DescriptionI came to this project interested in the question, what can narratives about baseball stadiums reveal about the development of Newark, NJ spanning the twentieth century? From this question arose an exploration of narratives that offered insight into competing interests within the city, definitions of civicness, the employment of nostalgia as an argumentative strategy, and how urban development plans are constructed and sold to citizens. The primary focus of this history is centered on two baseball stadiums in Newark, NJ, Ruppert Stadium, built in 1926 and demolished in 1967 and Bears and Eagles Riverfront Stadium, completed in 1999, sold in 2016, and is now slated to be replaced with mixed use retail space and condominiums. The narratives fashioned to support both stadiums construction and maintenance are strikingly similar. For both stadiums, for over a century, Newark mayors, councilmen, successful businessmen, community organizers, newspaper columnists and reporters, and local citizens all craft, repurpose, and used these civic narratives to further their own varied agendas. It is through these crafted narratives about these stadiums that I explore the competing views of the city and the competing visions for its future.