madisonsquaregarden

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.

In the upper left corner, the picture is dated 9/23/27.

See

A copy of this photo is at boxrec.com/media/index.php/File:Rickard21.jpg. That copy is dated 18 May 1921 with no indication of the source for the photo or evidence for the date. www.fighttoys.com/rickard photo pair 1921.htm also date photos from this shoot to May 18 1921. This appears to be an offer for sale of actual photos, and indicates that there is a typed identification: TEX RICKARD Preparing for the big fight May 18, 1921. The big fight was on July 2, 1921. See www.paulbeston.com/blog/2017/4/9/dempsey-carpentier NYT coverage ran to many pages: timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1921/07/03/issue.html

There are two dates on the negative: 9/23/27 and 5/18/21, which means that the photo was taken in 1921 and reused in 1927 by Bain News Service IMO.

B-59 : I agree about the dates.

This picture was taken BEFORE they had trucks and roads that could get them a big Adirondack Tree

More Bain/LOC photos of the 1913 tree-raising project:

Interestingly, in most of these photographs of the tree-raising in Madison Square, there are, in fact, people in the tree either tying or releasing ropes. They are only visible if you view the larger digital files over at the Library of Congress website by following the link at Persistent URL above. Quite a job!

And here I had figured that "learning the ropes" was only a seafaring term! Aye, aye Cap'n! Ahoy and avast! Batten down the mizzenmast!