The Park That Ruth Built by Paul Goldberger

Cathedrals
The Park That Ruth Built
by Paul Goldberger August 10, 2009

When Shea Stadium was torn down and its site turned into a parking lot for the Mets’ new Citi Field earlier this year, nobody seemed to care, least of all historic preservationists. It didn’t have that much history, and it was ugly besides. Shea was no Yankee Stadium. But, now that the Yankees have moved to their new $1.5-billion ballpark, the question has arisen as to whether their former home ought to disappear as completely as Shea did. The city has promised to turn the site into a park, complete with three ball fields. But the current design calls for the entire stadium to be demolished, its history recalled mainly through a series of panels and plaques in the pavement.
Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner, is a supporter of the park plan, but he knows that a lot of fans have never got over the fact that not a trace remains of either Ebbets Field or the Polo Grounds, both of which were replaced by housing projects.
“Yankee Stadium has had papal Masses, Billy Graham’s crusade, championship boxing matches, and the rally when Nelson Mandela was freed,” Benepe said. “Why can’t we create a great new park that acknowledges all of this?”
Benepe and city officials decided to hold a meeting. Rather than gather at City Hall, they asked if the Yankees would be willing to host a group in the new Stadium. So, the other day, Benepe and a dozen architects, preservationists, and community leaders spent two hours in Suite 7, a double-sized luxury box overlooking first base. The guest list included Lloyd Ultan, the Bronx borough historian; Sherida Paulsen, the former chairman of the Landmarks Preservation Commission; Rick Bell, from the American Institute of Architects; Tony Morante, the Yankees’ historian; and Jose Rodriguez, the district manager of Community Board 4 in the Bronx. Two of the designers for the new park, Gary Sorge and David Vanden-Eynden, also came to talk about their project, which has been given the bland name of Heritage Field.
Suite 7 was set up with a U-shaped table to make it feel more like a boardroom, and the Yankee hosts provided a buffet of Cracker Jacks, Power Bars, nuts, and pretzels. “This is just a brainstorming session,” Benepe said.
Sorge started out with a PowerPoint presentation of the design, which he said would have “subtle reminders of the site’s past” and would still be “a quality community recreational park.” He explained that one of the three ball fields would be set in roughly the position of the old Yankee Stadium diamond, but shifted slightly, so that second base would be atop the original home plate. The plans also called for the reuse of two thirty-foot-long panels of the old Stadium’s famous scalloped frieze. And the designers proposed painting two of the park’s field light posts to resemble foul poles.
Ultan, the historian, was the first to respond. “What is missing from the design is the architecture of the Stadium itself,” he said, holding up a souvenir cookie tin shaped like the old Stadium. “Some people came to see me recently who were trying to save Gate 2, which has not been altered. Couldn’t we preserve that as a monument?”
“Our research showed that Gate 2 had been altered,” one of the planners said. “It would have to be restored.”
“What I’m missing here are the small-scale parts of the Stadium that could be kept,” said Bell, who, like Ultan, had brought along his own miniature model of the Stadium. “I find a sense of continuity and authenticity lacking in this park design.”
No one wanted to raise the awkward question of how authentic the Stadium is in the first place, since it was so drastically renovated in the nineteen-seventies that not much of the original 1923 structure actually remains. The conversation shifted to the field itself. “Putting second base at home plate doesn’t make sense,” Paulsen said. “Why can’t home plate just be at home plate?”
Sorge explained that the main ball field had to be shifted to allow room for the other two fields. The participants seemed to understand the geometric imperative, but they weren’t happy about it.
“Some of the most evocative public spaces in the nation are places where great battles took place,” Benepe said. “In Central Park, we now have forty or so places where you can dial a phone number and a celebrity tells you a story about that place. You could have Yankees doing that here.”
“At least it isn’t being replaced by a building,” said Wilhelm Ronda, the director of planning for the Bronx borough president’s office.
“I’m just happy it isn’t going to be like Shea Stadium,” another particpant said, “paved over, so where the ballpark was is now where you park your Honda.” ♦