Yankee Stadium [I] Demolition

[monkeypants]

From 1976-2008 we had a Yankee Stadium with no frieze, no death valley, no Yankee Stadium letters on the lower exterior wall in front. The time to save Yankee Stadium was 35 years ago. Could you image Wrigley with no ivy or Fenway with no green monster or Old Comiskey with no arched windows? That is Yankee Stadium without the frieze. Plus a majority of the seats are in the upper deck and they are steep. Who wants that?

Actually, I just sat in the tier Row V (about third from the top), and the seats were amazing. I wish they would add another few thousand seats to the NYS, including more in the upper deck.

[Yankees12]

I love upper deck seats - they're cheap, and they give a great view of the action. Nothing's better than sitting in the upper deck, if you ask me.

[SparkyL]

But, I heard some ideas and they sounded like really good ones...ideas espousing both change and preservation. Conversion of the vast parking lots to municipal parks while the field, concourse and dugouts remain intact. The dugouts for museums, the field for...well, hell -- THE FIELD...and so on. These things sound cost-effective, innovative, sufficiently revenue-generating (and thereby self-funding) and...most importantly...reverent.

That was the original plan - to preserve the field, some field level seating, the dugouts and the underground concourses (and locker room).

With the current plan Yankee Stadium will be 100% gone without a trace. How's that for reverence?

[jerseyyankeefan]

From 1976-2008 we had a Yankee Stadium with no frieze, no death valley, no Yankee Stadium letters on the lower exterior wall in front. The time to save Yankee Stadium was 35 years ago. Could you image Wrigley with no ivy or Fenway with no green monster or Old Comiskey with no arched windows? That is Yankee Stadium without the frieze. Plus a majority of the seats are in the upper deck and they are steep. Who wants that?

No, its the same place, but sometimes a facelift just doesn't work out...

[monkeypants]

That was the original plan - to preserve the field, some field level seating, the dugouts and the underground concourses (and locker room).

With the current plan Yankee Stadium will be 100% gone without a trace. How's that for reverence?

That's a bit unfair. The city was compelled to demolish the entire stadium in part by local community groups who were not satisfied that the preserved field/stands was an adequate substitution for the loss of green space.

[MoonlightSinatra]

As a Yankee fan, I will definitely miss OYS. I think the reason there is no outcry is Yankee fans have a sense of resignation about the whole matter. The NYS is being built, and here is no turning back. We can rant and rave, but it'll do no good. Many I think feel as I do, that NYS will be terrific (restuarant obstructions notwithstanding), and maybe it'll be a worthy replacement. I'd rather no new stadium, but what can be done? They are building the damn new place. It's too late now.

I'm going to pretend, and I mean really hard, that NYS is really an updated OYS, on the same field, at the same location. Yeah, it's not true, but hell, let me fool myself enough.

Oh and the image of YS being demolished will really break my heart. But folks, it's coming, and there ain't a damn thing we can do about it.

[rwolfe09]

I just posted in the Tigers demolition thread saying it's sad for stadiums with history to go but I will not argue to see Yankee Stadium go. My disdain for that stadium has reached it's limits and my front screen during the offseason will most definately be a picture of that place being torn down.

[SparkyL]

That's a bit unfair. The city was compelled to demolish the entire stadium in part by local community groups who were not satisfied that the preserved field/stands was an adequate substitution for the loss of green space.

True - but it sure would have been nice to have known that before the new Stadium was approved . . . .

[monkeypants]

True - but it sure would have been nice to have known that before the new Stadium was approved . . . .

I agree, but the new stadium was approved under one plan, and then increased community pressure--rightly or not--forced modifications to the plan. One the one hand, the team and city can be faulted for not consulting with community groups more ahead of time. On the other hand, once the financing and other plans were in place, they can't really be blamed for not scrapping the whole project when subsequent objections arose.

I'm a bit torn on this issue. I'm not sure I would have been happier to see a remnant of the stadium still standing, which would have been (probably) more expensive for the city to maintain, and which (probably) would have meant less community access to the green space created (there is no way "Heritage Field" was going to be truly open to the public like a normal park). In fact, seeing the shell of the old stadium may have just filled me with more melancholy.

