1923 Yankee Stadium 3D Renderings

[bkhockey3]

BTW-----my name is Dave!

[bkhockey3]

Started to put in better railing fitting---will take some time. Started with bleachers and when they're done, I'll post a before and after. Wish there was spell check on this thread!

[chip]

Monument----still haven't read book yet---been really busy--------Marty had something like a word limit and he basically wrote the credits. The input from everyone is as valuable as the work I do!

bk,

I still can’t thank you enough for including me.

So thanks again.

It’s great being published.

[bkhockey3]

Chip----Thank You! Started putting in new railing fittings, and now it's not only placing them in right spot, but also making sure piping all connects to exact spots.

[bkhockey3]

Bleacher ball joints done. Nice subtle difference.

[bkhockey3]

While fixing ball joints on exterior railings, noticed scale of railings and ledge were too big---new version looks more accurate.

[J.E.Fullerton]

Subtle indeed, bk. Most of us would never have noticed the minor flaws that you keep fixing, but they really do make it all look better. You're commitment to the sheerest accuracy possibly is a constant source of amazement.

[bkhockey3]

Thanks JE! Any thoughts on exterior railing color?

[chip]

I vote GREEN.

[SultanOfWhat]

I think they were green, as well. Reference images (all from 1923) are below. No mention of the railing color in the 1923 architectural review (apparently based on a game attended in September 1923). That same review stated that the louvers were "emerald green", which seems to be a logical choice for the railings, as the two elements would be visible together, making a match desirable.

[SultanOfWhat]

I enjoy finding images from those long-ago years that were taken on the same day. Here are three images from a West Virginia- Penn State game played in YS on October 27, 1923.










We can see the postcard above has a green frieze. Another suggestion of a green frieze from 1923 was provided by F.C. Lane:

"From the east the Stadium becomes a sweeping curve of lofty stands, the roof fretted with a simple, yet pleasing design in steel painted dark, rich green, the almost numberless seats of the three huge stands a lighter green."


But we have no surviving green paint (especially dark paint) on the frieze, as far as I know. In addition, a number of references to the frieze in 1923 mention a "soft color", which seems more appropriate for exposed copper turning medium-brown that something painted dark green. One example, a note from Mike Wagner in the YS Frieze thread:

The Mansfield (Ohio) News, Tuesday,October 9, 1923, has a photo and article of the Stadium. In part, it says, "The soft color of the 15 ton copper cornice along the top of the grand stand was dimly visible in the shadow and the unusual flag pole..." They're talking about the copper baseball and bat at the top of the flag pole in center field.

It further states, "Both the cornice and the bat were done in copper because of the permanency of that metal and the fact that both its perfect resistance to the weather and its lightness preclude the possibility of repairs ever having to be made."



And the prospect of re-painting the frieze was the reason that copper was chosen over the discarded, originally-intended frieze material, toncan metal. So it's unlikely that the frieze was ever painted until the 1967 "whitewash".

[bkhockey3]

Will leave the railings green. Stadium would've look amazing with a green frieze. I also notice the metalwork in the postcard is silver as well as the interior railings. Just to reiterate: back in the day, there were no metals beside copper that didn't require a primer or painting?

[SultanOfWhat]

Will leave the railings green. Stadium would've look amazing with a green frieze. I also notice the metalwork in the postcard is silver as well as the interior railings. Just to reiterate: back in the day, there were no metals beside copper that didn't require a primer or painting?

That single postcard is not a reliable guide for colors. The steel work is depicted as gray, while we know it was green. As for the green frieze, other postcards circa 1923 show the frieze as a brownish green, or brown.

I did rely on postcard coloration somewhat to determine that the louvers were most likely green, not red, but that was based upon a consistent depiction of the louvers as green in several different images across a span of years, not just one. That, along with the fact that the orthochromatic photos suggested that the louvers could not be red, but that green would produce the shade we see in the 1923 B&W images, suggested green louvers. Still, it was very comforting to see that the louvers are described as "emerald green" in the 1923 architectural review, which came to light well into this project.

While re-reading the 1923 architectural review in search of guidance on the railing color (none is offered), I came across a reference I had been seeking. I remembered a mention of telephones in Yankee Stadium, and here it is, from that very same article in The American Architect, published November, 1923:

A battery of phone booths is located on each tier.

That would be a nice way to fill in some space on the concourses. Of course, that raises the questions:

Where were these batteries of phone booths located?
What did they look like?

We saw Harold Lloyd run into a phone booth in what was presented as Yankee Stadium, but the interior scenes with Lloyd seem to have been filmed somewhere other than YS. I will post images of the Lloyd phone booth tomorrow.


Another note from the 1923 review:

In a central location on the mezzanine concourse are a large store room and distributing center for refreshments, with adequate icebox facilities.


So there were iceboxes, but we can't be sure from that scanty description if they were electric or just insulated boxes in which ice chunks were placed. As there were in fact electrified iceboxes in 1923 (I believe I posted some examples earlier in the thread), we should probably lean that way.

