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    Yankee Stadium: 1923-2008
    Yankee Stadium: 1923-2008
    Yankee Stadium: 1923-2008
    Ebook168 pages38 minutes

    Yankee Stadium: 1923-2008

    By Gary Hermalyn and Anthony C. Greene

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    About this ebook

    The Bronx s Yankee Stadium was designed to be the grandest, most impressive and intimidating sports arena ever. Over the years, the stadium s mystique and grandeur have been exponentially enhanced by championship boxing matches, professional and college football, Negro League games, papal visits, and the New York Yankees baseball club s iconic reputation as the gold standard of professional team sports. Yankee Stadium has also been a witness to the 20th-century development of the Bronx from a small suburb to a large urban borough, thus forging a special and complex relationship with its hometown.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateJul 20, 2009
    ISBN9781439637654
    Yankee Stadium: 1923-2008
    Author

    Gary Hermalyn

    Dr. Gary Hermalyn is the executive director of the Bronx County Historical Society and author of numerous books and publications on New York City and the Bronx. Anthony C. Greene, the education director of the Bronx County Historical Society, is an author and educator.

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      Book preview

      Yankee Stadium - Gary Hermalyn

      Publishing.

      INTRODUCTION

      Yankee Stadium has never been just another ballpark. From its grand opening on April 18, 1923, the stadium was meant to be something larger and more majestic than any of its predecessors, especially the rival Polo Grounds just across the Harlem River. It was meant to symbolize the great city it represented, the upper crust of fans it would attract, and the largess of its very wealthy owners. At a time when baseball was in the infancy of its popularity, owners Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Cap Huston took a Roaring Twenties–size gamble on a swamp in the Bronx, choosing it to be the new home of their only recently successful ball club. Little did they know it would become the greatest and most famous sports arena since the Roman Colosseum.

      Yankee Stadium was constructed on roughly 12 acres of landfill over a tidal stream called Cromwell’s Creek (named after an old Bronx family that had a farm in the area). To the west was the Highbridge neighborhood whose bluffs ran from the foot of Anderson Avenue and 162nd Street all the way to the majestic High Bridge (built in 1848) that served as a grand footbridge and a landmark for weekend visitors who sailed up the Harlem River. More importantly, it was the vital connection for the Croton Aqueduct system, the first to bring a freshwater system to New York City. Next to the bridge stood Victorian houses of wealthy Bronxites, including William B. Ogden, the first mayor of Chicago. Along the Harlem River, at the foot of the hill, stood the town of Highbridgeville, an Irish and African American village that was home to the original builders of the High Bridge as well as men who made their living working for the railroad and fishing in the salty waters surrounding New York City. It was a blue-collar community, known for its train station, saloons, and tough characters.

      To the east one found newly planned streets and sewers, a large train yard, and the rocky hills that would be flattened to make way for urbanization. Although the borough’s business center was located roughly 20 blocks south, it was obvious that the center of all business and government would eventually work its way northward.

      The Bronx investment was risky but was well thought out. As New York City expanded and grew, the Bronx was in the midst of a 100-year evolution that transformed it from an early-19th-century collection of small villages and farms to a mid- to late-19th-century industrial center to an early-20th-century residential borough. Urban planners laid streets on top of farms, old dirt roads became paved streets, and rapid transit was built to connect the metropolis to its only link to the North American continent. Sporting was no stranger to Bronxites and wealthy sports fans as they flocked to horse races at the Jerome Park Racetrack and the Morris Park Racecourse to watch the first running of the Belmont Stakes and to baseball games of one of the first professional teams, the Union Baseball Club of Morrisania, which featured two of the sport’s first professional players who would eventually play for the Cincinnati Reds. These original Bronx Bombers were locals, possibly working as brewers, factory workers, or municipal employees. The Fordham University Nine played games at the Rose Hill Campus, inviting barnstormers, professional teams, and college rivals like Harvard and Yale to partake in well-attended games. The Interborough Rapid Transit Company built subways that connected the borough to Manhattan’s Lexington Avenue line, raising it aboveground after 149th Street and becoming an elevated train to its final stop, the famous Woodlawn Cemetery. In 1909, the Grand Boulevard and Concourse, a signature and elegant thoroughfare much like the Parisian Champs-Elysées, was completed, bringing the Bronx’s, and possibly the world’s, greatest concentration of art deco and art moderne apartment houses. Many of the concourse’s buildings came complete with doormen, elevators, outdoor courtyards and gardens, sunken living rooms, and large apartments. At the foot of the great boulevard at 161st

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