Yankee Stadium Frieze Shutters (Update)

It's been a long, brutal winter and I'm looking forward to warmer weather, the return of our Corvette, a years over due family vacation and wood working in the garage. First project on the agenda; the shutters for the basement windows.

Light through glass block is a lifeless intrusion and is best blocked out, man cave or not. Those glass blocks have a small vent in them that can be opened but we never open them. Only upon doing measuring for the shutters did I even notice the vent. You can't get out or in through those windows and I have to wonder why they're there in the first place. Just for that vent? Some sort of building code? What they do at worst is light our man cave during the day making it difficult to watch the TV. Yes, even that monster 60 inch HD is tough to watch with all that light beaming through. Curtains can only so much to block out the light and good luck find store bought shutters that would block out the light.

 

I had originally planned to build shutters that emulated the 1976 Yankee Stadium Frieze that adorned the outfield walls. This handsome facsimile, and this may sound blasphemous to many Yankee Stadium cognoscenti, is better looking than the turned metal frieze that decorated the roof of the 1923 Stadium.

 

 

As a kid I wasn't a fan of the Frieze. I thought it dainty, old fashioned, fuddy duddy-ish. The Yankees stunk too and had for years and years. The World Series years seemed decades past. The stinky, dumpy stadium fit the rancid team perfectly. Sorry, that's a little harsh. The Yanks weren't rancid they were just painfully mediocre.

 



  

New York in the '60's and '70's had little appreciation of its architecture from before World War II. Take the original, grand old Penn Station for instance. Gone with nary a protest. When the renovations of Yankee Stadium were taking place I applauded not only the removal of the site blocking posts but the removal of the dainty decoration on the roof. Yankee Stadium was going to be cool and modern like Shea Stadium! Newness to everything. The hell with history.

 

 

  

Legend has it George Steinbrenner insisted the "new" Stadium have a Frieze on the roof. Problem with that was that in order to have the Stadium be pillar free, because of the unique cantilever that held up the upper deck and mezzanine, the roof couldn't support anything that big and heavy.

 

 

Instead, a Frieze went onto the outfield wall. A beautifully tasteful compromise even more remarkable seeing that it was done during the tasteless 1970's. BTW, it was then Yankees president Mike Burke who insisted on the Frieze. Mr. Burke didn't do much for the Yankees during his long, tortured tenure but he did get the Frieze done.

  

 

My first go round with the Frieze shutters went even so far as my tracing a template. I ran into issues when I quickly realized that the above template would dwarf the window openings. Boiled down to the position of the office projector and how big or small I could make the projection. It was either too big or too small to base a shutter on. 

 

 

At 42 X 15, with shutters that big, I'd have to alter my Yankees insignia. Making any changes to what has become a beloved family icon didn't sit well with the biggest Yankees fan in my life, my 17 year old.

 

 

Giant shutters would mean at least moving the insignia lower. While it does need to be remounted to eliminate that odd cantilever, I've opted to not change a thing about it. The sign stays as is.

  

  

So, I decided to make these things shutters first and if they were to emulate the Yankee Stadium frieze, well, it would be in decoration - not part of the structure per se. From 3/4 inch plywood, I cut panels that were an inch and half smaller all around that the window opening. I painted the panels blue, the trim white as a contrast to the Yankees insignia.

 

 

The panels will fit up inside the open like a sliding medicine cabinet door. A 1X1 will be attached to the back of the panel and the weight of the entire "shutter" will hold it in place. Short of an earthquake, they'll stay where I put them. I have to get a scroll saw to make the Frieze decoration as good as it can be. While certainly much easier to go with pin stripping, I think it will look much better to go with the Frieze.

 

 

Anything worthwhile usually not being the easy way out.