Four separate stadiums known as the “Polo Grounds” played host to the New York Giants baseball team during their tenure in New York City. Of those four stadiums, only the original “Polo Grounds” were ever actually used to play polo; and it was used for polo for just a few months of its first season in operation.
But its transition to a major league baseball stadium was no surprise. Even before the first polo match was played there on May 22, 1880, the Manhattan Polo Club was already making plans to host baseball games there. Within three weeks of opening, rumors were circulating of efforts to bring a professional baseball team to the polo grounds. Those rumors persisted throughout the summer, the rumors turned into action, and the New York Metropolitans (the original “Mets”) playing thirteen games there in September and October.
Baseball quickly displaced polo at the Polo Grounds, which may have seemed like poetic justice to local baseball fans, particular to those from Brooklyn. Ironically, one of the reasons they built the Polo Grounds in the first place was backlash against their having played polo on the baseball fields at Prospect Park, across the river in Brooklyn, the previous summer.
Polo
In 1876, James Gordon Bennett, Jr. introduced the sport of polo to the United States, a sport the British had only recently brought back from India, and which had enjoyed popularity among the upper-crust in London and Paris for a few seasons. James Gordon Bennett, Jr. was a young heir to the New York Herald newspaper fortune, an accomplished athlete, bon vivant, man-about-town and trend-setter.
James Gordon Bennett, Jr., Puck, Volume 3, Number 77, August 28, 1878, page 2.
A Polo Club
Gordon Bennett, Jr. and his similarly well-to-do polo friends in New York organized a polo club in early-1876. Its grounds were located adjacent to Jerome Park, the original home of the Belmont Stakes, in a neighborhood of the Bronx which had recently been annexed from neighboring Westchester. The club became known as the Westchester Polo Club.
Mr. Bennett has rented a cottage near the Jerome park racecourse, to be used as a club house, and is having it fitted up in the most elegant style for the use of the members. It has polo grounds attached, and is expected to become a popular place of fashionable resort.
Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, New York), March 27, 1876, page 2.
From its earliest days, the Westchester Polo Club was open to hosting non-polo sporting events on its grounds. In 1877, for example, they offered to host a series of football games between Harvard, Columbia, Yale and Princeton. Although those games did not take place there as hoped, they were still open to hosting football and lacrosse games the following year.
The governors of the Westchester Polo Club have decided upon a formal opening of their grounds at Jerome Park New York on Saturday, 18th inst. . . .
The new attractions will be spirited games of foot ball and lacrosse, each by the best players in the country.
Newport Daily News (Newport, Rhode Island), May 13, 1878, page 2.
A few such games were played. In May of 1878, for example, Jerome Park hosted tennis, Aunt Sally (throwing sticks to knock clay pipes from the mouth and ears of the carved head of a woman), croquet, football and lacrosse.
There were the lawn tennis, the squares marked out plainly with lime; the burly figure of a negro woman, with a clay pipe in her mouth and another in each ear, and dozens of painted and varnished sticks to throw at the pipes; the croquet, and many other little amusements to pass the time away. The games to be played were matches in foot-ball between the Fordham Club and the Columbia College Freshmen; in lacrosse, between the New-York Club and the Ravenswood Club, and in polo, between the Newport and the New-York Clubs, as it was announced, although the players were all New-Yorkers. In the foot-ball and lacrosse matches prizes were offered - a fancy ball in the former and a beautiful silver cup in the latter.
The New York Times, May 19, 1878, page 2.
Despite the occasional additional game or sport, Jerome Park does not seem to have become a regular, multi-sport event venue as they had hoped.
Polo was a seasonal sport, and the polo season itself was divided into distinct sub-seasons. For several years, the polo gang would play at Jerome Park in the spring and early summer, leave for Newport en masse (polo ponies in tow) in the heat of summer in July and August, and returned to New York in late-September or October for some more games before winter set in.
In 1879, the polo contingent decided to move their early-season matches from Westchester to Brooklyn to escape the heat of the Bronx/Westchester. Westchester’s reputation for unhealthy summer weather is illustrated by a tongue-in-cheek description of Westchester published a few years later.
