A New Garden

For 35 years the premier arena for prizefights and political rallies, ice shows and sawdust revivals, Manhattan's Madison Square Garden will soon sport a new look in a new location. Admiral John J. Bergen, chairman of the Graham-Paige Corp., the holding company that owns the Garden, last week announced plans to build a mammoth, three-block, $38 million new sports and entertainment center to replace it, on the west side of Manhattan at a site yet to be chosen. To be privately financed, the new Garden (which will retain the old name) hopefully will be ready for the 1964 New York World's Fair, provide a fitting counterpart to the city's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts currently abuilding. Quipped the New York Times: it will be "a kind of Lincoln Center for the perspiring arts."

The sports complex will feature a 25,000-seat main arena building completely free from the interior columns that give present Garden fans a frequent crick in the neck. The new design by Soapman- Turned-Architect Charles Luckman will achieve its pillarless view by what he calls "the first use in such a large structure of a compression ring"--steel cables imbedded in concrete that support the roof. Onetime president of Lever Brothers Co. (1946-50), Luckman now employs 336 planners, architects and engineers, currently has $202 million worth of construction work under way from missile research centers to Los Angeles' new jet airport terminal.

Plans for Luckman's Garden also envisage a two-level building containing a 2,000-seat arena above and a 1,000-seat arena below. A third building will house a two-level restaurant; the spacious second- story mall will contain a skating rink and outdoor swimming pool, with a bowling alley and parking for 3,000 cars underneath. In cold-weather months, the rink and pool will be covered by a blue-tinted plastic roof held up by air pressure.

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