Evening Globe, Wednesday, December 29, 1920 - Page 13. In the accompanying picture Harvey Cohn and Philadelphia Jack O'Brien are seen ready to start off on a long jaunt" Cohn was a former member of the Irish Amateur Athletic Club who competed in the Olympics in St. Louis in 1904, 1906 in Athens and 1908 in London. He coached at Indiana and Colby. He coached the Japanese team at the Antwerp Olympics in 1920. His gig atop the Garden didn't last long, as by the summer of 1921 he was announced as the new coach at New Hampshire. O'Brien announced in 1922 that he was ending his association with the Garden and opening another gym on Broadway.

Seuss. Thank you! The additional identification of Cohn is greatly appreciated.

The "Colonel Donovan" named in the photo's caption is none other than World War I Medal of Honor recipient United States Army Colonel William Joseph Donovan. From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Joseph_Donovan): "During World War I, Donovan organized and led a battalion of the United States Army, designated the 165th Regiment of the 42nd Division, the federalized designation of the famed 69th New York Volunteers, (the 'Fighting 69th'). In France one of his charges was poet Joyce Kilmer. For his service near Landres-et-St. Georges, France, on 14 and 15 October 1918, he received the Medal of Honor. By the end of the war he received a promotion to colonel, the Distinguished Service Cross and two Purple Hearts " Much better known as "Wild Bill" Donovan, he was a law school classmate of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Donovan, although a Republican, was a friend and confidant of Democrat Roosevelt's prior to the Second World War and on the eve of the war was entrusted by FDR to found the Coordinator of Information (COI), which would become the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the World War II predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Donovan would lead the OSS until it was disbanded by President Truman in September 1947. The Victory Arch depicted in the photo was a temporary structure erected in Madison Square Park (note the Flatiron Building looking north though the arch) at the conclusion of World War I to honor New York's war dead. It would later be dismantled.

The horse shows look pretty much the same today, LOL

National Horse Show, Madison Square Garden, New York City, November 15, 1913. Orphans in a queue, waiting to get in. Hold your horses, boys and girls:

Wystan: Thanks for the information on this image. We will expand the record with more details.