Almost two years after announcing the relocation of Hoy Field, the day has arrived. Earlier this week, construction crews began removing the turf surface from the field. This development comes amidst the baseball season, with the men’s baseball team switching locations from Hoy Field to the new Booth Field as its season comes to an end.
Hoy Field’s imminent demise was long in the making. In 2005, Cornell commissioned a report to determine the future of the university’s development. Released in 2008, the “Master Plan” is an exhaustive list of Cornell’s priorities for which buildings to keep, which to ax, and which areas need wholesale redevelopment. The planners selected Hoy Field as a target, stating: “To fully realize new development, Hoy Field, the Grumman Squash Courts, and the Hoy Field surface parking lot must be removed and relocated.”
Of the targets on the administration’s redevelopment plan, only the Grumman Squash Courts still remain. The Master Plan is quite a bombastic document throughout, for only two bullet points down, it cavalierly requests the demolition of Rhodes Hall “when its useful life is exhausted … to restore the vista to the south.” Elsewhere, the plan calls for wholesale redevelopment of areas core to the university, such as the removal of the Cornell Store and subsequent reconfiguration of Ho Plaza.
But for now, the administration has fixed its sights on the baseball field. Hoy Field—named for David “Day” Hoy ‘81 (the same Davy as “Give My Regards to Davy”)—has been demolished after exactly 101 years of operation. Dedicated on April 22, 1922 “with great fanfare: a ‘parade… as well as a band concert,’” this mainstay of Cornell’s campus received no such acclaim on the way out. Hoy, then Cornell’s registrar, was a staunch supporter of Cornell’s baseball program and effectuated years-long plans to construct a modern facility for the Big Red.
Since its construction, Hoy Field has seen baseball greats and even U.S. Presidents play America’s game. In 1923, Lou Gehrig hit a home run that would have flown over the present-day roof of Rhodes Hall. During President George H.W. Bush’s term with the Yale baseball team, he likely played on Hoy Field several times.
Now, the voluminous history of the field has been rolled up and shipped beyond East Hill Plaza. The new home of Cornell Baseball, Booth Field, is located further afield than the Vet School and Oxley Equestrian Center. At a 40 minute walk from the previous site, it is not an overstatement to say that baseball has been shipped to Siberia. Baseball is not Cornell’s pastime. As noted in media coverage around the announcement of Hoy Field’s execution, attendance at games hovers around 100 people. However, what little attendance these games did garner will certainly collapse given the difficulty of traveling so far from campus.
Despite initial reports that the name “Hoy” would survive the 1.5 mile relocation, Cornell solicited a donation from Rich Booth ‘82 to construct the new facilities. With the beginning of deconstruction this week, Davy Hoy’s name has effectively been stripped from campus, apart from Hoy Road.
Cornell’s initial announcement of Hoy Field’s demolition detailed a plan to convert the area into “low-maintenance grass fields and landscaping until plans are drawn up and approved for new academic buildings on the site.” Last May, Cornell unveiled its intent to construct a clone of Upson Hall on the ground where Hoy Field once stood. To be clear, Cornell intended to destroy Hoy Field and replace it with nothing more than a grassy knoll, with only the eventual promise of building something new.
This is not the first time Cornell has attempted to replace the central campus stadium with an academic building. In 1948, New York state drew up plans to construct a new building for the ILR school that “enroach[ed] somewhat” on Hoy Field. The outrage was deafening. “The Association of Class Secretaries and fifty-three undergraduate organizations made formal protests,” as recounted by Morris Bishop in A History of Cornell. The administration relented, allowing Hoy Field to remain intact, and later constructing Ives Hall to house ILR.
This time, no such clamor erupted. Cornell is pushing ahead with its $76 million project to create a “unified complex” for the new Bowers college of Computing and Information Science on the ground where dozens of generations of Cornellians once played and spectated America’s game.
This is the second major CIS project in ten years; not even a decade ago, Gates Hall was erected to serve the needs of the growing computer science community at Cornell. Since then, the CIS program has seen a “sixfold” explosion, with 2,000 students now majoring in a CIS discipline. 76% of all Cornell undergraduates take at least one class in the new Bowers CIS college, so despite the recent investment, the college requires more space. For this reason, the Cornell administration condemned Hoy Field to death.
The construction crews have already padlocked the Hoy Field parking lot, erected fences around the baseball green, and removed the overwhelming majority of Hoy Field’s turf. With the men’s baseball team officially relocated to its new home on Ellis Hollow Road and the money for the new Bowers building allocated, it’s time to give our regards to Davy Hoy Field.
This article originally appeared in the Cornell Review Spring 2023 print edition.
