March 27, 2009

New Yankee Stadium, before and after

While the papers have been full of photos of the New York Yankees' new and old stadiums side-by-side, the public parks that were displaced by the Yanks' new home have been wiped from the map. Except on Google Maps, where they live on:

• Google's aerial photo of the Bronx offers an excellent "before" picture of the new stadium site when it was still Macombs Dam Park: The running track, adjacent ballfields (here filled with cars of fans parking for the ballgame then underway), and tennis courts just north of the old stadium are all now buried beneath the new stadium and its accompanying player parking garage.
• Stadium construction was already underway by the time Google took its ground-level view photos of the main Macombs Dam Park site, but you can still see what the park annex to the southwest looked like before it met the wrecking ball. Another Yankees garage now stands on this site; it's scheduled to eventually have a running track and artificial turf field on its roof eventually, but for now only a smaller temporary field will open later this spring.

The original Yankee Stadium is slated for demolition, at which point three new ballfields will be built on that site, one of these years.