Anyhow, one of the things Crash Course said in it's last World History episode is that history is often told through the people with funny hats, but what happened amongst the people is usually way more interesting. Merchant history, the history of how things were traded between places necessitating roads and increasing wealth among the polity, is way more interesting that who claimed to be ruling whom.
Local history is full of funny hat people, they put their names on our parks and on subway stations. They have passed laws and enacted ordinances, but as Crash Course World History points out, there's anyways some city nearby willing to lower taxes to take your business away. The LA film industry knows this all too well. So less interesting that who is in charge, is who were they trying to attract.
That's been my focus here since I've drifted away from phone numbers and roads. In talking about Hollywood it was the people who moved in, not the laws that made, that makes the Hollywood story so interesting.
I've talked before about Wrigley Field in South LA, and today I want to talk about all the things that had to happen for a man in New York to turn LA Wrigley Field into Dodger Stadium. I may have glanced against it in my Wrigley Field article, but here's the whole tamale. The fun part is how it's a great example of the people with funny hats needing merchants, and not the other way around.
So Charles Ebbets became the full owner of the Dodgers in 1902 when they were known as the Superbas. In 1912, Ebbets financed the building of Ebbets Field by selling half his shares to the McKeever brothers. In 1925 Ebbets died, and a trust controlled his shares of the Dodgers (although they were known as the Robins at that point). The nickname wasn't as important then as it is now, those Brooklyn teams wore an old english B on their chest at home, and Brooklyn spelled across the front on the road.
It wasn't until 1932 that the Dodgers (short for trolley dodgers, for the trolleys you had to dodge to get the Ebbets field) became the teams official nickname and became the first nickname to grace the Brooklyn franchise's uniforms.
This switch is actually important. Once the team was branded by a nickname and not by the place where they play, it's much easier to think of as a business, and relocation is a part of business. Manchester United couldn't up stakes and move to London, but if the UK had gone like the US and put Red Devils on all the official merchandise, then it's a bit easier to see.
So in 1942, Walter O'Malley is brought in as the Dodger's attorney. At this point, Ebbet's field is thirty years old. Two years later, O'Malley became a minority owner and by 1950 he was president and chief stockholder. There's a bunch of business stuff and rivalry stuff that happened in that six year period, but that's boring.
What's interesting is that in 1956, O'Malley sold Ebbets Field to Marvin Kratter and agreed to lease the stadium for three years. Given that the Dodgers moved west in 1957, clearly something happened.
Attendance for the Dodgers in the mid fifties, with Ebbets Field forty some years old and the cultural makeup of Brooklyn dramatically shifting, had fallen about 700,000 from what it was in the 40s. O'Malley wanted to build elsewhere in Brooklyn, but he ran into an opponent in Robert Moses.
Moses wasn't a funny hat man, he held no political office, but he had plenty of influence and access to plenty of city funds. Instead of running for office, Moses controlled several public benefit corporations. The corporations then built things like the Triborough Bridge and the Brooklyn Battery Bridge.
Moses favored cars over trains, and was against O'Malley's plan to build a ballpark at Flatbush and Atlantic at the end of the Long Island Railroad. That centralized real estate would be better served by a parking structure in a car based city, Moses felt, and would rather a large sports stadium be placed way out in Flushing Meadows, Queens; a former World's Fair site.
O'Malley, successful merchant that he was, did not bow to the wishes of a quasi-government official. The Dodgers had picked up the Portland Beavers of the PCL as a AAA affiliate in 1956 (the PCL at this time was an open classification league, limiting the rights of major league teams to draft players off the team). At that year's Winter Meetings, O'Malley and Cubs owner Wrigley swapped teams putting the Los Angeles Angels under O'Malley's care.
Following the 1957 MLB season, O'Malley moved the LA Angels to Spokane where they became the Spokane Indians. To provide some continuity, he kept the interlocking LA logo for his Dodger's caps (still in use today) as he took his Brooklyn Dodgers (who no longer owned Ebbets Field remember) and moved them to Los Angeles. Later, he sold the Angels name to Gene Autry to use for his American League Los Angeles baseball club.
Fans holds a sign welcoming the Dodgers outside of Wrigley Field. Photo credit LAPL
The one ballpark O'Malley did own was Wrigley Field as part of the purchase of the Angels. So it was assumed that the Dodgers would move in right away. There were even plans on how to expand Wrigley Field. On February 28th, 1957, while the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn but had bought the Angels and announced their intentions, this rendering of a 60k seater version of Wrigley Field ran in the Examiner.
Photo credit: Los Angeles Public Library
Pretty blah, right? I mean you'd still have the super cool clock tower, but otherwise it's no better than any of the other concrete doughnuts that were about to go in vogue. O'Malley wasn't the only one who wanted to replace his stadium built before the first Great War.
