1921: Ground broken for Yankee Stadium
Eighty-seven years ago this month, ground was broken for the largest-seating capacity baseball stadium in the world: Yankee Stadium.
The team purchased the site from the estate of William Waldorf Astor, builder of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, who had passed away two years earlier. The Yankees did not reveal the exact amount paid for the former 10-acre lumberyard, though an expert asked by the New York Times estimated the cost of the plot to be around $600,000. The cost of the stadium’s construction had reached $2.5 million by the time it was completed in 1923.
The stadium, which seated 58,000 people when it was intially built, was the first three-tiered sports facility in the United States. Once home to the New York Giants football team, as well as host to dozens of famous boxing fights, the stadium has experienced increases and decreases in its seating throughout its history, peaking at 82,000 in 1927.
While plans to build a new stadium had been known to the public for months, the club had decided only at the last moment to build on the 10-acre site on the east bank of the Harlem River, between 137th and 161st streets. They had previously been considering a much smaller plot, the site of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, on Broadway between 136th and 138th streets.
Yankee Stadium is currently slated for demolition upon the opening of the team’s new $1.3 billion stadium on an adjacent lot in the spring of 2009.
1951: City bans discrimination at publicly assisted housing
In February 1951, the City Council passed the Brown-Issacs bill in a unanimous vote, prohibiting discrimination or segregation in any private housing facility receiving financial aid or tax exemption from New York City or any of its agencies.
The bill, named for Manhattan council members Earl Brown and Stanley Isaacs, was an important precursor to their 1957 Sharkey-Brown-Isaacs Law, which made it illegal to discriminate in the rental of units in a multi-family building for all privately owned dwellings. The largest, and arguably the most controversial, example of discrimination in a government-assisted housing facility at the time of the Brown-Issacs bill’s passage was at Stuyvesant Town.
The enormous complex—owned by Metropolitan Life Insurance Company—barred African-Americans from renting when it opened in 1947. That year, the New York State Supreme Court ruled that being a privately owned housing complex, Stuyvesant Town “may select tenants of its own choice…Clearly, housing accommodation is not a recognized civil right.”
With the passage of the Brown-Issacs bill, however, rejecting a tenant “based on race, color, creed, religion, national origin or ancestry” made a landlord guilty of discrimination, punishable by a fine of $500. The law also gave a tenant who had been subjected to discrimination the right to bring the case before the State Supreme Court.
1985: First tenants move into World Financial Center
In February 1985, Toronto-based developer Olympia & York announced that the first tenants would soon begin moving into its still-incomplete World Financial Center. Merrill Lynch had signed, at 3.9 million square feet, the city’s largest-ever lease, and according to its broker, John Cushman III, the largest in the world.
Merrill Lynch’s initial deal secured the space in the 34-floor Four World Financial Center as well as in the 44-floor Two World Financial Center.
The company then decided that it could only afford to take two-thirds of the latter, 2.2-million-square-foot tower, and transferred the remaining space back to Olympia & York. In the deal, the financial services company also sold back its right to acquire a 49 percent stake in Two World Financial Center, which would have cost it 25 annual payments ending in 2012.
Construction of the complex’s initial four buildings, having a total capacity of around 30,000 people, was completed in 1987. Since then, two more buildings have been added—the Winter Garden Atrium in 1988 and the NYMEX building in 1997.
The complex was damaged in the attacks of Sept. 11, and some of it was closed for repairs in 2001 and 2002.