THE GIANTS, METS, JETS, YANKEES AND BASEBALL GIANTS CHIPPED IN HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS TO HELP GET IT BUILT
BY FRANK GREEN NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, August 5, 2014, 6:32 PM

A legendary flight of stairs has been re-born, thanks to a years-long campaign spearheaded by the Daily News.
The baseball and football Giants joined the Yankees, Mets, Jets and Major League Baseball, along with former Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, now the city controller, to contribute a combined $950,000 to fix the long-decayed John T. Brush Stairway in Highbridge Park.
For 50 years, the stairs carried fans of the five city sports teams to and from the Polo Grounds in Harlem, until they finally rusted away in the years following the stadium’s demolition, in 1964.
Brush was the owner of the Giants baseball team from 1890 until his death in 1912, the year before the team opened the staircase.

Now, 101 years after the New York baseball Giants built and donated them to the city, the stairs are open again to carry people 80 steps from Coogan’s Bluff on Edgecombe Ave. down to the Harlem River Driveway.

Melody Williams, 48, who grew up in the Polo Grounds housing development where the old horseshoe used to stand, was excited about the new construction, which includes fresh landscaping and several new tables at the stairway’s base.
“I might go take a picnic, you never know,” said Christian Lloyd Joseph, 41, a boxer who lives in the neighborhood. “It makes it way easier,” he added of navigating the famously hilly neighborhood.
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