Modern Coliseum
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The Giants, led by Bobby Thompson, race toward the center-field clubhouse at the end of the club’s final home game at the Polo Grounds in September 1957, outpacing pursuing fans. Apartment buildings of Washington Heights, perched atop Coogan’s Bluff, are visible in the background. Bettmann/Getty Images.
Visitors to Dodger Stadium in 1962 might have bought this program, which highlighted above all else the ballpark’s connectedness to freeways. A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Center, National Baseball Hall of Fame.
The modernist Three Rivers Stadium—Pittsburgh’s “machine for sport”—opened in 1970. Its circularity helped it convert between baseball and football formats, to host both the Pirates and Steelers. But this circularity also pushed fans for each sport farther from the field than had the Pirates’ Forbes Field and the oval Pitt Stadium, the Steelers’ home for the previous decade. Allegheny Conference on Community Development Photographs, MSP 285, Detre Library & Archives, Heinz History Center, Pittsburgh.