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April 4, 2009
Breaking With History in the Bronx
The New York Times
by Jim Dwyer
The About New York columnist hearkens back to the days when pro sports teams actually paid taxes.
The pharaohs would be at home in the new Yankee Stadium, if they could peel enough gold leaf off their sarcophagi to cover the costs of tickets. The monumentality of the place goes on display this weekend for the first games.
In dimensions and decor, the new stadium, handsome and comfortable, is meant to evoke the old one. But the resemblance is only concrete deep. This is not history, but a costume party, a rigging of familiar geometry. It disguises a radical departure from New York’s baseball history: the embrace of public subsidy — around a billion dollars when all the costs are added — for private wealth.
The first incarnation of Yankee Stadium opened in 1923. The owner, Jacob Rupert, bought private land, raised private funds for the construction, and maintained the place with money he made in ticket sales. Rupert and his successors paid taxes on the property: the land alone was assessed at $1.75 million in 1923. By 1970, the stadium and land were valued at $5 million.
If you were to page through the annual city tax rolls, you would find the valuation of Yankee Stadium — as well as the Polo Grounds in Manhattan and Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, the homes of the Giants and Dodgers — listed right alongside the other big properties in the city, like Rockefeller Center, the Metropolitan Life building and Loews Paradise theater.
What do those old tax rolls tell us?
Click through for the answers.
Posted by eric at April 4, 2009 10:38 AM