The Original Yankee Stadium: The House That Ruth Built, 1923 to 2008

By 4Baseball Staff · November 5, 2026 · 10 min read

The story of the original Yankee Stadium, from its 1923 opening through the 1974-75 rebuild, its renovated years and its last game in 2008, with the dimensions, monuments and championships that made it famous.

Yankee Stadium opened in the Bronx on April 18, 1923, and for most of the next 86 seasons it was the home of the New York Yankees, the club with more World Series titles than any other. In the first 51 seasons, from 1923 through 1973, Yankee teams that called the ballpark home won 27 American League pennants and 20 World Series, according to the historical record. The building was named for the team and nicknamed for its first great star, Babe Ruth, in a phrase usually credited to the sportswriter Fred Lieb: the House That Ruth Built.

It was a ballpark designed to impress. A three-tier grandstand ran around the infield and along both foul lines, which was unusual in 1923. A decorative frieze hung from the roof of the grandstand, and that scalloped facade became one of the best-known pieces of ballpark architecture in the country. The outfield was oddly shaped, with a short right-field porch for left-handed pull hitters and a very deep stretch of left-center nicknamed Death Valley.

This article follows the building from its construction to its closing: why the Yankees needed it, what the field looked like, how Monument Park began, what happened during the two seasons the club spent at Shea Stadium while the park was rebuilt, and what the historical record can and cannot tell you about the place.

Why the Yankees needed their own park

The franchise began in 1901 as the Baltimore Orioles and moved to New York in 1903, and for its first decade in the city it played at Hilltop Park in upper Manhattan, which the historical record gives as its home through 1912. From 1913 to 1922 the Yankees were tenants at the Polo Grounds, the home of the New York Giants. That arrangement suited both clubs while the Yankees were an ordinary team. The arrival of Ruth in 1920 changed the picture, and the historical data shows the Yankees drawing 1,289,422 fans at the Polo Grounds in their best season there.

The owners, Jacob Ruppert and, at first, Til Huston, bought land in the Bronx across the Harlem River and built a park of their own. The Yankees won the pennant in 1921 and 1922 while still renting from the Giants, and in both years lost the World Series to them (5 games to 3 in 1921, 4-0 in 1922). In 1923 they moved to the Bronx, and that October they beat the Giants for the first title in franchise history, 4-2. More about the earlier years of the club is in the Yankees' franchise history.

The opening game and the first home run

The opening game was on April 18, 1923, against the Boston Red Sox. The reported crowd was well over 70,000, and the Yankees won. Ruth hit a home run in the game, the first at the new park. In 1923 he was the American League's Most Valuable Player, and his 659 home runs for the club, from 1920 to 1934, are still the most in franchise history. The Stadium was built for a team with the biggest gate attraction in the game, and it showed.

Lights did not arrive until 1946, when the Yankees played their first night game at the Stadium. By then clubs such as Cincinnati had been playing at night for more than a decade; the story of that earlier change is in our article on Crosley Field and night baseball. The Yankees were slow to adopt it.

The shape of the field

The dimensions of the original Stadium are the part that fans argue about, because they changed over time and different books give different numbers. What is clear is the pattern. The right-field line was under 300 feet, one of the shortest in the majors, with a seating area in right field known as the short porch. Center field and left-center were far deeper, in the range of 450 to 460 feet, and the left-center area known as Death Valley swallowed fly balls that would have been home runs in most other parks.

That shape favored left-handed pull hitters such as Ruth and, later, Roger Maris, and it was hard on right-handed power hitters. Joe DiMaggio, who hit 361 home runs for the club, was said to lose long drives in Death Valley, and the point is a standard part of his legend; see our profile of DiMaggio.

The grandstand was triple-decked, with support columns holding up the upper levels. The columns blocked some views, a defect that would be corrected in the 1970s rebuild. Over time the stands were extended around the outfield, and the seating capacity rose accordingly.

The Stadium was a generation younger than the great parks of the 1900s and 1910s, and larger than all of them. Shibe Park in Philadelphia, Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, the original Comiskey Park in Chicago and Navin Field in Detroit were built within a few years of one another, and our articles on Shibe Park, the original Comiskey Park, Forbes Field and Tiger Stadium and Navin Field tell their stories. The Stadium took the same idea of a steel-and-concrete park and scaled it up.

The dynasty years in one table

The Stadium was home to a long list of teams, but only a handful of managers, and the historical record shows for the four longest-serving ones show how consistent the winning was.

Add the four records together and they come to 4,620 wins and 3,088 losses, a winning percentage just under .600 over more than 7,700 games. These four men managed the club in 46 of the 51 seasons from 1923 through 1973. The best individual seasons by winning percentage in the historical data were 1927 (110-44), 1939 (106-45), 1932 (107-47) and 1961 (109-53), and all four teams won the World Series, as did the 1998 club (114-48), which played at the renovated park.

The pennant record has streaks that look like typographical errors. Between 1949 and 1953 the Yankees won five consecutive World Series, and they won the American League pennant in 14 of the 16 seasons from 1949 to 1964, missing only in 1954 and 1959.

Monument Park

The most unusual feature of the original Stadium was that it had monuments in play. A monument for Miller Huggins, who died during the 1929 season, was placed in center field in 1932. A monument to Lou Gehrig followed in 1941, and one to Babe Ruth in 1949. They stood on the field of play, in fair territory in deep center, and outfielders had to run around them.

