Shea Stadium | Mets chairman | New York City | Fred Wilpon

In the Mets' case, no one would dare propose copying the unintentionally kitschy design of Shea Stadium - a bland 1960s  bowl. So planners, perhaps influenced by the Brooklyn roots of Mets chairman Fred Wilpon, looked instead to the Brooklyn Dodgers' Ebbets Field, which was torn down in 1960, three years after the beloved Dodgers broke the borough's heart by departing for Los Angeles. The new park will not be an exact replica of the stadium where Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, and the other boys of summer brought Brooklyn its only world championship in 1955, but its facade and its rotunda intentionally pay homage to Ebbets Field. The exterior of the new park will be made of brick, limestone, granite, and cast stone, and the brick will be the same color and texture as the brick that was used on the outside of Ebbets Field. Architects hope its interior design will also capture the intimacy of the original. Fans will be closer to the field than they are at Shea Stadium, and a higher proportion of the seats will be in the lowest level.

When Shea Stadium opened in 1964, its placement in a little-known part of Queens was a perfect reflection of the way American residential patterns were changing. It was placed near the convergence of several highways and bridges so that fans from the suburbs and from other boroughs could easily drive to the stadium and park in the gigantic lot encircling it. When Yankee Stadium opened in 1923, the majority of fans arrived on foot or via subway trains, but by 1964, most came to ball games by car, making Shea's location extremely practical - it was easy for motorists from Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey to get to games.
But a ballpark surrounded by a parking lot does not generate much romance or much interaction with its neighbors. Planners hope they can change this dynamic. Like the Yankees in the Bronx, the Mets hope to contribute to - and capitalize on - a general surge of improvements in Queens. Laird, the assistant planning commissioner for New York City's parks, says the new ballpark will be less isolated than Shea Stadium in two important ways.