Fewer know that at one time, there was a plan to build a stunning Neo-Classical stadium right at the foot of the Hudson River and 116th Street in what is now Riverside Park. The artist's rendering of the plans for that stadium are below:
And then there's the scant handful of people who know about how close Columbia came to playing its football and baseball games in the Bronx.
That's right, a grass field and surrounding running track known as the Columbia Oval once existed in the Williamsbridge section of the Bronx near Gun Hill Road.
Columbia acquired the land probably sometime in the 1890's and started using it for some athletic events, (not intercollegiate), in 1896.
After the football ban was lifted at Columbia in 1915, an alum named M.L. Cornell, (oh, the irony), suggested that the Oval be used as the site for a permanent football stadium.
The site was accessible by subway, and it is still within walking distance of the Woodlawn Station, which is currently the last stop on the #4 line.
If Columbia had built a stadium there, getting there today would be more than a little annoying. It would require going down on the #1 train from campus to 96th Street, changing to the 2 or 3 train from there and taking that to 149th Street/Grand Concourse, and THEN boarding the #4 and going the remaining 12 stops to Woodlawn. More intrepid travelers could take the #1 Uptown train to the last stop at Van Cortlandt park and walk across the park to the Woodlawn area.
... imagine the fun of that.
But with the advent of World War I a few years later, the idea was shelved so that make-shift hospital buildings could be put on the site and injured troops returning from Europe were treated there.
By the early 20's the Baker Field location had already been donated to the University, and the Columbia Oval was eventually sold off.
The only vestige of the Oval today is a tiny street at the foot of where the Oval once was.
Kings College Place
7 comments:
It seems the same value of athletics years ago as when some of Baker Field was given/sold.
... the follow-up to the Baker Field history is available at
http://myinwood.net/columbia-in-inwood
... I believe the "Signing Day" for Div. 1A is Feb. 6th .... though the Ivy League doesn't announce their "signees" until after Admission letters have been sent out in April, typically lots of Ivy recruits show up in their high school gyms to go thru the motions of signing a letter of intent .... looks like we will have to wait to then to see who Mangurian has recruited .....
Columbia also had a stadium next to the Polo Grounds in upper Manhattan, across the river from the later location of Yankee Stadium. Not sure if the university owned the stadium. Must have been in the 1890's or so.
The Riverside Park design looks incredible. What a stadium that would have been! Oh well...
Thanks, Red Tiger for the reference
to the my Inwood website. For someone who spent part of their childhood in that neighborhood, it provided a welcome bit of fond nostalgia!
Here are some game scores, dates and attendance numbers from 1899-1900, when CU's student run football team leased Manhattan Field at 155th & 8th Ave., and called it "Columbia Field". They lost the lease when they defaulted on the $15,000 rent. I wonder who got to keep the gate receipts? (By the way, Jake, there also are some nice illustrations of several games from the old New York Herald at http://www.luckyshow.org/football/mf.htm.)
Also known as Columbia Field 1899-1900.
10/14/1899 Princeton 11 - Columbia 0 4,000
10/18/1899 Columbia 40 - N.Y.U. 0
10/21/1899 Columbia 18 - Amherst 0
10/28/1899 Columbia 5 - Yale 0 20,000
11/7/1899 Cornell 29 - Columbia 0 25,000
11/11/1899 Princeton 12 - Carlisle 0 18,000
11/18/1899 Columbia 22 - Dartmouth 0 7,500
11/25/1899 Columbia Medical School v Cornell Medical School [played?]
11/30/1899 Carlisle 45 - Columbia 0 25,000
12/1/1899 Columbia Medical School v Long Island Medical College [played?]
Portion of “Thanksgiving Day Sports Attended by Many Thousands”
10/6/1900 Columbia 12 - Wesleyan 0 8,000
10/10/1900 Columbia 0 - Williams 0 1,500
10/17/1900 Columbia (subs) 45 - Stevens Institute 0 att: 500
10/27/1900 Yale 12 - Columbia 5
11/6/1900 Columbia 6 - Princeton 5
11/17/1900 Columbia 11 - Navy 0 1,000
11/21/1900 Columbia v Manhattan College cancelled
11/24/1900 Columbia Law School v Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons [played?]
11/29/1900 Columbia 17 - Carlisle 6 36,000
Columbia beats Carlisle before 36,000 on Thanksgivings Day, 1900
Notes:
• Usually twice as many watched the games from neighboring viaducts and bluffs than paid to enter. This is reason for two attendance figures listed, and the reason why the big football games were moved to The Polo Grounds (#3) just north in 1897.
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