Yankee Stadium [I] Demolition

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  • ChineseDemocracy
    Better
    • Oct 2008
    • 1307

    ^I think you are exactly right about the way my favorite stadium is going to be demolished.

    Since it is so much more different than the Shea Stadium demolition, I wonder if extreme winter conditions will slow things down.
    No one can make you
    Do what they want to
    You know you're stronger
    Than the lies
    That they tell you

    Comment

    • Maxlugar
      Registered User
      • Apr 2009
      • 361

      Originally posted by ChineseDemocracy View Post
      ^I think you are exactly right about the way my favorite stadium is going to be demolished.

      Since it is so much more different than the Shea Stadium demolition, I wonder if extreme winter conditions will slow things down.
      I think the whole construction company goes down into the locker room every day and scratch their heads. After a while they give up and play cards.
      Fake Yankee stadium Fail!

      Comment

      • Mike Wagner
        Registered User
        • Feb 2007
        • 737

        Dear voodoochile,
        Yes, they do have turnbuckles. It may very well play a pivotal part in the demolition process.

        -Mike Wagner

        Comment

        • JoeDOYS
          Registered User
          • Jun 2009
          • 275

          Here is an entry from the guestbook on my site....

          I was a Local 40 Ironworker in the days of the renovation, and I spent 19 months working for Karl Koch as a connector. It seems to me that the demo will have to be done with extreme care or else a catastrophe will occur. The upper deck sports a 77' cantilever and you just can't lift that mass out without supporting the outside or the other way around. They should be extremely careful and think the process through.
          Last edited by JoeDOYS; 09-25-2009, 06:37 AM.
          www.demolitionofyankeestadium.com

          Comment

          • The Monument
            Registered User
            • Feb 2007
            • 1997

            I also read that the cables were run down to the Stadium's basement. As far as the demo, I'm guessing that the lower part of the UD, the Tier Boxes, will go first to relieve tension. But I'm no engineer.
            Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,and welcome to Yankee Stadium. Here are the lineups for todays game...

            Comment

            • Aviator_Frank
              Engineer / Private Pilot
              • Mar 2008
              • 900

              You take down a cantilevered structure the same way you put it up, but in reverse. Load balancing.

              Think of piles of bricks on both sides of a see-saw: Remove the load equally from both sides of the fulcrum.

              Comment

              • ZeoBandit
                Registered User
                • Apr 2008
                • 64

                Originally posted by Aviator_Frank View Post
                You take down a cantilevered structure the same way you put it up, but in reverse. Load balancing.

                Think of piles of bricks on both sides of a see-saw: Remove the load equally from both sides of the fulcrum.

                It's more fun (not to mention faster) to just cut the cables and run like hell.

                Comment

                • NYFan1stYankFan2nd
                  Registered User
                  • Jun 2008
                  • 1631

                  Originally posted by The Monument View Post
                  I also read that the cables were run down to the Stadium's basement. As far as the demo, I'm guessing that the lower part of the UD, the Tier Boxes, will go first to relieve tension. But I'm no engineer.
                  If that were the case, there would be some visible signs of that on the exterior facade - either raised surfaces encasing the cables or bare cables themselves. Those cables were connected to heavy steel box beams at the "New" Upper Concourse level designed to allow access to the midpoint of the new taller upper deck - one level above the original - and supposedly still existing catwalks.
                  RYS to NYS: "Obi-Lonn never told you what happened to your father."

                  NYS: "He told me enough. He told me you killed him - in the 1970s!!"

                  RYS: "No, I am your father..."

                  NYS: "No, it's not true, that's impossible!!!!"

                  RYS: "Look beyond my respirator pods and my upper crown; you know it to be true!

                  Comment

                  • NYFan1stYankFan2nd
                    Registered User
                    • Jun 2008
                    • 1631

                    Originally posted by voodoochile View Post
                    I have absolutely no idea what, if anything, it attached to the ends of those cables, but I read an article shortly after the renovation that they were encased in cement and buried deep in the ground.
                    I'm wondering if they have a means of relieving the tension of the cables by way of a turnbuckle of some sort, allowing them to slowly lower the upper deck to the ground, or at least partially. If not, then maybe release the tension abruptly and allow a controlled collapse inside the walls.
                    Why hasn't anything been made public in regards to how they will perform the task of rendering a very huge concrete structure into a pile of rubble without explosives? What are they going to do, chip away at the concrete walls until the steel structure is exposed, then shear off the rivets and unbolt the nuts and haul it away piece by piece? You would think that they'd be bragging about what they're about to do, but instead it is all very secretive.
                    Every structure that has been demolished, whether it be a stadium, a hotel, a bank or any hi-rise, they publicize it. Why not this? There's something funny going on.
                    There are blueprints posted on BF - probably in YS Renovation 1974-75, of sections of the grandstand, before & after renovations. NOWHERE on those blueprints do we see cables running down through the stadium, or down the exterior face, to the ground. read my reply to The Monument.
                    RYS to NYS: "Obi-Lonn never told you what happened to your father."

