Jul 07 2008 09:33 AM
Thanks Grimmy, I love stuff like this. Never knew about it.
Here's a New York Times article from February.
With pictures!
February 19, 2008
A Stairway to Sports History From the Polo Grounds
By Timothy Williams
Steps that lead nowhere today once offered a clear, yet distant, view of games at the Polo Grounds.
(Photo: Geoffrey Croft/New York City Park Advocates)
A plaque at the bottom of the staircase honoring the New York Giants’ baseball team owner, John T. Brush,
was dedicated in July 1913, the year after his death. (Photo: Geoffrey Croft/New York City Park Advocates)
With the winter baseball news dominated by tales of steroids and human growth hormone drugs, hearings and investigations, and apologies and denials, a look back at a more innocent time in baseball may be in order this week, when position players are joining pitchers and catchers at training camp in Florida and Arizona.
The Polo Grounds, the northern Manhattan home of the New York Giants baseball team, has long been the site of a rather imposing public housing complex called the Polo Grounds Towers — four 30-story skyscrapers with 1,616 units.
Few clues remain about the glorious things that happened when the Polo Grounds was a sports stadium in Washington Heights — Willie Mays, the birth of the Mets, the New York Cubans, the New York football Giants, and Floyd Patterson vs. Ingemar Johansson, among them.
But one relic remains, not as the result of historic preservation, but by accident.
That relic is a staircase built down Coogan’s Bluff, the hill that overlooked the stadium, which is roughly where Edgecombe Avenue runs today. The staircase once led to a ticket booth, and was built by the owner of the Giants at the time.
Coogan’s Bluff had long been a sort of Tightwad Hill for local fans, a place where those unwilling or unable to pay the stadium’s entrance fee had a clear, if distant, view of the proceedings at no charge.
If nothing else, the Giants may have hoped a new stairway would prompt a few fans to buy tickets.
Today, the stairway leads nowhere, except for an overgrown stretch of Highbridge Park. Many, if not most, of its steps are missing; its guard rails rusting and falling apart; and some sections have disappeared into the underbrush, making an attempt to walk down them highly inadvisable.
But at a landing partway down is an inscription; like the staircase, it has been slowly disintegrating over the decades. Its letters are still clear despite rain, snow and heat, and it reads: “The John T. Brush Stairway Presented by the New York Giants.”
A New York Times article from July 9, 1913, retrieved by the Parks Department, says that on that day the baseball club would be formally presenting the “John T. Brush Stairway” to the city. The Giants’ team president, H. N. Hempstead, was to present the gift to the city parks commissioner, Charles B. Stover, to honor Mr. Brush, the Giants owner who had died in 1912.
But city officials say the long-forgotten inscription and staircase, which might be the last vestiges of the old ballpark, could be in for a reprieve.
As part of the Bloomberg administration’s PlaNYC2030 program, Highbridge Park is set for an overhaul, including the historic, and long-closed High Bridge — as well as the staircase.
The cost of repairing the staircase is about $1.2 million, according to city officials. So far, the city has only $400,000 to pay for it — all of it from the office of the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer.
Mr. Stringer, 47, who grew up in Washington Heights, near the stadium, said he never saw a game there. Indeed, Mr. Stringer said when someone mentions the Polo Grounds to him, his mind does not turn to images of Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron or Sugar Ray Robinson.
“When I think of the Polo Grounds, I think of the housing development and the people who live there,” he said.
As for the staircase, Mr. Stringer said he had no idea it existed until the Parks Department asked him to help finance its restoration. “It was sort of left to us,” he said. “But we’ll make sure the inscription is restored.”
(For the record, Mr. Stringer said he follows both the Mets and Yankees, but at heart, is a Jets fan.)
Adrian Benepe, the commissioner of the Department of Parks and Recreation, said the park “has undergone a significant rebirth in the last 10 years with more than $10 million worth of improvements completed or in progress” and that an additional $75 million in projects were already underway or planned. “Even with all that, there’s still more work we need to do on this historic park, including finding some additional funding for the Brush Stairway renovation,” he said.