The Press: Rickety Rickard

Tex Rickard, famed promoter, at whose behest innumerable great fists have done their devastating work, and strong men fallen and been jeered for falling, took in his hand a steam drill with which he intended to drive the last rivet —one made of solid brass—into the framework of the new Madison Square Garden, Manhattan. A workman turned on the steam. The driver began to chatter and jump about in the promoter’s grasp. He perspired freely. Neither his great brain nor his little thews could prevail to make the yellow rivets sink to its place. Onlookers tittered. Rickety Rickard rolled anguished eyes upon them, staggered like a fighter who knows that the next punch will be his last. A sturdy ironworker stepped forward, drove the rivet for him.

The new arena, which will be opened in “the last week in November or the first week in December” with a ball and a six-day bicycle race, is to be the largest athletic hippodrome in the world.