Photographic Evidence

Front page of the Columbia Spectator special edition, Oct. 30, 1939

Last week, I pointed the readers’ attention to the incredible treasure trove that is the growing online archive resource at the Columbia Daily Spectator site.

I have A LOT of pages to go through yet, but the number of great pictures and articles about football from the 1930’s on that I have seen are all just so great.

One issue: I’m still not finding too many great bigger pics of Baker Field. That kind of large scale photography was a lot more expensive back then and space in the older papers was precious anyway.

You rarely see many pictures of the old Baker Field stadium from the athletic department either, and I suspect that’s because it became kind of an eyesore early in its history due to the fact that it was all wood and never was supposed to be a permanent structure in the first place.

But that’s a shame because history is history, and so many glorious things occurred on that field that it would be great to have a frame-able, large scale picture of the old stadium to hang on the wall.

SO IF ANYONE OUT THERE HAS SOME VERY GOOD SHOTS OF THE OLD STADIUM, PLEASE SEND THEM MY WAY VIA EMAIL! 

Speaking of those glorious things, the most glorious victory of all at the old Baker Field was the 1947 win over Army.

And the BEST thing I’ve found so far in the Spec archives is the special edition special edition the paper rolled out for game day that fateful Saturday 66 years ago.

It’s amazing how football-crazed the entire campus and neighborhood was. You can hear stories about it, but seeing the evidence in print makes a big difference.

Please click and enjoy this resource as much as possible. 

Also, here are some pics of interest I DID find from other sources that put sports at Columbia in perspective:

Below is an aerial shot of the main campus in 1926. Remember, that's just three years after Lou Gehrig left Morningside Heights to join the Yankees, so the prominence of the baseball field makes sense. (click picture to enlarge).

As for shots of the "whole" of the old Baker Field, the one below from 1944 is about as good as it gets. (again, click the picture to enlarge)

Below, you can see a slightly elevated view of the stadium from what appears to be the train tracks across the water in Marble Hill. This picture is from early 1936. (again, click the picture to enlarge)

This shot gives you a look from what was probably the press box on the east side of the stadium. Based on this shot, it appears that many of the upper rows did indeed offer the great view of Spuyten Duyvil and the Hudson River Bridge that the entire east side of the stadium can see now. (again, click the picture to enlarge)

This shot of President Eisenhower rousing the crowd give you an idea of what the west side of the stadium looked like from field level. 

This was not the last version of the scoreboard, but it stood for decades and you have to love the yard line indicator. This was all manually-operated of course: