When the Garden Played Second Fiddle: The Knicks’ Twenty-Year Romance with the 69th Regiment Armory Culture – The Indypendent

Although Madison Square Garden is entrenched in the public mind as the one and only home of the New York Knickerbockers, a closer look at the franchise’s genesis may well surprise a few readers. On November 11, 1946, the team indeed played its very first home contest at “the world’s most famous arena” (the third, Madison-and-50^th iteration). However, the vast majority of Knick games in Gotham during that inaugural season were held at a leased venue around 1.4 miles to the south. 

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, MSG was hopping with proven money makers, such as the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, ice shows, the New York Rangers, and college basketball doubleheaders. Ned Irish, the Knicks founder who crucially doubled as the Garden’s top promoter and acting president (his boss, General John Reed Kilpatrick, was still in the army), had serious doubts as to the staying power of professional hoops. As Matthew Goodman relates in The City Game, “‘The way college basketball draws,’ [. . .] Ned Irish was once heard to say, ‘the Knicks are nothing but a tax write-off anyway.’” 

Against this backdrop, only six out of New York’s 30 home dates were at MSG during that first year. The rest of the matches took place at the 69^th Regiment or Lexington Avenue Armory, between E. 25th and 26th Streets – a few blocks from the two even older iterations of the Garden overlooking the eponymous park. That said, popular sources, like Basketball Reference and Wikipedia, erroneously identify the renowned building as the site of games irrefutably played at the military installation. 

A stout, red-bricked edifice trimmed with limestone, the Armory opened its doors in 1906. The Beaux-Arts style National Historic Landmark consists of two wings: a three-story administrative building; and indoor drill grounds. Compared to the Garden’s 1946 capacity of just over 18,000, this venue seated roughly 5,600 basketball fans. Although the Knicks spruced up the latter court with overhead lighting and a new parquet, it retained the feel of a slightly battered minor-league stadium.  One Knick fan, John Grasso, who attended games at the Armory, described it as “about the size of a big high school gym.” At least tickets prices were more affordable. Compared to $5.00 at MSG, the most expensive seat on Lexington Avenue went for $3.50 (or 58.38 today, adjusting for inflation) that inaugural campaign.

The first Knick game at the “drillshed” was held on Saturday, November 16, 1946. Previewing the matchup, The New York Herald Tribune noted that “It still must be proved that basketball fans will storm the gates of an armory with as much enthusiasm as the gates of the Garden.” Like the opener at MSG, “there will be pre-game festivities. . . , including set shooting and foul-throwing contests for cash awards.” 

After bowing in overtime to the Chicago Stags at MSG earlier in the week, the Gothamists were seeking their first home triumph in franchise history, against the Pittsburgh Ironmen, before an announced crowd of 3,603 fans – a far-cry from the 17,205 at the Garden on Monday. The visitors raced ahead early behind the offensive prowess of John “Brooms” Abromovic, who would finish with 29 points. However, “Ossie Schectman, Leo Gottlieb and Sonny Hertzberg, the New York set-shot trio,” the Trib’s Irving T. Marsh reported, “began to hit.” Erasing an 11-point deficit, the Knicks knotted up the game with two minutes remaining. In the extra period, former NYU star Ralph Kaplowitz scored all five of New York’s points to secure a 64-62 victory.

The Armory would continue to serve as the Knicks’ alternative venue for twelve more years. Starting in 1951, the facility even hosted, due to prior scheduling commitments at the Garden, all the team’s home matches over three consecutive NBA finals, none of which New York managed to win. On April 10, 1953, the Knicks hoped to fend off elimination before a capacity crowd of 5,200 against the redoubtable George Mikan and the defending champion Minneapolis Lakers. After taking Game 1 of the series on the road, the Gothamists were bested three times in a row. New York’s widely-respected coach, Joe Lapchik, tried to shake things up by benching Dick McGuire, the team’s struggling All-Star point guard, in favor of Ernie Vandeweghe. Concomitantly enrolled in medical school at Columbia University, the guard would be hanging it up after the season in order to begin an internship in pediatrics at Bellevue Hospital. What’s more, his son Kiki played for the Knicks between 1989 and 1992. 

