STAIRWAY BUILT BY PRO SPORTS 100 YEARS AGO IS BEING REBUILT BY PRO SPORTS
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
TUESDAY, JULY 9, 2013, 4:05 AM

One hundred years ago, at 2 p.m. on July 9, 1913, the New York Giants baseball team donated to the city an 80-step stairway that millions of New Yorkers used to reach the Polo Grounds from a bluff that rose above the playing field and stands.
The Seventh Regiment Band played as the Giants passed title to “The John T. Brush Stairway,” named in honor of the team’s late owner, who had died seven months earlier. The passageway is today the last artifact of the stadium where so much New York sports history was made.
The Giants played at the Polo Grounds until moving in 1957 to San Francisco. Bobby Thomson hit his 1951 shot heard ’round the world there. In the 1954 World Series, the greatest Giant of all, Willie Mays, made “The Catch” there, on the run, over his shoulder, with graceful ease.
For a decade after 1913, the city’s American League club played in the Polo Grounds and took the name “Yankees.” The football Giants were born there in 1925 and played 30 seasons. The Jets (then the Titans) started there in 1960 and the Mets made their debut there in 1962.
After the field was demolished almost a half-century ago, the stairway fell into disrepair and was sealed off. Five years ago, this page suggested that the five pro clubs might honor their heritage by chipping into a $1 million restoration project.
The teams donated a half-million dollars (baseball Giants: $50,000; Yanks: $100,000; football Giants: $200,000; Jets: $50,000; Mets: $100,000). Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer added $400,000. Major League Baseball and Commissioner Bud Selig anted up $50,000.
The work is almost done. Once the stairway ran down from Edgecombe Ave. through High Bridge Park to the Polo Grounds. It will soon connect Edgecombe with the Polo Grounds Houses, which sit where the field was. Kudos to all.