Stadiums Citi and Yankee

by
March 16, 2009

Reviews of Yankee Stadium and Citi Field from The New Yorker. The reviews themselves wind around in typical New Yorkery style, but end up here:

A stadium is a stage set as sure as anything on Broadway, and it determines the tone of the dramas within. Citi Field suggests a team that wants to be liked, even to the point of claiming some history that isn’t its own. Yankee Stadium, however, reflects an organization that is in the business of being admired, and is built to serve as a backdrop for the image of the Yankees, at once connected to the city and rising grandly above it.

Best line of the review, however, comes in describing the scale of Yankee Stadium compared to the surrounding neighborhood:

The stadium is bigger and more imposing than everything around it, of course, but it seems to grow out of its surroundings, and this somehow rescues the building from its own pomposity.

I don’t pretend to know a thing about architecture, but I could read architecture reviews all damn day.


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Andy L
15 years ago

Ah, but could you DANCE about architecture?

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John Henning
15 years ago

I’ll grant you it’s a pleasant read, but can anything save the New Yorker’s Review from its own pomposity?

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Rich
15 years ago

At least (to this point) they’re modern and clean, which makes them a lot more user friendly than the old, dilapidated stadiums that they are replacing.

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Joao
15 years ago

As a non-Mets fan, I don’t really begrudge the Mets appropriating some of the history from the other New York clubs long gone, particularly since they inherited such a large part of that rootless fanbase.  I think we can debate the degree to which what they are appropriating is too much, but not the fact in itself.  I find it kind of nice that a team is harkening back to the lore of those teams, specially for younger fans.  I mean, its not like they are putting a statue of Duke Snyder in front of the ballpark or anything.  In fact, as a Washington resident (although currently doing a stint overseas), I wish the Nats would do more to connect the team to the old Nats/Senators, Grays, and heck, even the Expos.

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