From Big Plans Evolved House That Ruth Built

The sheer size of it taxed the imagination.

A stadium with 75,000 seats.

That was the announcement, 78 years ago today, by New York Yankee owners Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast L. Huston, that they had purchased 10 acres of land in the Bronx and would build a stadium.

The sign out front would say “Yankee Stadium,” but it really was “the house that Ruth built,” as New Yorkers would later say.

Babe Ruth, obtained from Boston the previous year, had sent attendance soaring with a stunning 54-home run season in the Polo Grounds, the park the Yankees shared with the Giants.

Ruppert and Huston paid $500,000 for the land, between 157th and 161st streets, and the estimated cost of building the stadium would be $1.5 million. The land was purchased from the estate of William Waldorf Astor.

Yankee Stadium opened in 1923, with 67,000 seats. Ruth hit the first home run there.

Also on this date: In 1977, at Hartford, Conn., Linda Fratianne of Northridge won the U.S. figure skating championship. . . . In 1948, Dick Button became the first U.S. gold medalist in figure skating at the Switzerland Olympics. . . . In 1976, cheered by his countrymen, Franz Klammer won the Olympic downhill race at Innsbruck, Austria.