                    NYS: "He told me enough. He told me you killed him - in the 1970s!!"

                    RYS: "No, I am your father..."

                    NYS: "No, it's not true, that's impossible!!!!"

                    RYS: "Look beyond my respirator pods and my upper crown; you know it to be true!

                    Comment

                    • RichardLillard1
                      762*
                      • Jun 2006
                      • 976

                      Another complication is that the rubble is not going to be taken off-site and disposed of. All concrete will be crushed on-site to be used in the landfill for Heritage Park.

                      If historical concern prevails though, Gate 2 could be spared from such a cruel demise.


                      Richard

                      Comment

                      • voodoochile
                        Registered User
                        • Mar 2005
                        • 314

                        Originally posted by NYFan1stYankFan2nd View Post
                        There are blueprints posted on BF - probably in YS Renovation 1974-75, of sections of the grandstand, before & after renovations. NOWHERE on those blueprints do we see cables running down through the stadium, or down the exterior face, to the ground. read my reply to The Monument.

                        Mike Wagner is my source of information regarding the renovation of Yankee Stadium. He verified that there are indeed turnbuckles on the cables in question, therefore there must be cables regardless of what the blueprints show.
                        Mr. Wagner's credentials include a yet to be published book detailing the renovation of Yankee Stadium. He also started the thread that you referred to, Yankee Stadium Renovation 1974-75. I gotta' go with what he says.

                        Comment

                        • NYFan1stYankFan2nd
                          Registered User
                          • Jun 2008
                          • 1631

                          Originally posted by voodoochile View Post
                          Mike Wagner is my source of information regarding the renovation of Yankee Stadium. He verified that there are indeed turnbuckles on the cables in question, therefore there must be cables regardless of what the blueprints show.
                          Mr. Wagner's credentials include a yet to be published book detailing the renovation of Yankee Stadium. He also started the thread that you referred to, Yankee Stadium Renovation 1974-75. I gotta' go with what he says.
                          I'm sure there are turnbuckles - right on the roof where the cables tie into the upper deck concourse. NOT at street level.
                          RYS to NYS: "Obi-Lonn never told you what happened to your father."

                          NYS: "He told me enough. He told me you killed him - in the 1970s!!"

                          RYS: "No, I am your father..."

                          NYS: "No, it's not true, that's impossible!!!!"

                          RYS: "Look beyond my respirator pods and my upper crown; you know it to be true!

                          Comment

                          • Mike Wagner
                            Registered User
                            • Feb 2007
                            • 737

                            Dear Friends,

                            Here is part of my telephone interview with Dick Muller on June 15, 2008.
                            Dick was an ironworker on the Yankee Stadium Renovation. The full interview will appear in my Yankee Stadium Renovation book when I find a publisher.

                            Dick was a dream to work with!!! Dick is a wonderful historian and gentleman.

                            -Mike Wagner



                            There’s a picture of Joe D. leaning on a rail on the subway platform. Do you
                            see the stringers up there? The bottom of those stringers look like they’re
                            sitting in no-man’s land. The bottom of those stringers are attached to the top
                            of the vertical trusses. The first thing we did was put the vertical trusses in.
                            Then we attached a couple of extra pieces of steel to the mezzanine and the
                            upper deck. The stringers were then put on top of the vertical trusses. You can
                            see how that would balance off the overhang, or cantilever, from the upper
                            deck and mezzanine.

                            The metal that looks like steps – that’s the stringer. That’s a pre-cast piece of
                            concrete. From the top of the old grandstand was where the end of the new
                            vertical truss was put, thereby connecting the stringer to the top of that. The
                            sneaky part of Yankee Stadium is that all the seats that they lost, because there
                            were no more seats behind where the new vertical truss was. All those seats
                            were lost. To gain back those seats, they put the new grandstand seats way up
                            high. But in the mezzanine, they lost all those seats because the vertical truss
                            went into that seat area quite a bit.

                            M.W.: I know you had to get rid of the poles in order to cantilever the Stadium.

                            D.M.: The columns. The columns. Use the right terminology here. To get rid of the
                            columns, we had to balance out the cantilever by adding seats to the top, and
                            then hoisted to the cable. The top of the cable is attached to the bottom of the
                            stringer, as well as the top of the vertical truss.

                            The bottom of the cable was actually a turnbuckle. The turnbuckle was
                            enormous. We couldn’t pick it up by hand. It was eight or nine feet long. The
                            turnbuckle is an extension of the cable, and was located on the outside of the
                            stadium near the top of the grandstand. The cable has to remain taut. There
                            has to be a tension. The bottom of the turnbuckle was attached to the very
                            outside of the building. The other end of the turnbuckle went to the cable,
                            which went to the very top of the vertical truss, which was where the stringer
                            sat.

