One word can describe Yankee Stadium, historical. Since its opening, Yankee Stadium has been home to more Hall of Fame players and more than two dozen World Championship teams than any other stadium ever built. The New York Yankees, then known as the New York Highlanders (1903-1912), began playing at 16,000 seat Hilltop Park in 1903. The team played at Hilltop Park until after the 1912 season when their lease expired. They then accepted an invitation to play at Polo Grounds, where the New York Giants played. With the move to Polo Grounds, the Highlanders changed their name to the Yankees. The team spent ten years at Polo Grounds. With the Yankees’ Babe Ruth setting homerun records and the Yankees drawing more fans than the Giants, they evicted the Yankees after the 1922 season.

Immediately the Yankees began looking for land to build a new ballpark on. A ten acre site, less than a mile from Polo Grounds in the Bronx was bought to build the stadium on. Designed by Osborn Engineering, originally the plan was for a triple-decked stadium with grandstands circling the entire field. However, because the stadium seemed to foreboding the original plans were scaled back. Instead, the ballpark became the first to have three tiers of seating consisting of 58,000 seats. It was also the first ballpark to be called a stadium because of its enormous size. Construction of the stadium began on May 5, 1922. The stadium was built of mainly steel and concrete. The triple decked grandstand extended behind homeplate and up the base lines. The lower deck continued until it met the wooden bleachers behind the outfield fence. A 15-foot copper facade was erected to adorn the stadium's third deck that became one of its most recognized and grandest features. The scoreboard was located beyond the bleachers in right field. Given the name Yankee Stadium, it was completed in only 284 days, opening on April 18, 1923. Original dimensions at Yankee Stadium were 295 ft. (right), 490 ft. (center), and 281 ft. (left). Centerfield became known as "Death Valley" because of its distance from homeplate.