Forest Hills Stadium Loses Bid to Be a Landmark

Joshua Bright for The New York Times The derelict former United States Open stadium at the West Side Tennis Club last May.

Its courts were the site of the United States Open tennis championship for 62 years and they hosted the Beatles, Frank Sinatra and the Rolling Stones. But time may be finally running out for the now crumbling West Side Tennis Stadium in Forest Hills Gardens, Queens, one of the world’s most famous tennis arenas.
The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission notified supporters this week that it had decided not to grant landmark status to the dilapidated 50,000-seat stadium where, among other historic accomplishments, Arthur Ashe in 1968 won the Open, becoming the first black man to win a Grand Slam tournament.
The supporters were hoping that the designation would encourage the stadium’s restoration — now they say they worry that without that protection it could be sold for redevelopment or, worse, razed to the ground.
“It is part of the history of tennis and all the greats played there,” said Tony Trabert, 80, the president of the International Tennis Hall of Fame who himself first played at Forest Hills in 1948, at the age of 18, and later won titles there in 1953 and 1955. “I am sad. I have very fond memories of playing at the stadium and from a sentimental point of view I would hate to see it demolished and have a bunch of condos there.”
But city officials said sentimentality had to be weighed against the economic costs of preserving a place whose wooden seats were rotting and whose interior court was unfit for play.
Elisabeth de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for the preservation commission, said the stadium’s disrepair made it an unlikely landmark — for now. “After several visits to the stadium and months of careful study, our staff found that while the stadium does have some architectural, historic and cultural significance, the very architectural features that could render it a landmark are so compromised — with crumbling concrete and water damage — that it can’t be designated a landmark at this time.”
The stadium — which occupies about 2.4 acres within the West Side Tennis Club, a private center in one of the city’s most exclusive enclaves — has already come perilously close to a stark makeover.
In September, members of the club narrowly rejected plans to sell the stadium for about $9 million to a developer, Cord Meyer, which sought to build condominiums and a pool. The plans called for incorporating the stadium’s distinctive arches into the development, but that was little comfort for many nostalgic tennis fans disturbed at the thought of suburbanites watching television or doing dishes over the once-hallowed courts.
The prospect of a sale had prompted furious jockeying by some members to find a benefactor willing to finance the stadium’s restoration. It also fostered a bitter divide between those who say the stadium should rest as it is and others who say it is a white elephant and should be sold to bring in much-needed cash for the tennis club.
Kenneth J. Parker, the club’s president, declined to comment on the decision not to make the stadium an official landmark. But he insisted that the club was financially secure and said it was reviewing its options about the stadium’s future. “We are considering any proposals that come to us,” he said.
Mr. Trabert said one of his most memorable moments at the club was seeing the look on the face of the former Wimbledon champion Dick Savitt when Renée Richards — the former Dr. Richard Raskind — greeted the towering Mr. Savitt with a kiss on the cheek during a game she was attending as a spectator. In 1976, Ms. Richards was famously denied admission to the United States Open tennis tournament in Forest Hills after refusing to take a chromosome test for all women entrants.
From 1915 through 1977, the Open championships were held at the West Side Tennis Club. But by the late 1970s the tournament had become enormously popular and the stadium became too small to handle the crowds. The Open was moved to Flushing Meadows in 1978, which some say heralded the beginning the stadium’s gradual decline.