Westchester. – Named after a swell polo club. Place laid out with the intention of becoming the suburbs of New York. Up to the present date chiefly remarkable for its production of chills and fever and bad country building lots held at city prices. Board at variegated terms. Prime quality of malaria on tap everywhere.
Puck on Wheels No. III, for the Summer of 1882, New York, Keppler & Schwarzmann, 1882, page 26.
The north Bronx was still very remote from Manhattan, and although it was close to Westchester where many wealthy families kept large estates, it was far away from other recreations, prompting them to seek new grounds; which they found - in Brooklyn.
During the months of April and May the members continued their daily practice at the Jerome Park grounds, but at no time did these grounds suit them for summer practice, and hence, with the approach of warmer weather a change of locality was agreed upon. The ground granted by the [Brooklyn] Park Commissioners affords far more room than the space heretofore occupied by the club at Fordham. The convenience of members who desire to spend part of the day on the seashore has also been consulted in the selection of this new playground, the boulevard where the clubhouse is located being in splendid condition all the way to Coney Island.
The Brooklyn Union, June 10, 1879, page 3.
Polo on the Baseball Grounds
The grounds the Westchester Polo Club rented from Brooklyn were located on the public baseball fields in Prospect Park in Brooklyn. And, to add insult to injury, they were scheduled to play on the same days the baseball fields were in use, and the polo pitch cut off portions of ten, of the thirteen available, baseball fields.
[T]he Park Commissioners [granted] the Westchester Club the exclusive use of ten acres of the central part of the parade ground, thereby cutting off the use of the outfields of ten of the thirteen ball fields laid out at the grounds. The club days selected, too, include two days of the week when public school boys, store employes and others of the business class of Brooklynites find it the only time they can get to the Park for sport. They would be content to see the polo gentlemen have their games on any day but Wednesday and Saturday, especially Saturday.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 11, 1879, page 4.
The outcry was immediate, even before the first match of polo was played.
At Prospect Park there was a large gathering of the fraternity [of baseball players], and when they saw the flags marking the boundary lines laid down for the proposed match at polo by the wealthy bloods of the Westchester Club, and saw how these flags cut off the outfields of a dozen of the ball grounds at the Park, the boys became indignant, as was proper for them to do under the circumstance. Fortionately [(sic)] the polo horsemen failed to put in an appearance and consequently the resident ball players, whose local rights were thus to be infringed upon, were not interfered with. It would be just as reasonable to have granted Delancy Kane’s coaching club an exclusive right to use the main drive at the Park on Saturday, as to grant the use of the parade ground to August Belmont’s Polo Club the same day. As it happened, the Brooklyn amateurs enjoyed their ball games undisturbed, and the result was a good day’s sport.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 8, 1879, page 4.
They played their first game on a Wednesday.
The Westchester Polo Club having left its headquarters at Jerome Park and secured from the Park Commissioners the use of ten acres of the central part of parade ground in Prospect Park to the exclusion of school boys and ball players, played its second annual game with the team from the Queens County Hunt. . . .
Polo will be played every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at Prospect Park till the first of August, when the players will go to Newport, returning to Prospect Park in October.
Times-Union (Brooklyn), June 12, 1879, page 4.
Feelings were still running high after the first polo match. The aristocratic game of polo was viewed as undemocratic, particularly when it displaced the masses from enjoying publicly owned land during their brief time off.
The new game [of polo] . . . is a sport which from its costly and dangerous character, is precluded from becoming popular with us to any such extent as our national game of ball is. It is a sport, too, monopolized by the wealthy minority, and when, as in this case, the minority comes in collision with the special interests in field sports of the large class of collegians, school boys, clerks and young business employes, who seek recreation on the only day of the week they can find time to spare for out door sports, it becomes a matter of serious importance, and one which should call forth the serious attention of the Park Commissioners, in awarding to any one class such special privileges as they have granted to the Polo Club.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 12, 1879, page 2.
The public outcry resulted in swift action. The polo players were banished to the northern edge of the parade grounds, on a smaller-than-regulation polo pitch, which did not impinge on the territory of any of the baseball fields.
THE POLO MEN MUST RETIRE.
