Moses King New York Guide Book Cover – Inspiration for O.Henry’s short story The Lady Higher Up?

https://archive.org/details/kingsphotographi00kingrich

New York World Sunday Magazine, July 24, 1904, The Lady Higher Up by O.Henry

http://www.literaturecollection.com/a/o_henry/172/

I have to thank the Internet for the coming together of ideas. Researching the latter part of the nineteenth century New York I came across the Moses King Photographic Views of New York originally published in 1892.

I cannot but help to think in the last twenty four hours looking at the cover of the King’s Tourist Guide that Bill Porter hanging around pool halls, billiard parlors and rummy saloons around Fourteenth Street, fingered his King’s Guide to New York to inspire a story for a much needed sawbuck to pay his bar tab and some back rent on a furnished room. 

That about a year and a half to two years into residence in New York City he may have been ready to toss that book - feeling like a native NYer - but instead fingered that guide for inspiration, in a copy newly purchased when he has first arrived or in a dime used copy at a bookstore outdoor stall – with the cover image of Diana the Saint Gaudens sculpted weathervane on top of Madison Square Garden - pointing an arrow at Lady Liberty - may have just been the visual inspiration trigger for the story mentioned above.  

Just a thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._Henry

http://lastcivilizedyank.blogspot.com/2011/07/miss-diana-of-staircase.html

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Madison Square Garden to Seek Its Fifth Home – Evicted by NYC City Council – Ten Years to Vacate Important Transportation Hub in Midtown

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/city-council-votes-overwhelmingly-move-madison-square-garden-midtown-site-10-years-article-1.1408251

The City Council voted Wednesday to limit the arena’s permit for its location atop Penn Station to a decade — ignoring pleas from the Garden’s owners and celebrities like Knicks superfan Spike Lee and former Knicks greats like Earl Monroe and Walt Frazier, who lobbied the Council to extend the Garden’s permit indefinitely.

Council members say they would rather see the Garden move to make way for an improved Penn Station and voted, 47 to 1, to offer the more limited permit, although it could be extended in the future.

It was never a great idea to tear down the legendary classic designed Old Penn Station in the mid-sixties. Kind of creative to put a big arena over the subterranean tunnels and rail tracks below street level. But everything else was a hassle and crowded, crowded, crowded when a well-functioning train station got shoved underground to make it convenient for season basketball tickets holders to grab a ten minute subway ride to midtown.

After 911 they did a major redo of the subterranean tunnels, labyrinth station under MSG that served both east coast trains and the Long Island Railroad traffic. Now they are digging a tunnel to connect Grand Central and Metro North with Penn Station. There are plenty of other empty places or underused places in the five boroughs to serve a new arena. Case in point the Barclay Arena across the East River and built over a bunch of rail tracks of the Long Island Railroad.

The flow of the pedestrian tunnels in the post 911 redo was directed toward expanded and increased exits with disasters or acts of terror in mind. The old World Trade Center went through a similar major redo of expanded and increased exit space after the 1993 bombing. Perhaps some lives were saved in the 911 attack in the underground plaza area of the WTC with the redo. It was needed even if the result to fulfill maximum usage in time of emergency was not realized.

The conversion of the Old Classic Central Post Office into a new above ground Penn Station needs a lot of other components in the new connecting tunnel with Grand Central Terminal and the expanding transportation hub of the now old number four Madison Square Garden. 

New York is a forever changing fluid place of building, tearing down and rebuilding the New York Dream.

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Augustus Saint-Gaudens – Goddess, Diana of the Tower (MSG), Diana of the Staircase (PMA)

A few views of the famous Saint-Gaudens statue of Diana that was once the weathervane on the second Madison Square Garden, (right off Madison Square NYC) 1890-1925, before finding a permanent home at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison_Square_Garden_(1890)

The original eighteen foot Diana by sculptor Saint-Gaudens was made of bronze and thought to be out of proportion when first put on the Second Madison Square Garden in 1891 - and too heavy to maneuver quickly in the winds.

In 1893, it went to the top of a building at the Columbia Exposition in 1893 in Chicago. 

Agriculture Building - Columbian Exposition Chicago 1893

Bottom half of statue was lost in a fire in Chicago. Top Half of statue, whereabouts unknown, and presumed lost to history.

The second Saint-Gaudens Diana as weathervane on Madison Square Garden was of gilded sheet copper and thirteen feet high.

This Diana eventually founds its home as the centerpiece of the grand staircase main hall entry way of the Philadelphia Museum of Art after demolition of the second Garden arena.

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