Shea Stadium and Queens
Queens was an agricultural district until it became part of New York City in 1898. The opening of the Queensborough Bridge, the Long Island Railroad and the Hell Gate Bridge to the Bronx, all in the early 20th century, helped to connect Queens to the rest of New York City and its population began to increase dramatically. The population of Queens more than doubled between 1920 and 1930. Today, Queens is home to more than a quarter of the city's population.(1) 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.(2)
The National League Returns Mets
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1 Homberger, p. 123.
2 Thornley, pp. 117-8.