So O'Malley moves his team out after the 1957 season, doesn't really know where he's going to play yet. An article in the Jan 27th, 1958 issue of Time magazine says there were four considerably different final offers made in five days of negotiation with the City of Los Angeles. Finally they settled on the LA Coliseum at $200,000 per year for 1958 and 59, plus 10% of the gate and all the concession profits from the first nine games of the season after an annual opening series against the San Francisco Giants. The Coliseum sat 101,528 and wasn't built with baseball in mind so the dimensions were quite colorful.
LA Coliseum with baseball diamond squeezed inside. Photo credit LAPL
As you can see, it was an ungraceful squeeze. A fence had to go up along that short left field, and centerfield is marked by a short fence with plenty of green behind it. Fans sort of just fade out after the foul poles, with no centerfield seating to speak of. In the background that's the LA Sports Arena that opened in July of 59, with the Lakers beginning play there in 1960. Lakers, Dodgers, and Rams all in one complex.
The Dodgers won the World Series in 1959, playing their home games in that gigantic facility. They'd stay there for two more seasons while work was done in building the Dodgers a permanent home. But where they decided to build that home takes a bit of rewinding of the history machine.
In 1949, the men in funny hats at the US capitol passed the Housing Act of 1949. This, put simply, gave local governments funds to build housing projects. It was also money for urban renewal, so instead of building out in flat suburban areas cities demolished minority housing and rebuilt new public housing projects. And because of corruption, it wasn't even always used for housing, as seen in New York's Lincoln Center.
So in the early 50s, Los Angeles like many other cities across the US used eminent domain to kick out the most hispanic inhabitants of Chavez Ravine to build a complex with two dozen 13 story buildings. The Dodgers weren't even a twinkle in Los Angeles' eye yet.
However, a new mayor in 1953 was against these public housing projects and bought the land back from the Federal Housing Authority. This meant LA had hundreds of acres of developable land right in the center of the city, but the stipulation was it had to be used for a public purpose.
In 1958 they were approached by Walter O'Malley with a purpose. Proposition B was put on the ballot on June 13th, 1958 to approve or disprove a deal that came out of the talks O'Malley had with the City of Los Angeles referenced above. O'Malley would trade his Wrigley Field property for the 300 acres at Chavez Ravine.
Take a look at the oppositions argument. The Dodgers were locked into the Coliseum already, and of course renovating Wrigley Field was still an option. The deal with the City would not only have LA deed over the land, but pay for the building of infrastructure around the Stadium. Roads and freeway off ramps and all sorts of work would have to be done to make the site viable.
The City would get no rent, gate receipts, nothing from advertising or radio rights. It's hard not to see this as a raw deal for Los Angeles. However, the City didn't have the leverage. They wanted the Dodgers to stay, and there was nothing keeping O'Malley from shipping off for Seattle or Minnesota or some such after two years. The City wanted the prestige of a Major League team, more than the team wanted to be in that specific city.
Construction of Dodger Stadium. Photo credit LAPL
The area labeled two is what would eventually become the field, and one points out the various levels being carved out in the hill. One of the unique elements to Dodger Stadiums construction is that your ticket would correspond to a parking lot that would be right up against your entry gate. So instead of parking in the city, entering and walking up to your seat; one literally drives right up to their seat. It's this hillside construction that makes that possible.
Construction continues. Photo credit LAPL
We come in again in 1962. The stadium has taken shape, and now it's time to pave the parking lots and build the access roads. The LA River and the Golden State Freeway are up top, Silver Lake in the other corner. Solano ave leading up to the Police Academy is now known as Academy road, and that entrance the Academy gate.
Chavez Ravine Road is now Stadium Way, Elysian Park ave. leads back to Sunset Boulevard making that the Sunset gate. The naval armory labeled there is now a training facility for the fire department. The downtown gate would be built off the Pasadena Freeway.
Walter O'Malley in front of almost completed Dodger Stadium. Photo credit LAPL
Fifty years later and Dodger Stadium is celebrating it's 50th anniversary. Still pretty much the same as it was in 1962. There's less foul territory now, but it's still as O'Malley drew it up all those years ago. Mayors in New York and Los Angeles have come and gone. But one merchant's legacy lives on.
Before I finish, don't mistake this article as an argument for Laisez Faire business with no regulations. My only point is that the things that make us sentimental about Los Angeles were built by private individuals who wanted to do something great. Dodger Stadium, Griffith Park, Disneyland...these things exist because of the visions of the people who lived here, not because the people in charge wanted to something great for it's citizens.
Movie productions continue to happen in Los Angeles despite the heavy taxation, not because of it. Cities need money to build roads and maintain police and fire departments. Taxes are a good thing. But no city should forget there's always a neighbor willing to let your merchants do their thing for less.
Heck, it's called Anaheim, and it took Disneyland, the Angels, and the Rams. None of this is good or bad, it's just what is. The merchants influence the city scape more than the people in charge. As a result, the merchants are far more interesting.
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