Washington Park

This article is about the former baseball park. Washington Park is also the name of towns in Florida, Illinois, and North Carolina and is the name of a community area in Chicago.

Washington Park was the name given to two different major league baseball parks in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, located at 3rd St. and 4th Ave. The two ballparks were cater-corner from each other at that intersection.

The first Washington Park was bounded by 3rd and 5th Streets, and 4th and 5th Avenues. The property contained an old building then called the Gowanus House, which still stands, albeit largely reconstructed. It was used as quarters by General George Washington during the Battle of Long Island, and that fact inspired the ballpark's name... despite the reality that the battle itself was a defeat for the Americans. To borrow Jonathan Goldman's somewhat catty remark in The Empire State Building Book, "George Washington schlepped here!"

The ballpark was the home of the Brooklyn baseball club during 1883-1891, with a slight interruption by a destructive fire during the 1889 season. The team started in a minor league in 1883, joined the then-major American Association in 1884, and then switched to the National League in 1890. Trolley tracks ran near the ballpark, inspiring one of the team's many nicknames, the one that ultimately stuck: Trolley Dodgers.

In 1892 the team left Washington Park and set up shop at a newer facility called Eastern Park. That might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but the park was a little too "eastern" for the fans' convenience, and was abandoned after six poorly-attended seasons.

The second Washington Park [1] (http://www.ballparks.com/baseball/national/washin.htm) was bounded by 1st and 3rd Streets, and 3rd and 4th Avenues. The park sat 18,800. It consisted of a covered grandstand behind the infield and uncovered stand down the right field line. The Brooklyn National Leaguers, by then often called the Superbas as well as the "Dodgers", moved into this new ballpark in 1898, where they would play for the next 15 seasons. Meanwhile, owner Charlie Ebbets slowly invested in the individual lots on a larger piece of property in Flatbush, which would become the site of Ebbets Field once he had the entire block. So in 1913, the Dodgers, at that time most often called the "Robins" for their manager Wilbert Robinson, abandoned Washington Park.

But that was not quite the end of the story. The Brooklyn Tip Tops or "BrookFeds" of the Federal League, possibly the only major league team ever named for a loaf of bread, acquired the ballpark property in 1914, then rebuilt the second Washington Park in steel and concrete. The old park took on a modern appearance; in fact, it was nearly a dead-ringer for the initial version of another Federal League park in Chicago that would become Wrigley Field. However, with the Dodgers in a new and somewhat more spacious steel-and-concrete home already, there was no long-term need for Washington Park, so it was abandoned for the final time after the Federal League ended its two-year run.

Washington Park was also the name of two different early-20th-century minor league ballparks in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Source: Green Cathedrals, by Phil Lowry.

Dimensions

(The Second Washington Park between 1st Street and 3rd Street)

• Left Field - 335 ft. (1898), 375.95 ft. (1908), 300 ft. (1914)
• Left Center Field - 500 ft. (1898), 443.5 ft. (1908)
• Center Field - 445 ft. (1898), 424.7 ft. (1908), 400 ft. (1914)
• Right Center Field - 300 ft. (1898)
• Right Field - 215 ft. (1898), 295 ft. (1899), 301.84 ft. (1908), 275 ft. (1914)
• Backstop - 90 ft. (1898), 15 ft. (1908)

Fences

• Left Field to Center Field - 12 ft.
• Right Field - 42 ft. (13 ft. brick fence topped by 29 ft. of canvas)