Photo: Shea Stadium in the Round

I stumbled across a photo of a model of what would be Shea Stadium, except this version is completely round! The photo comes from a 1961 story in The New York Times reporting on the stadium’s approval.

Aside from the completed circle, there are two other things of note:

It is interesting that there is a football field rather than a baseball field in the model of Shea Stadium. The Mets did not exist yet in 1961, so maybe they weren’t sure that the city would really get a baseball team, so they went with the football motif.

Also, the design was so far along that those famous blue and orange panels are on the model.

UPDATE 1/22:

Here are some better images of the model, courtesy of StadiumPage.com: