The Heisman Trophy, which has been without an official home since the Downtown Athletic Club closed four years ago, will remain in Lower Manhattan as the centerpiece of the National Sports Museum being planned in a building on Broadway at Bowling Green.
The overseeing board of the Heisman Trophy Trust, which controls the trophy, entered into an agreement Tuesday with the National Sports Museum to house the trophy and create an exhibit using Heisman historical artifacts and memorabilia. Philip Schwalb, the chief executive and founder of the sports museum, said the museum hoped to become the site of the annual presentation of the Heisman Trophy, a nationally televised event in which the top college football player of the year is selected.
The 9,290m2 museum at 25 Broadway in the former Cunard Passenger Ship Line building is scheduled to be completed in November 2006. It is considered the first national museum to celebrate all sports under one roof.
"The Heisman deserves a permanent home," said Bill Dockery, president of the Heisman Trophy Trust. "We're had offers coming in from all over the country. But we're delighted that the trophy is staying in New York City and staying downtown where it was born, nurtured and grew to be the premier individual sports award in America."
The Heisman Trophy was first awarded in 1935 by the Downtown Athletic Club, which had erected a 35-story building at the southern tip of West Street and quickly became a mecca for Wall Street businessmen and sports enthusiasts.
In 1936, the trophy was named in honor of the club's late athletic director, John Heisman, a longtime college football coach. It has been given out every year since, recognizing some of the most notable athletes of the 20th century. The Downtown Athletic Club, only a few blocks from the World Trade Center, closed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Since then, the Heisman Trophy ceremony has taken place at other Manhattan locations, most recently at the New York Hilton in Midtown. The landmark Downtown Athletic Club building, no longer controlled by the club, is being converted into condominiums, Dockery said.
"It's exciting that the Heisman is coming home to help in the rebirth of Lower Manhattan," said Schwalb, whose sports museum will take shape with the help of US$52 million in Liberty redevelopment bonds. "From the back windows of the National Sports Museum you can see the old Downtown Athletic Club building. It's a historical touchstone, and I'm very enamored with the fact that you can see building to building."
The collection of former Heisman Trophy winners, many of whom attend the award's presentation annually, have been eager for the trophy to find a new home, even if they will reluctantly say goodbye to the Downtown Athletic Club's wood-paneled Heisman Room, where the trophy presentation was held for decades.
"We'll remember the Downtown Athletic Club as it was," John Cappelletti, the 1973 Heisman winner, said Tuesday. "There's nothing we can do about it now. More important than anything else is that the Heisman has found a place that hopefully will be its permanent home. I am glad it's going to a place of sports history. You don't want the Heisman on display in some hotel lobby."
Schwalb's concept for a national sports museum has been several years in the making. The design calls for a highly interactive site dedicated to the history, meaning and culture of sports.
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