Even blasé New Yorkers perked up when the elephants were exercised near the Garden.
John Lindsay Photo
FROM THE LATEST ISSUE OF BANDWAGON
For generations of New Yorkers, spring didn’t truly arrive until the circus came to Madison Square Garden.
When the fourth Madison Square Garden opened above the former site of Pennsylvania Station, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey was among its earliest attractions. In April 1968, elephants, camels, zebras and llamas made their way through Manhattan to a new arena—and began another chapter in a New York circus tradition stretching back nearly a century.
Over the decades that followed, some of the greatest names in circus history appeared there. The Garden witnessed spectacular productions, celebrated anniversaries, daring aerial feats and generations of performers for whom appearing with Ringling in New York represented the pinnacle of a circus career.
Chris Berry’s final installment of There Used to Be a Circus Here follows the circus through this new era while connecting it to the extraordinary history of the three Gardens that came before.
Step back into a time when colorful circus posters appearing on New York walls meant one thing: The Greatest Show on Earth was coming back to the Garden.
There Used to Be a Circus Here, Part IV:
“A New Garden Blooms”
By Chris Berry
Volume 69 • Number 2 • 2025 • Pages 36–89
Tito Gaona was relaxing in his stateroom when he heard an unexpected knock. It was Irvin and Kenneth Feld. The owners of The Greatest Show on Earth had made their way to the Manhattan railroad yards at Twelfth Avenue and Thirty-Third Street with shocking news. Karl Wallenda, patriarch of the most famous troupe of high-wire walkers in circus history, was dead. He had fallen to his death in San Juan, Puerto Rico, caught in a gust of wind while attempting to walk a 750-foot cable strung between two beachfront hotels.
With only a few hours until the New York premiere of the circus, the Felds had a request. They asked Tito if he would attempt a quadruple somersault at the performance that night. Three days earlier the thirty-year-old flyer’s quest to complete the “impossible” trick had been the cover story in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, and because of the sudden interest in Wallenda’s death, reporters from radio stations, television networks, and newspapers were swarming Madison Square Garden, clamoring for reaction. “I remember the press that day,” Kenneth Feld recalled. “There were more reporters than ever because of Wallenda’s fame.”
One of those was a writer for Newsweek who approached clown David Carlyon for his thoughts. Carlyon wrote in his journal that day that while he had already been with the show for a year, he “did not feel circus enough” to give a quote.
“I will throw the quadruple for you,” Tito recalled telling Irvin Feld, as he reflected on that day more than forty-five years later. Although the printed program listed The Flying Gaonas as the sixth display, on the night of March 22, 1978, the lineup was shuffled, and while the opening pageant, “Rousing Ringling Rhythms,” was still underway, the floor crew began raising the safety net.
On that night—and only that night—The Flying Gaonas opened the circus, and as Tito, brother Armando, and sister Chela scampered up the rope ladder to the pedestal bar, their cousin, Lalo Murillo positioned himself as their catcher.
The complete article is available to members of the Circus Historical Society through the members-only Backyard.