History of Hilltop Park

Hilltop Park was New York's first home. The park was originally named the American League Park. Before, the stadium was in very poor condition. It had a swamp in right field, the clubhouse wasn't even finished and there was pretty much no grass in the outfield. Talk about a nasty atmosphere to play in, but that soon changed. 

When the field was completed the swamp was filled in with stone, the field actually had grass. The project ended up costing around $75,000 to redue Hilltop Park. It was even said that you could see the New Jersey Palisades and the Hudson river. The first game was played there on April 30th, 1903, as I talked about in my recent post. 

The New York Giants moved into Hilltop park with the New York Highlanders after the Giants polo grounds caught fire and was destroyed in 1911. This was the time the Highlanders officially changed there name to what there now presently called today, "New York Yankees."

The last game ever played at Hilltop was October 5th, 1912. The park was then demolished in 1914. I was surprised that the park was only used for 10 years. More surprised that they demolished it because that was a pretty big piece of Yankee history right there. But I guess it wasn't very important at the time.