Polo Grounds - The Final Years

The Final Years

The Polo Grounds' end was somewhat anticlimactic, especially compared to other "Jewel Box" parks. Part of the problem was that the stadium was not well maintained from the late 1940s onward; while the baseball Giants owned the stadium, they did not own the parcel where it stood. Also, the neighborhood around the stadium had gone to seed by the early 1950s. All of this combined to severely hold down ticket sales, even when the Giants played well. In 1954, for instance, the baseball Giants only drew 1.1 million fans (compared to over 2 million for the Milwaukee Braves) even as they won the World Series.

The football Giants left for Yankee Stadium across the Harlem River following the 1955 NFL season, and the baseball Giants' disastrous 1956 season (most of which they spent in last place before a late-season surge moved them up to 6th) caused a further drag on ticket sales. The Giants' 1956 attendance was less than half of the figure for the Giants' World Series-winning 1954 season. That meant little to no money for stadium upkeep.

Frustrated with the subsequent obsolescence and dilapidated condition of the Polo Grounds and the inability to secure a more modern stadium in the New York area, the Giants announced on August 19, 1957, that they would move following that season, after nearly three-quarters of a century, to San Francisco, California, following the Dodgers to the West Coast. The Giants had won five World Series championships in the Polo Grounds. The ballpark then sat largely vacant for nearly three years, until the newly-formed Titans (present-day New York Jets) began play in 1960, followed by the newly-formed Mets in 1962, using the Polo Grounds as an interim home while Shea Stadium was being built. (As a 1962 baseball magazine noted, "The Mets will have to play in the Polo Grounds, hardly the last word in 20th Century stadia.")

In 1961, the city of New York decided to claim the land under eminent domain, for the purpose of condemning the stadium and building a high-rise housing project on the site. The Coogan family, which still owned the property, fought this effort until it was finally settled in the city's favor in 1967.

In the 1992 book The Gospel According to Casey, by Ira Berkow and Jim Kaplan, it is reported (p. 62) that in 1963, Mets manager Casey Stengel, who had bittersweet memories of his playing days at the Polo Grounds, had this to say during a rough outing to pitcher Tracy Stallard, whose greatest claim to fame had been giving up Roger Maris' 61st homer in 1961: "At the end of this season, they're gonna tear this joint down. The way you're pitchin', the right field section will be gone already!"

The final incarnation of the stadium was indeed demolished in 1964, and the Polo Grounds Towers public housing project opened on the site in 1968. Demolition of the Polo Grounds began in April of that year with the same wrecking ball (painted to look like a baseball) that had been used four years earlier on Ebbets Field. The wrecking crew wore Giants jerseys and tipped their hard hats to the historic stadium as they began the dismantling. It took a crew of 60 workers more than four months to level the structure. The site is now home to the Polo Grounds Towers, a public low-income housing project run by the New York City Housing Authority.