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Behold, The 1950s Baseball Dome That Would Have Kept The Dodgers In Brooklyn

Jen Carlson

Published Oct 20, 2015

Modified Oct 20, 2015

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Jen Carlson

Published Oct 20, 2015

Modified Oct 20, 2015

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(via Modern Mechanix)

In the mid-1950s, there was a proposal for a new home for the Brooklyn Dodgers, dubbed: the Dodger Dome, which would have sat where the Atlantic Terminal Mall is today, right near Barclays Center. The design came from dome-loving architect Buckminster Fuller, who four years later proposed putting a geodesic dome over much of Manhattan. According to a 1955 article in the NY Times, the Dodgers camp asked Fuller to build them a new home.

Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley wrote a letter to Fuller on May 26th, 1955, asking specifically for a domed design, and declaring: “I am not interested in just building another baseball park." By the end that year, things were moving forward, and O'Malley told the Times, "I am delighted at the work that has been done. I believe a substantial contribution to the stadium concept has been made. The type of dome Mr. Fuller proposes seems to be quite practical and economical."

(via Modern Mechanix)
(via Wikipedia)

Fuller's dome—which would have been the first of its kind (Houston's Astrodome wasn't built for another decade)—measured 300 feet high and 750 feet in diameter, but it never moved beyond the preliminary design stage. It was to be located on a 500-acre plot of land in the center of a four square block area near Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, and would have included air venting, shadowless lighting fixtures, a huge underground car park with four automobile entrances, a promenade lined with shops, restaurants and other facilities. From Mechanix Illustrated:

Fuller’s ball park plan is at present simply a proposal to employ his geodesic dome on a truly grand scale. How many fans it would hold has not yet been figured, but... more than Ebbetts Field, the Brooks’ hallowed but decaying home park.

The dome design makes feasible the demand for a ball park big enough to hold the enormous Dodger following. It would also be an all-weather, year-round sports palace capable of pulling in big money as a showplace for every kind of sporting event and exposition. The New York State legislature has created a $30,000,000 authority empowered to create such a center and the dome design helped convince the lawmakers that it could be made to pay its own way.

The Dodger Dome would certainly become an object of pride in Brooklyn. It might even rival the borough’s ball team in public esteem.

The idea came up around the time O'Malley scoffed at Robert Moses's idea to build a stadium for the team in Flushing Meadows, Queens, where Shea Stadium was eventually built.

A determined O'Malley wanted to keep the team in Brooklyn, but Ebbets Field was old, and not easily accessible to fans, leaving too many spirit-crushing empty seats at games. (Still, better than Gowanus?) O'Malley sold it to a developer in 1956 for $3 million, and told Moses: "If my team is forced to play in the borough of Queens, they will no longer be the Brooklyn Dodgers."

Moses told him: "I just don't want to see a baseball field in downtown Brooklyn at all. The streets will never handle all the cars. Your domed stadium would create a China Wall of traffic." Their meeting regarding stadium location was called "a scoreless tie" in the papers.

O'Malley kept his options open, though at first didn't seem keen on relocating the team out of the 5 boroughs, at one point telling L.A. City Councilwoman Rosalind Wyman that he was not interested in meeting. She recalled this a couple of years ago, saying, "I wrote a letter to Walter O'Malley, it's a famous letter nowadays, and we'd heard he wanted to move from Ebbetts Field. The Dodgers were considered one of the best franchises of any sports in America at the time, and I thought 'What the heck?' So I wrote that letter to Walter, and he thought I was just a politician using him. He wrote me back that he was too busy, but I continued to look around to see who else might be available. And almost to the day that we voted, I really never thought that we would get the Dodgers."

But eventually they did, as "politicians refused to let O'Malley build the Brooklyn stadium he wanted... [and] Los Angeles offered him what New York would not: a chance to buy land suitable for building a ballpark, and own that ballpark, giving him complete control over all its revenue streams." That was something Moses wouldn't have done, even in Queens it would have been a municipal stadium.

Two years after O'Malley wrote that letter to Wyman, the Dodgers played their last game in Brooklyn (on September 24th, 1957. Their first game in Los Angeles on April 18th, 1958. Thanks Robert Moses.

Tagged

flashback

history

original

robert moses

dodgers

LGM

dodger dome

walter o'malley

baseball

Jen Carlson

Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.

Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

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