Only a year after they changed Baseball forever with the purchase of Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox, the Yankees made another buy that would forever change the way the game was watched.

On February 6, 1921, the Yankees issued a press release to announce the purchase of 10 acres of property in the west Bronx. The land, purchased from the estate of William Waldorf Astor for $675,000, sat directly across the Harlem River from the Yankees' current Manhattan home, the Polo Grounds, which they shared unhappily with the landlord Giants of the National League since 1913.

The relationship between the Giants and their tenant crumbled after the 1920 season when Yankee attendance boosted by their new slugging sensation doubled to 1,289,422. That was over 100,000 more than the Giants, who, in 1921, notified the Yankees to vacate the Polo Grounds as soon as possible. With their departure from the Polo Grounds now inevitable, Yankee co-owners Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast l'Hommedieu Huston set out to build a spectacular ballpark of their own, Baseball's first triple-decked structure. With an advertised capacity of 70,000, it would also be the first to be labeled a "stadium."