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Hi Julie,
I’d like to find out when “high service” water finally reached the hilltop homes in north Manhattan and Kingsbridge. It would have been sometime after 1872, when the HB tower was completed. But how long did it take to get the infrastructure built? Once the homes had running water, cisterns and wells would have become unnecessary.
Accounts of the early 1900s fires which destroyed about a third of the homes all have a common thread… the fire hydrants were too far away and at too low an elevation to deliver effective pressure.
I was asked if the Kingsbridge Athletics played against black teams and there’s evidence that the answer is yes. Alex Pomepez’s Cuban Stars played the Athletics in May 1917, soon after the first grandstand was built there. Pompez’s team played and lost in the 1935 Negro National League championship series, and then won it all in 1947. Here’s the ad for the d1917 game.The Kingsbridge Athletics play an important role in the origin of the Dyckman Oval. So it’s not just an Inwood story!
I never thought much about where Poe did his drinking when he lived up here, but in this 1913 clipping about the stadium they mention Poe’s connection with the Kingsbridge Tavern. From its location they must mean the Kingsbridge Hotel. From the St Joseph News Press Gazette, May 5, 1913.
I actually have an original of that postcard, a lucky find.
Here’s a clipping from the NY Press Apr 24, 1915, perhaps the first year the Kingsbridge team played at the Dyckman Oval.
I think Babe Ruth signing with Connie Savage to barnstorm at the end of the 1921 season is how the Babe got suspended in 1922.
Each year MLB prohibited the two World Series teams from barnstorming afterwards. The Yanks played the 1921 Series, lost to the Giants, and then Babe went barnstorming with Savage. Getting Babe Ruth suspended… Do you that that could have ended Savage’s career as a baseball promoter? Is that why he was back tending bar in 1933?
Good one Tom. Here is Savage tending bar in 1933 in the Bronx and telling tales of his baseball days. Any idea where this was? Sep 26 1933 Brooklyn Times Union.
Here’s the Jan 19, 1917 article from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle announcing the Kingsbridge Athletics lease to build the first semipro ballpark at Dyckman Oval. History in the making!
Thanks guys – I’ll try the NY Historic Papers. The question I’d be very interested to know the answer to is if the Athletics’ move south to Inwood had anything to do with the American League (Yankee) stadium that was being built at 225th Street and Broadway before the team’s new owner (Ruppert) changed his mind about the site. Were the Athletics displaced by the Yankees unrealized plans?
