Growth of Metro New York City and the Flight to Suburbia
The 1898 consolidation of the five boroughs into New York City caused changes in the social, economic, and political conditions that would affect commerce dramatically, including Major League Baseball. In 1898, nearly all of the city's population was concentrated in two of its five boroughs, Manhattan and Brooklyn. Manhattan had almost two million people, and Brooklyn over one million. Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island combined had less than half a million residents. Over the next two decades, with more than two million new immigrants crowding the Lower East Side, people began to move to the outer boroughs, especially to the Bronx.(1)
By 1920, the Bronx had a population of 700,000. When the Giants were considering evicting the Yankees from the Polo Grounds in 1920, Giant's manager John McGraw said, "If we kick them out, they won't be able to find another location on Manhattan Island. They'll have to move to the Bronx or Long Island. The fans will forget about them, and they'll be through."(2) However, due to the rapid increase in population of the Bronx, when the Yankees moved there they were far from through. In fact, it was only when they moved across the Harlem River that the Yankee's success in attendance and success on the field really began, as they set attendance records in their first year at Yankee Stadium, and won their first World Championship that same year.
Not only was the Bronx beneficial to the Yankees, the Yankees and Yankee Stadium helped the Bronx as well. The Yankees brought business to the Bronx. The area immediately around Yankee Stadium became much more valuable because restaurants, garages and bars now could have confidence that people would come to the area.(3)
While consolidation helped the Bronx grow from a rural underdeveloped area into a vibrant part of a large metropolis, it had somewhat of an opposite effect on Brooklyn. By 1898, Brooklyn had grown so large that it could no longer afford to build schools, sewers, and the other public works that it needed. Merging with New York City was an economic necessity, but for Brooklyn it was a step down in status for the fourth largest city in America.(4) Being a part of New York City brought Brooklyn under the power of Robert Moses, whose policies changed the city dramatically. Moses' view of Brooklyn as a single borough in a vast city made him unsympathetic to O'Malley's cause - building a new stadium for the Dodgers. Thus, the Dodgers ultimate fate would be determined by the borough's link to New York City.
Brooklyn was one of the oldest and most developed part of the city, so there was little room for development. As the wealthy, white population began moving away from Brooklyn to the suburbs to get away from the crowded borough, the population of the borough decreased by 110,000 from 1950 to 1960. Most of the people leaving were white, and poorer blacks and Puerto Ricans replaced them. This change hurt Brooklyn's attendance, and was in large part responsible for the Dodger'smove to Los Angeles..
Queens was one of the less populous boroughs brought into New York City by consolidation. From the 1920's onward, the population of the city shifted eastward, and Queens continued to grow. Robert Moses looked at Flushing Meadows as a "Central Park" for the entire consolidated city. Moses offered Walter O'Malley a stadium for the Dodgers to be built by the city. O'Malley was not interested, and the Brooklyn Borough President, John Cashmore, felt that the move by the Dodgers to Queens would be a stab in the back to Brooklyn. Robert Moses' wish for a publicly built stadium in Flushing Meadow was granted in 1962 when the National League returned to New York with the New York Mets.