Rebuilding the house that Ruth built: Yankee Stadium in LEGO bricks
September 21, 2008 marks the closing of Yankee Stadium, an 85-year-old piece of New York history that is being supplanted by a newer, bigger stadium.
Together with a Manhattan gradeschooler and over 45,000 LEGO bricks, I have been building a sculpture of Yankee Stadium over the past three years. It will be complete in the next few months; these preview photos give you an in-progress look at the sculpture. The sculpture is 5 feet wide and 5 feet long, built to an approximate scale of 1:150.
The "façade" (above) is a unique feature of Yankee Stadium that fans know and recognize. It was very important to get this visual feature correct!
"Monument park" (above) includes placards and monuments to famous Yankees players, like Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Lou Gherig.
The building is built to look as it does to this day, including all of the modifications that were made over the history of the building (above). When complete, it will be populated with tons of miniature people, hot dog vendors, scoreboards, and more.
An elevated train line runs alongside the stadium. When complete, it will contain a microscale New York City subway train, with lots of traffic and crowds on the street below!
Batter up!
Working on the stadium
I am building the sculpture together with a Manhattan grade schooler. We began work on the sculpture in February 2006, working whenever the boy had available time. The pictures below were taken during the course of 2006, 2007, and 2008.
The stadium will be complete in a few months -- Check back soon for an update!
presents the LEGO brick's history as well as stories around its creation and its use by children and adults everywhere.
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