Metro

New Meadowlands stadium filled with view-obstructing beams

What a bunch of blockheads!

These are the worst seats in the new $1.7 billion Meadowlands football stadium — so bad the Giants and Jets scrapped selling tickets for them because the only action fans would see is paint peeling on the massive columns in front of them.

Each of the two end-zone mezzanine sections has four pillars supporting the upper deck — unsightly and archaic steel structures that experts say are routinely avoided in modern stadium design.

Behind each column are rows of seats where views of the gridiron are fully obscured — 59 seats in total. Some others have limited sightlines.

“The fact that there are columns in there and possibly obstructed-view seating is a joke,” said a Jet season-ticket holder and New Jersey resident who spotted the upright eyesores during a walk-through of the stadium last weekend.

The steel curtain affects sections 201, 202B, 203B, 249B and 250B in one end zone and 224B, 225B, 226, 227B and 228B in the other.

The kicker is that fans in those affected sections must pay for a personal seat license — a $4,000 one-time fee — and then shell out another $1,200 each season for tickets to eight regular-season and two preseason games.

Some of America’s pre-eminent stadium designers were shocked by the architectural oddities.

Famed New York architect Peter Eisenman, who designed the 63,400-seat Phoenix Cardinal stadium that opened in 2006, said his Arizona structure and the 80,000-seat Dallas Cowboy stadium, which debuted last season, don’t have columns.

“I’m surprised. I don’t know why the columns are there,” Eisenman said. “Those things are usually worked out when you’re working on big projects like that.

“They didn’t put [the columns] there because they wanted them there. I can tell you that.”

Eisenman, a lifelong Giant fan and season-ticket holder, speculated that costs might have factored into the decision to use steel supports instead of just cantilevering the stadium’s upper levels.

“They might have saved a lot of money in terms of the steel needed in the cantilevers,” he said. “They might have been under a lot of pressure to bring the cost down or under enormous time pressure.”

Theo David, a professor of architecture at Pratt Institute, agreed that such columns are usually employed to save money.

“There are technologies in place today that allow for huge, clear spans in these kinds of structures,” David said.

The Jets and Giants took a pass on commenting. But the stadium’s designer, George Heinlein, of Kansas City, Mo.-based 360 Architecture, defended the columns, saying they were necessary to create seating that surrounds the field on all levels and is stacked as closely as possible to the game action.

“The objective of ownership . . . was to create the most intimidating home-field advantage in football,” he said. “Columns are not needed in other stadiums, which do not have the capacity or the proximity of end-zone seating.”

He said the seats with obstructed views were never intended to be sold — but provided an odd explanation as to why they are there in the first place.

“The seats were installed during construction as a temporary solution to prevent a hazard and will be removed shortly with a permanent railing,” he said.

james.fanelli@nypost.com