Last Years
In March 1971, Louis Graboyes and S. Solis Tollin agreed in principal to buy the Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium property from Jerry Wolman, who had purchased it in 1964 for $757,500 and was no longer able to meet the mortgage on it. The sale, however, was not completed and some sources say that Wolman, who sold the Eagles to Leonard Tose in 1969, eventually sold the ballpark to the city of Philadelphia for the token price of 50 cents.
On August 20, 1971, the Connie Mack statue was re-dedicated at Veterans Stadium. That same day, while an evangelical revival group was setting up its tent, two stepbrothers, aged nine and twelve, sneaked into the park and started a small fire that grew into a five-alarmer, burning through much of the original upper deck, collapsing the roof and leaving twisted steel supports visible from the streets; ironically, the collapse of the overbloated roof restored much of the balanced grandeur of the original design. The park remained that way for four years, slowly deteriorating and becoming increasingly hazardous. Squatters took up revolving residence, and trash and debris accumulated; small trees took root and the manicured emerald turf became unruly knee-high stalks. In October 1975, Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Ned Hirsh ordered the stadium razed. The corner tower and its domed cupola, Connie Mack's original office, whose design had been compared to a church, was the last segment of the ballpark demolished, on July 13, 1976.
In 1991, Deliverance Evangelistic Church, an independent Pentecostal congregation, constructed a church building on the site.
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Famous quotes containing the word years:
“When any man expresses doubt to me as to the use that I or any other woman might make of the ballot if we had it, my answer is, What is that to you? If you have for years defrauded me of my rightful inheritance, and then, as a stroke of policy, of from late conviction, concluded to restore to me my own domain, must I ask you whether I may make of it a garden of flowers, or a field of wheat, or a pasture for kine?”
—Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826–1898)
“It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;Mit is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)