The Park Commissioners have evidently taken notice of the numerous protests against granting the privilege to the Westchester Polo Club to use the best portions of the parade ground on Saturdays, and acted upon them. The Polo men will be allowed only the use of the northerly end of the ground, and if it shall appear that all of the ground is needed by the ball and cricket players, the club will have to play on Wednesdays, or get out altogether.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 14, 1879, page 4.
The arrangement seems to have worked.
Polo at the Park.
Several Exciting Games on Saturday and the Base Ball Players Satisfied.
The Parade Ground at Prospect Park on Saturday afternoon, presented a gay appearance there being no less than six games of base ball and one of cricket and polo progressing at the same time. The threatened indignation meeting of the ball players was not held, owing to the fact that the Park Commissioners had compromised the matter by moving the polo ground from where it was first laid out through the centre of the field and taking a portion of nine of e thirteen ball grounds, to the end of the inclosure and running across the field instead of lengthwise. By this arrangement the ball players had all the ground they wanted, but there was some grumbling among the polo players on account of their ground being but 750 by 400 feet, whereas a full game of polo requires a plot 900 by 600 feet. However, the polo players got used to the grounds after the first bout, and the spectators witnessed some rattling games before the play for the day was brought to a close.
Times-Union (Brooklyn), June 16, 1879, page 3.
The polo players continued using Prospect Park, without controversy, three days a week until leaving for Newport, Rhode Island at the beginning of August. But the dispute raised the question, “if polo players were so rich, why couldn’t they just buy their own land?”
The game of polo, being as it is an aristocratic one, requiring the possession of wealth and leisure for its indulgence, without doubt another day than Saturday could be set apart by the Park Commissioners, and thus the recreations of the “curled darlings” of society would not interfere with those of the masses; or it might even be with propriety suggested that the high toned polo clubs buy their own ground. That would be satisfactory all round.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 12, 1879, page 2.
This last suggestion proved prophetic. But in the end, they wouldn’t “buy their own ground,” they would lease it. It’s not that there were no empty spaces on Manhattan; it’s that much of the empty space was not for sale. It was largely held as an investment with an eye toward future development. Large swathes of the undeveloped land was held by one woman – Mary Goodwin Pinkney. The result of their efforts to find a place to play polo was the original Polo Grounds, the first of four major league baseball stadiums that would be known by that moniker.
Baseball on the Polo Grounds
Following one full season of sharing the field with baseball players in 1879, the Westchester Polo Club sought a playing field of their own and more convenient than their home field, at Jerome Park, in the Bronx. Mary G. Pinkney had the perfect spot and was willing to make a deal. To secure the land without risking their personal fortunes, the polo bros incorporated themselves as the Manhattan Polo Club in early 1880, with an initial capitalization of $15,000.i
A few weeks later, Mary G. Pinkney gave them a lease of two square blocks located at the northeast corner of Central Park, bounded by 5th and 6th Avenues and 110th and 112th Streets, at an annual rent of $2,500. The names on the lease were a list of who’s-who of elite New York Society; James Gordon Bennett, August Belmont, Jr., William Jay, and Herman Oelrichs, among others.ii
Luckily for their purposes, 111th Street was just a line on the map at the time, and hadn’t been excavated or developed. The whims of civic leaders with respect to opening that street would play a role in the eventual demise of the first Polo Grounds a decade later, when the city tore down an outfield fence to open 111th Street to traffic a few months before the start of the 1889 season. But in 1880, everything seemed fine.
The club built an enclosed ground with tennis courts, dressing rooms with lockers,a clubhouse on the second and third floors, and a grandstand – all for a three-week, local spring polo season, with more polo to be played in the autumn when the polo crowd returned from their summer homes in Newport. Renting out the field for baseball and other sports was in their plans from the beginning.
The present season of the Polo Club is to last but three weeks, but playing will be resumed in the autumn after the return from Newport. Meanwhile, the grounds will be open to cricket, lacrosse, base ball, and other associations for amateur athletic sports.
The Times Picayune (New Orleans, Louisiana), May 21, 1880, page 6.
In June, Harry Wright, who had assembled the first professional baseball team in Cincinnati in 1869, and later founded the Boston Red Stockings, was reportedly trying to assemble a team to play at the Polo Grounds, although his efforts would fail.iii
It fell to James Mutrie and the original New York Metropolitans (Mets) to secure the rights to play at the polo grounds. The Mets played their first game at the Polo Grounds on September 29, 1880. But since they did not have full control of the stadium, they still had to play a couple games in Brooklyn, due to conflicts with polo on one day and bicycle races another.