Perhaps it's best that they have decided to leave only the footprint in the form of a few ball fields. We have now unprecedented ability to record--between videos and photos and 3-D models, etc, the old stadium will be recorded and documented and "preserved" in a way that no other historic park has been before. It will not be forgotten.

[TinoM24]

I just posted in the Tigers demolition thread saying it's sad for stadiums with history to go but I will not argue to see Yankee Stadium go. My disdain for that stadium has reached it's limits and my front screen during the offseason will most definately be a picture of that place being torn down.

im assuming that totally has nothing to do with you being a red sox fan at all

[Philtration]

From 1976-2008 we had a Yankee Stadium with no frieze, no death valley, no Yankee Stadium letters on the lower exterior wall in front. The time to save Yankee Stadium was 35 years ago. Could you image Wrigley with no ivy or Fenway with no green monster or Old Comiskey with no arched windows? That is Yankee Stadium without the frieze. Plus a majority of the seats are in the upper deck and they are steep. Who wants that?

Right.
It was butchered years ago and that was the time to get worked up over it.
The Yankee Stadium that we see today is just a shell of the old, and in my opinion, the real Yankee Stadium.

[yankies4life]

I think i've been pretty vociferous about by dislike that they're tearing down YS, but why should I care if Yankee fans don't? I'm a Mets fan and I bleed Orange & Blue(Black too ) but I think it's just wrong to tear down a piece of American history. I feel the same way about this as I do about Comiskey (Although I didn't pay much attention to that and Tiger Stadium (But to their credit Comerica looks fantasic). And I would express the same ammount of disdain if they even tryed to take down Fenway or Wrigley, even though I think Red Sox or Cubs fans would never let that happen. Just as I though Yankee fans would never let YS be torn down, but I was wrong. From what i've seen and heard the majority Yankee fans lack the passion to have stopped it from the beginning.

Like you said before, it's hard for me to care when most Yankee fans don't even care that they are destroying a huge piece of their history and a piece of baseball history.

You can tell there are Yankee fans out there that are jealous that the Red Sox get to keep their old time gem with the history thats father & son have been going to since 1912. I see some Yankee fans now are pushing that the Red Sox should get a new stadium for more revenue and yada yada...My question to them is always you do you care and why do you want your biggest rival to get more money? And usually they never have an answer back. They're jealous. As they should be.

Damn shame.

Theres nothing as fans we can do. I hate how you try to put the blame on us, the fans for this American Icon for being torn down. Quite frankly, I love the stadium and hate seeing it go. But in the end, we all must accept the fact that we cant do anything. Nobody here is a billionaire and as is, its on city property. I wouldve liked for them to do another refurbishing, even if it did take a couple years, I wouldnt have minded it. I saw what happened to the Tigers stadium and for someone who is not a Tigers fan and could care less what happens for them, I saw the set of photos of what it looked like inside. It was really sad, seeing the stadium just broke down and all.

But I guess the only real thing Ill miss about the stadium is the history. Besides that, Im sick of cramped isles and always bumping into people just to move along in the tier section. Heck, if you walk by the third base side of the stadium, the padded seats are all torn up. The history will be tough to replace, but in the end, I know that 10, 15 years from now, I'll hopefully be taking my son to the New Stadium and creating memories there.

[Gary Dunaier]

Heck, if you walk by the third base side of the stadium, the padded seats are all torn up.

Naah... that's just 1970s-era "planned obsolesence..."


(Photo taken July 1, 2008. © Gary Dunaier)

[Yankees2k6]

I just posted in the Tigers demolition thread saying it's sad for stadiums with history to go but I will not argue to see Yankee Stadium go. My disdain for that stadium has reached it's limits and my front screen during the offseason will most definately be a picture of that place being torn down.

And Fenway Park is gonna break down before you know it

[curb my enthusiasm]

But I guess the only real thing Ill miss about the stadium is the history. Besides that, Im sick of cramped isles and always bumping into people just to move along in the tier section. Heck, if you walk by the third base side of the stadium, the padded seats are all torn up. The history will be tough to replace, but in the end, I know that 10, 15 years from now, I'll hopefully be taking my son to the New Stadium and creating memories there.

You are clearly someone who "gets it". I agree with every work you said.