Heritage Museum Picture of the Month  

The Salvation Army’s Big Christmas Dinner

by Rob Jeffery   

Today, Madison Square Garden in New York City is the home of the NBA’s Knicks, the NHL’s Rangers, college basketball tournaments, boxing matches, and arena shows by popular musicians, including Billy Joel’s recent long-running concert residency.

But in an earlier incarnation of the arena under the same name, several blocks away at Madison Avenue and 26th Street, the early Salvation Army put on massive dinners at Christmastime for over 3,000 people! Thousands of additional uncooked dinners were distributed to those who could not be seated on the arena floor.

In this page from the Jan. 4, 1902, edition of Harper’s Weekly, Commissioners Frederick and Emma Booth-Tucker, our national commanders from 1896 to 1904, supervise the massive food and hamper distribution. “Go big or go home” could well serve as the unofficial motto of such Salvation Army endeavors.