Gehrig's farewell is the story that gives the Stadium its sense of ceremony. On July 4, 1939, the Yankees held a day for him, and he told the crowd that he considered himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. His number 4 was the first retired in baseball. Ruth's last appearance at the Stadium, on June 13, 1948, was also a ceremony, a celebration of the building's 25th anniversary, and he died that August. The Yankees retired his number 3.

During the 1970s rebuild the monuments were moved behind the outfield fence in left-center, and that area became Monument Park, where the club later placed plaques for other honored players and retired numbers. The place is a descendant of the 1930s monuments, not a separate invention. The list of honored Yankees there overlaps with the franchise leaders in the historical record: Ruth with 659 home runs, Mickey Mantle with 536, Gehrig with 493 and DiMaggio with 361.

What happened on the field

Several of the most-remembered games in baseball history took place there. Don Larsen pitched a perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series, on October 8, the only perfect game in a World Series. In 1961 Maris hit his 61st home run on the last day of the regular season, October 1, to pass Ruth's record of 60. In 1976 Chris Chambliss hit a home run in the ninth inning of Game 5 of the American League Championship Series, which put the Yankees through to the World Series, 3 games to 2 over Kansas City, and fans poured onto the field. In 1977 Reggie Jackson hit three home runs in the sixth and final game of the World Series against the Dodgers, and the Yankees won it 4-2.

The Dodgers are the club the Stadium is most associated with in October. The two clubs met in the World Series 11 times from 1941 to 1981, and the Yankees won eight of the meetings (1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1956, 1977 and 1978) and lost three (1955, 1963 and 1981). If you want to understand how those series were organized, the history of the World Series covers the formats, and our guide to reading a box score helps with the archived games.

More than baseball

The Stadium was a general-purpose venue as well. It hosted boxing, including the Joe Louis and Max Schmeling rematch in 1938, and professional football. The New York Giants of the NFL played there from 1956 to 1973, and the 1958 NFL championship game, in which the Baltimore Colts beat the Giants in overtime, was played at the Stadium. The ballpark also held large religious events, including Mass said by Pope Paul VI in 1965 and by Pope John Paul II in 1979. Pope Benedict XVI visited in 2008, in the last year of the old building.

The rebuild, 1974 to 1975

By the early 1970s the building was old and in need of repair. The city took over the project, and the Stadium closed after the 1973 season. For two seasons, 1974 and 1975, the Yankees played their home games at Shea Stadium in Queens, which they shared with the Mets. The best attendance in those two years was 1,288,048, well below what the Bronx park had drawn.

The renovated ballpark reopened in 1976, and it was not the same building. The support columns were gone, the seating was rearranged, the outfield was brought in so that the deepest part of center field went from more than 450 feet to the low 400s, and the original frieze was taken down. The seating capacity was reduced. Critics said the result lost the character of the original. Supporters said the sightlines and amenities were much better.

The Yankees won the pennant in 1976, their first since 1964, and the World Series in 1977 and 1978. They also won the pennant in 1981, and the next title came in 1996. By the end of 2000 the franchise had added four more championships (1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000), and pennants in 2001 and 2003 followed. The park's best attendance, 4,298,655, came in 2008, the last year.

The last season and the new ballpark

The last game at the old Stadium was on September 21, 2008, against the Baltimore Orioles, and the Yankees won. The 2008 All-Star Game had been held there in July. The new Yankee Stadium opened across the street in 2009, with an exterior that echoes the old frieze, and its best season attendance in the historical data is 3,765,807. The historical park labels for the years after 2008 are inconsistent, so check a primary source if you need exact seasons for the new building.

The shape of the new park is similar, with a short right-field porch, but it is a different building. The franchise's title count stood at 20 after 1962, 22 after 1978 and 26 after 2000, and the 27th came in 2009 in the new park. Through 2025 the club has won 41 pennants in all.

The numbers behind the building

What the data cannot tell you

The historical record lists the park each club used, the years it used it and the best attendance in each stretch, and that is why the table above is reliable. It does not hold the dimensions of the old Stadium year by year, the seating capacity at a given date, or park factors, which measure how much a ballpark inflates or suppresses runs and home runs. Those need other sources, and the older figures in popular books often disagree with each other by several feet.

It also cannot say how much of the Yankees' success belonged to the building. The short porch helped left-handed hitters, but the club also had a long run of great players, and a record of 10,990 wins and 8,369 losses over 125 seasons through 2025 (a .568 winning percentage) reflects all of that. The honest summary is that the Stadium suited the club's best hitters, and the club's best hitters suited the Stadium.

Common questions

Why was it called the House That Ruth Built? The reasoning was that the crowds Ruth drew paid for the building. The phrase is usually credited to the writer Fred Lieb.

How many World Series did the Yankees win while the original park stood? Counting the titles from 1923 to 1962, the franchise won 20. Add 1977 and 1978 at the rebuilt park, and 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000, and the count was 26 by the end of 2000.

Are the monuments still there? The monuments were moved to the new park, in a Monument Park beyond the outfield fence.

Where can I read about other old ballparks? Try Tiger Stadium and Navin Field and Forbes Field, both of which opened in the same period.

Where to go next

For the current club, visit the New York Yankees team page. For more on ballparks and the fans who fill them, see the ballparks and fans topic page.