Washington Park was the name given to three different major
league baseball parks in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New
York, located at 3rd St. and 4th Ave. The two ballparks were cater-corner
from each other at that intersection.
At
a glance...
WASHINGTON PARK
Facility
statistics
Location
Brooklyn,
New York
Broke
ground
1883
Opened
I: May
12, 1883
II: May 30, 1889
III: April 30, 1898
Closed
I: May
19, 1889 (fire)
II: October 3, 1890
III: September 30, 1915
1898:
Left Field - 335 ft
Left-Center - 500 ft
Center Field - 445 ft
Right-Center - 300 ft
Right Field - 215 ft (unconfirmed)
Backstop - 90 ft
1908:
Left Field - 375.95 ft
Left-Center - 443.5 ft
Center Field - 424.7 ft
Right-Center - 300 ft
Right Field - 295 ft
Backstop - 18 ft
The first Washington Park was bounded by 3rd and 5th
Streets, and 4th and 5th Avenues. The property contained an old
building then called the Gowanus House, which still stands, albeit largely
reconstructed. It was used as quarters by General George Washington during
the Battle of Long Island, and that fact inspired the ballpark's name...
despite the reality that the battle itself was a defeat for the Americans.
To borrow Jonathan Goldman's somewhat catty remark in The Empire State
Building Book, "George Washington schlepped here!"
Fly
to the site of Washington Park!
If you have Google
Earth installed, click here
to be "flown" to the site of the later Washington Park. Of
course the stadium is no longer there, but you can see the old
neighborhood. (If you do not have it installed, get
it from Google. It allows you to view virtually anywhere on
Earth in 3D using satellite imagery.)
The ballpark was the home of the Brooklyn baseball club from 1883 (when
it was in the minor Inter-State league) to May of 1889. Brooklyn's club
won the Inter-State league championship and then joined the then-major American
Association in 1884. A fire destroyed the grandstand on May 19, 1889
while the Bridegrooms (as they were then known) were on a road trip. The Brooklyn
Daily Eagle of May 21 reported:
"In the account of the fire at the Washington Park base ball
grounds, publication was given to the rumor that the club would not be
able to play there on Wednesday, May 29. Mr. Ebbets writes that this is
erroneous, for an army of workmen now employed on the grounds will have
everything in readiness by the time the Bridegrooms return."
What is now considered to be the "second" Washington Park was
constructed over the next nine days - in time for Brooklyn's next home
games against St. Louis. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of May 28
reported:
"The new grand stand is being rapidly pushed forward at
Washington Park. Secretary Ebbets expects the structure to be in
readiness on Thursday morning. It will be much larger than the old one.
It will be much larger than the old one. The workmen began to put the
roof on today, and by noon had half the frame up. It is a truss roof and
there will be no pillars in the center of the stand to obstruct the
view. There is no intention of using the view. There is no intention of
using the chairs from the Polo Grounds in New York, much less then
stand, as has been announced was to be done. The new stand is built in
the strangest manner, and bolted so that it can be easily moved or
carried away if necessary. It will be furnished with benches next
Thursday. The work has been delayed considerably by the stormy weather,
but the workmen will be kept going night and day until the stand is read
for the opening game on Thursday morning. They will probably work by
electric light tonight and tomorrow night."
Brooklyn then joined the National
League in 1890. Trolley tracks ran near the ballpark, inspiring one of
the team's many nicknames, the one that ultimately stuck: Trolley Dodgers.
In 1891 the team left Washington Park and set up shop at a newer
facility called Eastern Park. The park had been home to the Brooklyn
Wonders of the Player's League
and part of the consolidation deal that brought an end to that team was
that the National League team would play at Eastern Park. That might have
seemed like a good idea - or at least expedient - at the time, but the
park was a little too "eastern" for the fans'
convenience, and was abandoned after six poorly-attended seasons. A letter
to the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle by Charles Merritt on
November 12, 1897 summed up the feeling:
"Now that the baseball season is over I hope the management of
the Brooklyn Club will do something in the way of securing new grounds.
This has been promised to the patrons of the game for the last two or
three years, but it seems to fall flat just a few weeks before the new
season. Next year, from all accounts, we are to have a pretty strong
team, and there is no reason why we should not have one. I think it a
shame to have to journey to Eastern Park. If their grounds were
somewhere in the neighborhood of old Washington Park, Brooklyn would be
one of the leading baseball cities in the Union."
The third Washington Park was bounded by 1st and 3rd
Streets, and 3rd and 4th Avenues (near but not on the old
Washington Park grounds). The park sat 18,800. It consisted of a covered
grandstand behind the infield and uncovered stand down the right field
line. The Brooklyn National Leaguers, by then often called the Superbas as
well as the "Dodgers", moved into this new ballpark in 1898,
where they would play for the next 15 seasons. Meanwhile, owner Charlie
Ebbets slowly invested in the individual lots on a larger piece of
property in Flatbush, which would become the site of Ebbets
Field once he had the entire block. So in 1913, the Dodgers, at that
time most often called the "Robins" for their manager Wilbert
Robinson, abandoned Washington Park.
But that was not quite the end of the story. The Brooklyn
Tip Tops or "BrookFeds" of the Federal
League, possibly the only major league team ever named for a loaf of
bread, acquired the ballpark property in 1914, then rebuilt the second
Washington Park in steel and concrete. They announced plans to install
lights and start playing night baseball, but the league folded before it
could.
Washington Park!
Brooklyn's
predecessor to Ebbet's Field, Washington
Park.
Photo
courtesy of LCPC
The old park took on a modern appearance; in fact, it was nearly a
dead-ringer for the initial version of another Federal League park in
Chicago that would become Wrigley
Field. However, with the Dodgers in a new and somewhat more spacious
steel-and-concrete home already, there was no long-term need for
Washington Park, so it was abandoned for the final time after the Federal
League ended its two-year run.
Part of the wall of the last Washington Park, on 3rd Avenue in
Brooklyn, can still be seen.
Washington Park was also the name of two different
early-20th-century minor league ballparks in Indianapolis, Indiana.
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