[New Yorker]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: to whoever's responsible for this, wow! This is obviously a labor of love, but I hope you also get to use your wonderful digital skills, interest in architecture and attention to detail in your day job, whatever that might be. Kudos!

[SultanOfWhat]

Getting back to the phone booths we see in Harold Lloyd's film, Speedy, here are two screencaps from when he is sitting in the grandstand. It's not Yankee Stadium, judging from the railings and seats:







Here are the views of the phone booths. I am assuming that this is also not YS:







The Harold Lloyd film was released on April 7, 1928 in NYC, but the filming outside YS and of Babe Ruth's HR in YS was done in September 1927. Here is a page that attempted to nail down which HR is shown in Speedy:

http://www.captainsblog.info/2011/02...speedy/?like=1


I'll look for a few other examples of phone booths circa 1923.

The other questions are how many phone booths would constitute a "battery" and where exactly they were located. Any ideas? I'll check the blueprints to see if I can find a mention.

[alpineinc]

Had to chime in, a simply outstanding, historically invaluable work. With so much skill and scholarly input, it will be the definitive record of 1923 Yankee Stadium that could possibly exist! Very exciting. Kudos to Dave/BH, and to all.

[chip]

Sultan,

I'm sure those photos are at Wrigley Field in L.A.

[J.E.Fullerton]

I'm sure those photos are at Wrigley Field in L.A.

Could you elaborate, chip? My guess would have been the Polo Grounds or Ebbets Field given the NYC specific footage of Speedy, but LA would make a lot of sense for a Hollywood film in the 1920s. Is there any specific comparison between the Speedy park and WFLA that is striking?

[chip]

Could you elaborate, chip? My guess would have been the Polo Grounds or Ebbets Field given the NYC specific footage of Speedy, but LA would make a lot of sense for a Hollywood film in the 1920s. Is there any specific comparison between the Speedy park and WFLA that is striking?

Here are Wrigley Field’s original box seats……





And the sharp corners on the box seat divider rails….





Also you can see the shadows on the field from the window openings
behind the upper deck……

[J.E.Fullerton]

Thanks, that does look like a pretty good match.

ETA: Ah, I see the wall openings and shadows, now. I'm convinced.

[SultanOfWhat]

Nice work on the Wrigley Field LA photos. I didn't think the grandstand Lloyd used looked like the Polo Grounds, either, and Wrigley LA makes sense for Lloyd, since he was LA-based.

On the phone booths, I haven't been able to find any notation on the blueprints as to the exact locations of the "batteries" of phone booth on "each tier", but we can make some assumptions about the 1923 YS phone booths. The first is that they probably had phones with separate mouth and ear pieces, as seen in this photo, below:




The second is that the doors were probably of the accordion type, to keep doors from opening outward and interfering with pedestrian traffic. So the door type seen above is unlikely. This type of door is probably what was used:




A lot of phone booths had a grill at the top to admit air, a light at the top of the booth, and a fan mounted high up in the booth. We can't be sure that the YS phone booths had these features, but they probably had a bench and a small shelf, as seen in the pics below.







Here is a "battery" of four phone booths at the NYPL. The center section might have once had a shelf with hanging phone books, where callers might retrieve phone numbers before they went into the booths to make their calls.




Probably makes more sense to mount the phones on the side of the booth, rather than in the middle as seen in the first pic.


EDIT: That phone in the top pic doesn't seem to have a dialing mechanism. Maybe the caller just told the operator which number to dial. However, there were payphones available by circa 1920 that did have dialing mechanisms. Several examples are below.

[SultanOfWhat]

Found some new pics. First up are two images of buses running a few blocks away (along Grand Concourse) from the under-construction Yankee Stadium in July, 1922.

This first bus is probably more "photogenic" than the second one. Note the sign identifying the bus route. These buses were photographed at 167th & Grand Concourse:




The second bus:




A look north on Grand Concourse circa 1930. Looks like the Gingerbread House is being torn down (see excavator):




Good look at the Macombs Dam Bridge from the Manhattan side, from June 25, 1930. Yankee Stadium is off-camera to the right, across the Harlem River:

[Jgweiss]

looks good and accurate.
one item is missing, the club office entrance on the 1st base side...

2 years and 4700 posts later, looks like there was a little more than that missing!!

Its amazing how huge this model was to begin with, and how it morphed into the definitive Yankee Stadium 1923 resource.

[bkhockey3]

Whoa---- A lot to catch up with! Am still knee deep in ball joints. Very tedious---could use a joint! ---------hope to have entire lower deck done by this weekend. Until they're all in place, I'm gonna render closeup views of some sections that are totally done, including the new high detail seats--- as this new rendering has.

[bkhockey3]

Figured I'd get a jump on the phone booth. Screen grabs of the next two renderings coming up in the next couple of days.