James Mutrie, New York Clipper, November 12, 1881, page 556.
The Metropolitans played at the Polo Grounds for only about one month in 1880. Their business plan was to play games against visiting professional teams, eager to tap into the New York City baseball market, which had been without a major professional baseball team for several years.
Having made a successful experiment at the end of the 1880 season, the Mutrie and his Mets planned to play a full season the following year. The team joined the “League Alliance,” a group of independent professional teams who maintained friendly relations with the League, by agreeing to adhere to the same contract regulations and other baseball rules.
Mr. Day, the financial head of the Metropolitan Club of [New York City], made application for admission to the League Alliance, which will be granted beyond a doubt. This will give the Metropolitan Club all the protection of the league in enforcing contracts with players, etc., while not obliging them to incur the expense of Western tours involved in the regular League Club membership.
Chicago Tribune, December 11, 1880, page 5.
They also arranged to use the Polo Grounds on non-polo days.
Mutrie has secured the polo grounds in New York city for four days a week from April 1 to November 1.
Boston Globe, December 12, 1880, page 1.
Baseball’s “Polo Grounds”
Following a full season of baseball at the Polo Grounds in 1881, the polo club sublet the Polo Grounds (at a profit) to the Metropolitan Exhibition Company (the corporate entity that owned Mutrie’s Mets), for the remaining three years of the lease, giving the baseball team full control over the field and scheduling.
A desirable innovation in the line of providing outdoor amusements, says Truth, is that of the Metropolitan Exhibition Company. They have leased, for a term of three years, the Manhattan Polo Grounds, above Central Park, New-York, with the intention of making that a permanent institution for all athletic sports. The staple attraction will be base ball.
Buffalo Morning Express, March 16, 1882, page 3.
Ironically, the polo players who had been banished from the baseball grounds of Brooklyn in 1879 banished themselves from their own Polo Grounds to make way for baseball in 1882.
“We have engaged the Polo Grounds at Newport for the coming season,” said Herman Oelrichs to a New York Tribune reporter yesterday, “but have given up the grounds in this city. The fact is, there is little interest taken in polo, and it does not look as if there would be very lively times with the Westchester Polo Club.”
Cincinnati Enquirer, April 7, 1882, page 2.
The polo players weren’t giving up much. There is no indication that they even played polo at their own Polo Grounds in 1881. In fact, they even played practice games in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park that spring, despite owning their own polo grounds in Manhattan.
Polo.
Games at the Park. - A portion of the parade ground at Prospect Park has been set aside for the equestrian game of polo, and yesterday members of the Meadow Brook Hunt and the Manhattan Polo Club participated in a series of practice games, best two out of three, which was won by the Reds, who obtained two goals to the Blues one. Mr. Belmont bore off the fielding honors. There was a large number of carriages around the field, whose occupants watched the proceedings with interest.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 12, 1881, page 3.
One reason for the decline in interest in polo was the fact that James Gordon Bennett, Jr., who had kickstarted the polo fad a few years earlier, apparently lost interest.
James Gordon Bennett Again.
It may be stated that he never again will appear as the centaur of the polo ground. He has sold his mustang ponies and bidden farewell to an amusement which held power for the unusual duration of two years.
Public Ledger (Memphis, Tennessee), November 3, 1880, page 4.
i Laws of the State of New York, Passed at the One Hundred and Fourth Session of the Legislature, Volume 1, Albany, Weed, Parsons and Company, 1881, page 977. “Corporate name, Manhattan Polo association, limited; Principal Business and Objects of Corporation, Maintaining polo grounds; Date of filing preliminary certificate, Feb. 12, 1880; Date of issue of final certificate of incorporation by Secretary of state, April 8, 1880; location of principle business office, New York city; amount of original capital, $15,000.”
ii New York Times, March 22, 1883, page 8 (reported when the lease was filed at the land records office).
iii Williamsport Sun-Gazette (Williamsport, Pennsylvania), June 7, 1880, page 3.
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