According to The Trib’s Leonard Koppett, the hosts “stayed even for about 19 minutes, when Vandy went out and the score was 29-all.” However, the Laker reserves fueled a run that left New York down nine at halftime. Minneapolis’s starters, including future Hall of Famers Vern Mikkelson, Jim Pollard, and Slater Martin, picked up where the bench left off. By around the eight-minute mark of the third quarter, the Gothamists found themselves in a 55-to-35 hole. 

Wielding a full-court press, center Connie Simmons, Vandewiegh, and the rarely-used guard Jerry Fleishman mounted a furious comeback, which was abetted by Mikan’s foul trouble. With 35 seconds left, McGuire finally netted his first bucket of the game to pull New York within a single point. However, that was as close as the foul-plagued Knickerbockers would get. The Lakers pulled away for a 91-84 victory and the club’s fourth title in five years. Heart-wrenching as the defeat was for the Gotham faithful, their club would not reach the rarified air of a championship series for another 17 years. 

The 69^th Regiment Armory would host a few NBA All-Star games as well. The Knicks’ final assignation on Lexington Avenue was a nationally televised matinee against the Cincinnati Royals and sharpshooter Jack Twyman on January 16, 1960. Ending their 14-year run at the drillshed with a flourish, New York set a team record for most points at the venue in a 132-106 rout. 

Between 1946 and 1960, the fortunes of the pro-game had steadily improved; and the Knicks were easily the league’s most profitable outfit. Moreover, the point-shaving scandals that rocked college basketball during the early 1950s severely hindered most of the big programs in the New York metropolitan area. For example, CCNY, LIU, and NYU all downgraded their basketball programs in the aftermath of the revelations. “It’s quite feasible,” Charley Rosen posits in The Chosen Game, “that had the scandals of ’51 never happened, the BAA-cum-NBA would have taken a backseat to college hoops for at least another decade.” As the ensuing table illustrates, the number of Garden dates mounted in lockstep with the growth of the pro game and the Knicks’ fortunes at the turnstile.

Breakdown of Home Contests between 1946 and 1960*

* Game data were gleaned from sundry media reports, whereas the attendance figures were published by the Association for Professional Basketball Research.

With the establishment of the American Basketball Association  in 1967, the New York Americans (currently the Brooklyn Nets) wanted to book the drillshed as its home court. However, the Knicks pressured the venue, along with other arenas throughout the city, into refusing their adversary’s overtures on grounds of “territorial rights.” As a result, the Americans had to settle for the remote, if stately, Teaneck Armory in New Jersey.  

This episode did not spell the end for basketball on Lexington Avenue. In 1972, the Baruch College Statesmen, a nearby Division III program, moved in. By this juncture, though, the building was well past its prime. “Because temperatures routinely dipped to 40 degrees,” Corey Kilgannon recounted for The Times, the Armory was dubbed “the Icebox.” That said, the frigid conditions did not deter rats from interrupting “locker room pep talks.” Moreover, “National Guard troops would idle trucks inside the armory during practice and delay games by conducting military exercises. Once, the team showed up for practice to find police chalking the outline of a dead body on the court, apparently a suicide from the armory’s homeless shelter.” Not surprisingly, Baruch bolted to a high school gym about ten block south (Xavier) in 1982 (though they continued to practice at the drillshed for a few more seasons). That same year the municipal college also changed its name to the Bearcats.

Over the decades, the 69^th Regiment Armory has accommodated a plethora of different events. Apart from serving as the headquarters of the eponymous unit to this very day, it has catered to tennis and boxing matches, fashion shows, fundraisers, and art exhibitions. Most notably, the building hosted the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art (or the Armory Show), where many Americans got their first glimpse of Paul Cézanne, Vincent Van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and other continental masters. Immediately following the terrorist attacks on 9/11, friends and relatives of missing victims hung pictures of their loved ones, exchanged information, and found solace at the drillshed. At the time of this writing, the historic venue is finally undergoing major renovations.

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