Hilltop Park

Hilltop Park was a ballpark in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It was the home of the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball from 1903 to 1912 when they were known as the "Highlanders". It was also the temporary home of the New York Giants during a two-month period in 1911 while the Polo Grounds was being rebuilt after a fire.

The ballpark's formal name, as painted on its exterior walls, was American League Park. Because the park was located on top of a ridge of Manhattan Island, it was nicknamed Hilltop Park, and its team was most often called the New York Highlanders (as well as the Americans and the Yankees). This "Highland" connection contrasted with their intra-city rivals, the Giants, whose Polo Grounds was just a few blocks away, in the bottomland under Coogan's Bluff.

Hilltop Park sat on the block bounded by Broadway, 165th Street, Fort Washington Avenue, and 168th Street. The structure consisted of a covered grandstand stretching from first base to third base and uncovered bleacher sections down the right and left field lines. Originally built in just six weeks, the park sat 16,000, with standing room for an additional 10,000 or so. The bleachers were covered in 1911, and also bleachers to seat an additional 5,000 fans were built in 1911 (partially to accommodate Giants fans, who were temporary tenants after the Polo Grounds fire) in center field.

The field was initially huge by modern standards — 365 ft (111 m) to left field, 542 ft (165 m) to center field and 400 ft (120 m) to right field. An inner fence was soon constructed to create more realistic action. Both the park and the nickname "Highlanders" were abandoned when the American Leaguers left, at the beginning of the 1913 season, to rent the Polo Grounds from the Giants. The Polo Grounds had a far larger seating capacity, and by that time was made of concrete due to the 1911 fire. Hilltop Park was demolished in 1914.

American League baseball came to New York City in 1903 when gambler Frank J. Farrell and former New York City Police Chief William S. Devery bought the Baltimore Orioles franchise for $18,000, equal to $629,933 today. They established the team at Hilltop Park, a hastily constructed wooden park seating about 16,000 fans, on the west side of Broadway between 165th and 168th streets. It was catty-corner to the New York School for the Deaf, which at that time was located at 99 Fort Washington. The land was acquired via a ten-year lease, arranged by the New York Institution for the Blind.

The block was effectively parkland, with many trees to be cut down and an artificial lake to be drained and filled in. In mid-April, the owners announced that the new ballpark was to be officially known as American League Park.

Between that fact and the club president Joseph Gordon being fancifully linked by sportswriters to the Gordon Highlanders, the team nickname "Highlanders" followed logically. Opening Day came on April 30, 1903, when the New York Highlanders played the Washington Senators.

The ballpark site was quite large for its time (9.6 acres (3.9 ha) or nearly double the size of many ballpark sites of that era), and the south portion of the land plot was used for the parking of first carriages and later automobiles. The shape of the land plot was a large trapezoid with right angles at the site's northeast and southeast corners. The left field foul line ran mostly North to South and was parallel to Fort Washington Road (the western boundary of the park). The left field foul line would, if extended about 20 additional feet, have intersected 168th Street at less than 90°. The right field foul line would, if extended, have intersected Broadway (the eastern boundary of the park) at more than 90°. The ballpark site was thus trapezoidal in shape and large for the Deadball Era.