VALENTINE'S MANUAL

Twenty years before the Garfield National Bank was
established on Twenty-third Street, Fifth Avenue and
Broadway at their intersection were little better than
country roads aiid Madison Scjuare, althottgh a park, was
contemptuously and ciuite graphically alluded to as a rocky
cow pasture. Where the bank now stands was Madison
Cottage, a road house, famous for hot toddy and other
forms of hospitality, and run by one Corporal Thompson.
It bore a printed notice to the efifect that stages left every
four minutes, presumably for the south, the Battery,
since there was nowhere to go to the north. Things were
crude and desolate at that point, relieved mostly by Cor-
poral Thompson's good cheer. But, hold! There was
also Franconi's Hippodrome in those days that stood on
another corner, across the way, covered two whole acres
of land and had a frontage of a couple of hundred feet
on Broadway. That was in 1853. Patrons of the Astor
House, Broadway and Vesey .Street, used to come all the
way out there to see Franconi's wonder jĩlace. No visit to
town was complete without the experience.

The day after the Hiispodrome was established the fol-
lowing writeup, in style characteristic of the period, ap-
peared:

"But if the exterior at once surprises, attracts, and
elicits adrairation, what raust be the effect of the internal
arrangeraents ? Classic lore, ancient history, Walter Scott's
pictures of the tournament, the songs of chivalry, all are
competent to give an idea of what is to be seen at Fran-
coni's Hippodrome."

Such was Twenty-third Street when Amos R. Eno had
a vision of a great hotel to be located there, to draw the
fashionable from all parts of the world. There were
many so-called "wise ones" of those days who, having

[82 1