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| The Best Seat On The House? |
So, imagine the owners of North Philly rowhouses who charged admission to enter their bathrooms and then climb a ladder to the roof to watch baseball.
The rooftop bleacher on 20th and Somerset streets across from Shibe Park (later renamed Connie Mack Stadium) provided a birds-eye view of the baseball diamond, thanks to a right field wall only 12-feet high. One could watch a Philadelphia Athletes game either from second floor windows or rooftops.
Soon after the stadium opened in 1909, home owners had invested in bleachers and were charging admission to sit on their roofs.
When the As were playing for a league championship or for World Series games, every ballpark seat was sold, so fans paid high prices for rooftop viewing.
Remember, there was no television.
Even some cops on the street sold tickets to the rooftop bleachers and were paid a commission. Kids sold bags of peanuts on the roofs. Women often sold hot dogs.
Movie news reel companies – Pathe, Universal and Fox Movietone – paid to place cameras and crews on the rooftops.
For a World Series game. an estimated 3,000 cheering fans were sitting across the street on the rooftops or peering out of second-story windows.
Was it legal? Well, there were visits from fire officials, License and Inspections inspectors, amusement tax collectors, but the rooftop seating was never shut down.
Finally, in 1934, the Shibe family and Connie Mack put an end to the neighbors' lucrative practice by simply building the right field fence high enough to block rooftop viewing.
Furious homeowners called it “the Spite Fence.” It was made of tin, and players called it “the Great Tin Monster.” Balls striking the fence took odd bounces.
The neighbors went to court claiming the Spite Fence blocked the sun and lowered the value of their houses. The Shibes hired a young lawyer, Richardson Dilworth. He won the case and was later elected district attorney and mayor.
So, in the land of free enterprise, homeowners can charge people to sit on their roofs and stadium owners can build high fences.