3. Park Slope once served as the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers
Over the years, the city’s baseball stadiums have come and gone. One such stadium is a series of ballparks known collectively as Washington Park. Consisting of three separate stadiums in the Park Slope and Gowanus neighborhoods between Third Street and Fourth Avenue, Washington Park was the home base of the Brooklyn Dodgers between 1898 and 1912.
The first park was used from 1883 to 1891, containing what is now the Old Stone House. The park also served as the birthplace of ice baseball — a unique combination of ice skating and baseball featuring only five innings and 10 players. The first ice baseball game took place on February 4th, 1861 between the Atlantics and Charter Oaks, drawing around 12,000 spectators. Beginning in 1892, the Dodgers would split their time between the first park and a newer facility called Eastern Park. This lasted until 1898, when the team moved fully into the second park due to poor attendance. While at the second park, owner Charles Ebbets began developing Ebbets Field in Flatbush, which would become the Dodgers’ future stadium in 1913. Following its purchase by the Brooklyn Tip-Tops after the Dodgers’ relocation, Washington Park would be rebuilt with steel and concrete. The Tip-Tops were short-lived, disbanding one year later and leaving the park to be demolished in 1926. Today, the property is owned by Con Edison.
