Collect this irreplaceable piece of Yankee Stadium and New York history!
102 years old, this original one-of-a-kind blueprint was used in the building of Yankee Stadium. Imagined in 1921, ground was broken for the start of construction in May 1922 — and the Opening Day of Yankee Stadium was less than one year later, on April 18, 1923.
This antique blueprint was used in the building of Yankee Stadium. The blueprint bears a stamp, lower right, in black ink, reading “OFFICE COPY / The Osborn Engineering Co. / Approved July 6, 1922 / By . . . . . . . . . . . ." The stamp's signature field is initialed by “K.H.C.”, and hand-signed in black ink. Beneath the initials, four other individuals and/or representatives of companies have also approved and signed off on the design: one approval dated 7-5-22”; and three additional approvals on 7-7-22.
Indicated on the blueprint are details including the area of Yankee Stadium represented in the plan (“GRANDSTAND”, “Section A”), the date the plans were drawn up, the drafter of the drawing, Order No., Sheet No., and other historical details.
The blueprint shows signs of actual use in the construction process, including check marks hand-applied in yellow, folds, etc. After construction was complete, it was ultimately framed. Presented in its original vintage frame, the blueprint is framed with dusky blue matting. Beneath the blueprint are four early postcards of Yankee Stadium, while on the frame itself, at the bottom center, is an engraved brass or golden plaque that reads: “YANKEE STADIUM / 1922”.
The frame, measuring 35" in height x 42" width, is of wood with glass. The visible area of the blueprint measures approximately 22-1/2" in height x 34" width. Each of the four postcards measures 3-1/2" x 5-1/2".
The History of Yankee Stadium:
It may have been known as “The House That Ruth Built,” but the original Yankee Stadium was actually built by an engineering company from Cleveland.
Osborn Engineering Company of Cleveland, Ohio was founded in 1892 and got its start on bridges, roadways, and other civil engineering projects. But the growing popularity of spectator sports created new opportunities. Osborn turned its knowledge of bridge design into an expertise in sports architecture early in the 20th century that made it the creator of an all-star team of facilities, and by 1928, Osborn had designed 75 ballparks around the country, including Fenway Park in Boston, Comiskey Park in Chicago, and the football stadium at the University of Notre Dame.
On February 6, 1921 the New York Yankees announced the purchase of ten acres of property in the West Bronx. The Yankees’ owners, Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast L. Huston, sought out Osborn, and by early 1921 they had signed their deal. Ground was broken for the start of construction on May 5, 1922 by Osborn Engineering, along with The White Construction Company of New York, which served as the lead contractor. Opening Day was April 18, 1923.
Before this whirlwind schedule of building came over a year of fastidious planning, which included the painstaking work of drafting the plans and blueprints — with sheets detailing everything from the structure, to the electrical and plumbing systems, to the decorative elements that made the park unique, such as the terracotta panels featuring an eagle clutching baseball bats in its talons.
On Opening Day, it was a brisk 49 degrees in New York City. The wind whipped up dust from the dirt roads and vacant lots abutting the ballpark that now rose from the planed-out soil of city plot 2106, lot 100. Those same winds whirled the eight-foot copper baseball bat that served as a weathervane from atop the in-play flagpole in center field.
There had been a farm there, granted to John Lion Gardiner just prior to the Revolutionary War, and then a sawmill, and the surrounding sweeps of land seemed more suited to just that — an old farm or sawmill — rather than what now scraped the sky.
And what loomed above, three decks high, was a concrete-and-steel colossus unexampled in sports and certainly baseball. The forging of the stadium at 161st and River displaced 45,000 cubic yards of Bronx soil. Then it devoured 20,000 yards of concrete; four million feet of lumber; 800 tons of re-bar; 2,200 tons of steel beams and channels and angles and plates; 13,000 yards of topsoil and 116,000 square feet of Merion Bluegrass sod; one million screws of brass.
It was not the first stadium to be raised up in the medium of modern construction materials, but it was the most hulking, the most impossible-seeming. Unlike Wrigley, Fenway, Shibe, Crosley or others of the prior generation, Yankee Stadium defied words like "cozy" or "intimate" at every grand angle. In that way, it augured a coming era in which ballparks would no longer tuck into their existing neighborhoods but rather barge in with shoulders wide and arms akimbo. The original design of Yankee Stadium of course reflected some geographic limitations, but its final presence looked and felt like an unyielding one. Yankee Stadium was big and bad like its warrior-poet Babe Ruth — like its titular hometown nine soon would be — and it augured a reimagining: that the "ballpark" could be elevated and sprawled into the realm of "stadium." And so it was the first ballpark to be called a stadium.
The stadium became an icon of American sports architecture, home to baseball greats from Babe Ruth to Joe DiMaggio to Derek Jeter, and 26 World Series championship teams.
This beautiful framed blueprint is one of the building blocks, that helped build the legendary stadium, that housed some of the greatest players in baseball history.
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