This Day in Walter O’Malley History: November 23

Former Supreme Court Justice Hon. Edwin L. Garvin, Trustee of Froebel Academy in Brooklyn, announces the election of Walter O’Malley as President of the Board of Trustees of Froebel Academy. O’Malley is Vice President and co-owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers and attorney-at-law, while serving as a director of many corporations. He is General Chairman of the 1948 United Hospital Fund in Brooklyn and director of the Swedish Hospital. Froebel Academy was established in 1877 and is generally regarded as the first parent-teachers operated elementary school in the United States. O’Malley succeeds prominent Brooklyn attorney and former President of the Brooklyn Bar Association Conrad Saxe Keyes, who retired after 10 years of service.

While announcing that Walter Alston would return as Dodger manager for the 1955 season, Walter O’Malley also distributes information to the press regarding Brooklyn’s attendance figures, which had declined in the post World War II years. The Dodgers led the National League in “home attendance of 12,378,242 and road attendance of 14,508,779 for the nine-year post-war period.” Jack Hand, Associated Press, November 23, 1954

In his correspondence with E. Vincent Curtayne of the New York City Transit Authority, Walter O’Malley discusses a recent visit to Princeton University’s School of Architecture to view ideas for a Brooklyn Dodger dome stadium under the auspices of inventor and designer R. Buckminster Fuller. “Mr. T. William Kleinsasser Jr., a graduate architectural student at Princeton is making this project a design problem for his Master’s thesis. I was greatly impressed with the model that the students made and which I saw at Princeton. I am particularly pleased with the way Mr. Kleinsasser is approaching the problem. There is nothing official in the Princeton study or in Mr. Kleinsasser’s work on his thesis insofar as the Dodgers are concerned but it is nevertheless of great interest and might ultimately prove of substantial practical value. The Atlantic and Flatbush Avenue site that is the subject of the study is one of the most important subway intersections or junctions in the city and there are detailed maps that I am sure could be made available to Mr. Kleinsasser. I have offered to introduce him to you and I know that you will be good enough to read this letter and give him some time. There is other information which it will be helpful for him to have such as the subway running times from various important points to the Atlantic & Flatbush Avenue stops.”