                            M.W.: This sounds like the same way a bridge or tent is put up.

                            D.M.: If you think of a seesaw, where the middle of the seesaw is that vertical truss
                            that attaches to the bottom of the stringer. And, now you’ve got this huge 77
                            foot cantilever, which is an enormous cantilever that stretches out. We’ve
                            eliminated the columns. You can see in the photo that there are columns on
                            the left side and not the right side. Imagine how much work those columns did.
                            Now, how the heck are you going to take that column out and balance it? With
                            the use of the weight of the stringers and the new seats, and the cable and
                            turnbuckle pulling down and lifting up the cantilever. Do you understand it
                            better now?

                            M.W.: Yes, I do.

                            D.M.: If I remember correctly, Arrowhead Stadium, in Kansas City, is cantilevered.
                            It was completed in 1972. It was a similar cantilevered and cable system.
                            Cables have enormous tensile strength. They’re made of really fine steel, and
                            sewn together. John Roebling was the inventor of what they call “wire rope.”
                            He built the Brooklyn Bridge, and that was the first use of wire rope. They
                            realized it has enormous, enormous strength with regard to tension.

                            D.M.: We didn’t think Yankee Stadium was very strong. We felt it wasn’t as strong
                            as it should have been. All the iron workers thought a 77 foot cantilever was
                            way waaayyyy too much for the renovation. We made jokes about it the day
                            we cut the columns out. Everything was done. We hadn’t cut the columns
                            down yet. All the tension and all the turnbuckles and all the cables were all
                            tightened to specs, and all that downward pull from the outside was supposed to
                            take all the weight off the columns, so that when we cut the columns – the
                            overhang – the mezzanine and upper deck, were supposed to spring up a tiny
                            bit, like a quarter inch. That would prove that the whole balance and truss
                            system worked! All the theoretical balancing points and cables - all that weight
                            - that it was a solid design that was going to work.

                            My job was to pre-cut the columns. So, I went around everyday with
                            an acetylene torch and pre-cut all the columns. Pre-cut means you leave a little
                            sticker. You cut the column about 95% through. So, I sat for days – I killed
                            myself in the process – with lead paint and an acetylene torch. I cut these huge
                            holes in the rivets and columns. I just left the stickers on the columns.
                            Structurally, since everything was in tact on the back, there was no
                            compression on these columns anymore.

                            Then came the day when I cut the first sticker. All the engineers were there.
                            All the big shots were there with their measuring devices, like reverse
                            micrometers so they could see how much the column went up. So, I cut the first
                            sticker, and the column came down a quarter of an inch. It was supposed to go
                            up a quarter of an inch. “Uh oh!,” big time “Uh Oh!” So, we stood there while
                            all the engineers and architects were checking out what to do, and at the end of
                            the day they laid us off for a week. They were trying to figure out what was
                            going on. Was this an acceptable mistake? As I recall, it was supposed to go
                            up a little bit. It didn’t. It went down a little bit. As far as the accuracy is
                            concerned, you can have a fault of one sixteenth of an inch or so, but not much
                            more than that.

                            So, they brought us back after a week. Their solution was to put extra tension
                            on the turnbuckles. For weeks, we went around and manually tightened
                            turnbuckle after turnbuckle. It was an awful job because the turnbuckles were
                            galvanized. They weren’t machinery smooth, and weren’t made to be moved.
                            Once you set them up, you had to tighten the daylights out of them. That’s
                            about it for now, Mike.

                            M.W.: Thank you again for your kindness, Dick.

                            Comment

                            • voodoochile
                              Registered User
                              • Mar 2005
                              • 314

                              Originally posted by NYFan1stYankFan2nd View Post
                              I'm sure there are turnbuckles - right on the roof where the cables tie into the upper deck concourse. NOT at street level.
                              I only mentioned that there must be turnbuckles without any reference as to their location.

                              Mike Wagner, you just released to the world a story that has eluded everyone since the renovation, and from the mouth of the man who had the biggest part in it. I was so intrigued reading what Dick Muller had said about the transformation from columns (not poles) to cables, and the fact that the expectation of the upper deck was that it would rise a mere quarter of an inch. With the unexpected drop of a quarter of an inch, a one half inch disappointment doesn't seem that big a deal, but if it's off, it's off.

                              I was somewhat disheartened when he said "That's about it for now, Mike" since I was on the edge of my seat to learn what happened next. I assume he did continue the story later. I can't help but think how it would be to cut that last 5% of that column and expect it to go up, only to see it come down. That split second of fear that the upper deck was about to crash down on you would probably give me a heart attack. I wonder how a system such as that would work on a stadium here in Southern California with an earthquake banging it around.

                              Comment

                              • Mike Wagner
                                Registered User
                                • Feb 2007
                                • 737

                                Dear voodoochile,
                                That was my last interview with Dick.

                                -Mike

                                Comment

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