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The area where Madison Square is now used to be a swampy hunting ground, and first came into use as a public space in 1686. It was a "Potter's Field" in the 1700s.

A potter's field, paupers' grave or common grave is an American expression for a place for the burial of unknown or indigent people. Potter's field is of Biblical origin, referring to Akeldama, bought by the high priests of Jerusalem for the burial of strangers, criminals, and the poor, and paid for with the coins that had been paid to Judas Iscariot for his identification of Jesus.

The term comes from Matthew 27:3-27:8 in the New Testament of the Bible, in which Jewish priests take 30 pieces of silver returned by a remorseful Judas:

Then Judas, who betrayed him, seeing that he was condemned, repenting himself, brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and ancients, saying: "I have sinned in betraying innocent blood." But they said: "What is that to us? Look thou to it." And casting down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed, and went and hanged himself with a halter. But the chief priests, having taken the pieces of silver, said: "It is not lawful to put them into the corbona, because it is the price of blood." And after they had consulted together, they bought with them the potter's field, to be a burying place for strangers. For this the field was called Haceldama, that is, the field of blood, even to this day.

The 5th Avenue corner was the site of Dodworth Studios, where Teddy Roosevelt took dance lessons as a boy. In 1876 Delmonico's, at the time the most fashionable restaurant in New York, moved here. This location was the birthplace of Lobster Newberg and Eggs Benedict. The women's organization Sorosis met in an upstairs room. When Delmonico's moved uptown in 1899, it became Cafe Martin, where on June 25, 1906 architect Stanford White had his last meal before being shot at his Madison Square Garden. This building went up in 1913; the FX cable channel was here in the 1990s.

The Toy Center, also known as the International Toy Center, is a complex of buildings in the New York City borough of Manhattan that for many years was a hub for toy manufacturers and distributors in the United States. By 1981, the complex covered 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m^2) of leasable space, with its 600 tenants accounting for 95% of toy transactions in the United States that year, amounting to $4 billion.