n, sipping an _aperitif_ at the
corner table of the Cafe de la Paix, believes himself to be occupying
the exact centre of the universe. The Manhattanite knows him to be wrong
by a matter of three thousand and some odd miles. Be he plutocrat or
panhandler he knows that it is some spot from which he can look up and
see the lithe figure of Diana, and the illuminated clock in the tower of
the Metropolitan Building.

Although not formally opened as Madison Square until 1847, the story of
the land goes back almost two hundred and fifty years. It was in 1670
that Sir Edward Andros, Governor of the Province, granted to Solomon
Peters, a free negro, thirty acres of land between what is now
Twenty-first and Twenty-sixth Streets, extending east and west from the
present Broadway (Bloomingdale Road) to Seventh Avenue. Forty-six years
later the negro's descendants sold the tract to John Horn and Cornelius
Webber, and a hundred years after it became vested in John Horn the
second. In the middle of the present roadway west of the Flatiron
Building the Horn farmhouse, occupied by John the Second's daughter and
son-in-law, Christopher Mildenberger, stood when the Avenue was cut
through to Twenty-third Street in 1837. It was allowed to remain there
two years more, when it was removed to the famous site at the northwest
corner of Twenty-third Street and became the Madison Cottage. The old
chroniclers tell of the joyous spirit and flavour of that roadhouse, a
favourite _rendezvous_ of horsemen in the forties, and of the genial
management of its proprietor, Corporal Thompson. In the Collection of
Amos F. Eno there is a photograph of the business card of the Cottage,
with the announcement that the stages "leave every 4 minutes." A picture
shows the stages before the building with its slanting roof and its
three dormer windows facing the Avenue and Park. Several miles beyond
the city proper, it was a post tavern in the coaching days, and the huge
pair of antlers announced the "Sign of the Buck-horn."

It had its brief and glorious day and then passed. Early in 1853 it was
torn down to make room for a circus, known as Franconi's Hippodrome,
built by a syndicate of American showmen, among whom were Avery Smith,
Richard Sands, and Seth B. Howe. The lithograph in the Collection of J.
Clarence Davies shows a combination of tent roof and permanent wall.
There was a turretted sexagonal entrance at the corner facing the Avenue
and Twenty-third Stree