Reese Kaplan -- Baseball Stadium Architecture History Lesson

Winston Churchill is known for many things he said in his lifetime, but seldom would anyone associate the man with the game of baseball.  

Yet one of his most famous quotes immediately sprang to mind when I viewed today's video as it brings to the forefront the differences between how various architects treated the same premise -- how to convert a needed space for playing the game of baseball while taking into account the vagaries of the chosen space, the number and position of seats given to the paying customers who buy tickets, and the budget allowed by the team owners to transform design into reality.  

What Churchill famously uttered was, "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Thirty five year veteran architect Michael Wyetzner of Michielli & Wyetzner Architects took time from his busy schedule to analyze what worked and didn't work in the design of baseball stadiums around the USA.  

His video is a historical look at how the needs and styles evolved over time from ones you associate with the very beginning of professional baseball playing fields up through the cookie cutter styles in the 1970s through 1990s, and how it once again renewed interested in making ballparks look distinctive once again while retaining some of the economic benefits of the seemingly fast food approach to stadium architecture.  

Baseball as a game began in the 1840s but the first professional games started 29 years later with the Cincinnati Red Stockings who employed 10 salaried ballplayers.  Stadium construction at the time was done with wood, something not seen in today's modern era.  

Ironically it took until 1902 until a noteworthy example of wooden architecture evolved to house this team and it was called The Palace of the Fans.  It used symmetry which had not been an element seen before.  It also included "opera boxes" which were the precursor to today's luxury boxes and then Greek style architecture columns to support the regular grandstands.  

Seats behind the columns were obstructed and teams were forced to offer them at a reduced price.  This stadium held about 6000 people.  Together they formed the winged symmetry which is now so familiar in ballpark construction.

Shibe Park, by contrast, was offered up as a truly urban piece of architecture that had to exist within the city grid of Philadelphia.  The row houses surrounding it made them an extended viewing option where people could see into the stadium by peering from the roofs of their dwellings (which also happened in later environments in Chicago).  

The French architectural influence was pronounced with the roof lines and French Renaissance facade which made it look like a genuine and permanent part of the environment.  Unlike the wooden efforts of the past, Shibe Park employed brick for construction, as well as introducing domes, dormers and other elements never before seen.  

A very different approach was taken by the Negro Leagues which grew up in isolated parallel to the Major Leagues.  As an example, Wyetzner chose Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama to showcase what was done for a playing environment when the owners pockets were not quite as deep and the playing was done for much lower ticket prices.  

Built in 1910, it uses a Spanish style with stucco being introduced along with a curved red tile roof as well as the now ever present sponsor advertising all over the interior to help fund the operations of the team.  Timing wise, it housed a 16 year old Willie Mays playing for the 1948 Negro World Series.  

From here the video goes on to define the malleability of outfields and non-infield dimensions as required by city environments where they are built such as Lansdowne Street in Boston forcing the Green Monster to evolve in Fenway Park as well as some other architectural oddities that grew given urban architectural constraints.

He then goes on to discuss the 1923 construction of Yankee Stadium, also known of course as The House That Ruth Built.  It was constructed with the short right field fence to match up to the hitting style of the Bambino, a lefty slugger.  It no longer resembled a downtown office building but instead gave off the now accepted appearance of a ballpark.  It was also enormous in its dimension, seating an unheard of 58,000 people.  

He even draws a comparison to the Coliseum in Rome with the stylistic elements being somewhat similar.  It was made completely of limestone, a very expensive construction material, which reinforced the Yankees announcing to the baseball world that they were the richest team anywhere.  They also were the first to create a plaza in front of the stadium to allow people to gather before and after the game near the main entrance.  

Cleveland Municipal Stadium worked just outside the city grid and they developed a shape and size more reminiscent of what would happen in the future long past its 1930 construction.  It was so big, in fact, that they had to bring in temporary outfield walls because no one could hit it out of there.  It is significant in that it was the first ever stadium financed not exclusively by the owner of the ballclub, but it included public money from the taxpayers.  

The next in-depth look was San Francisco's Candlestick Park which contributed many design elements.  Columns were no longer an obtrusive part of the grandstands.  Light poles were positioned outside the playing area to allow night games to take place without blocking fans' views of the diamond.  

The construction matched the pattern of people moving outside the city centers and required massively large parking lots to house the fans and their vehicles.  There is no longer a corner bar within walking distance to the ballpark's entrance.  It opened up some negative but necessary design elements.  

The first truly different stadium to be built for this game was 1965's construction of the Astrodome in Houston.  Obviously the roof enabled games to be played regardless of the weather outside, but it also meant the necessity of fake grass being deployed as the roof kept necessary sunlight from allowing natural grass to grow.  It was unique for sure, but it was glaringly ugly and the whole Astroturf introduction changed the way the game was played for many years.

Camden Yards in Baltimore was the first stadium to express an architectural debt to the past while also housing a team on its way to the modern era of baseball.  It was an attempt to make the playing field a part of the city environment once again with walking distance access to restaurants and bars adjacent to where the professional games would be played.  

It employed brick as a construction and visual element to make the stadium appear both old and new at the same time.  They originally wanted to knock down the old railroad warehouse behind the stadium, but the Project Manager Janet Marie Smith insisted it be kept intact and now it is as much a part of the looks of the environment as the stadium itself.  It helped make Camden Yards a part of the city of Baltimore which was something missing from the off-the-grid environment seen elsewhere.  

Now during this retro era many good and bad examples exist.  Wyetzner cites Citifield as a glaring example of what can go wrong in design.  You see a lot of similarity to Camden Yards with the brick and steel elements.  However, the Ebbets Field influence can be seen but it is not a part of a central city environment out in Queens were it resides.  Its scale is gargantuan compared to Camden Yards and Ebbets Field.  Sorry, Mets fans...

A positive element in bringing together the city environment with the needs of the baseball team is Loandepot Park in Miami supporting the Marlins.  It incorporates the closing roof like the Astrodome once did, but it retains the feel of being entrenched in Miami with a big open window onto the urban environment.  The fan ramps are outdoors without being hidden inside the construction of the ballpark itself.  

There are streets running by both sides of the stadium with a park also being incorporated into the playing field environment.  The opened roof over tree-like supports forms a covered porch.  It was just a well done integration of playing baseball and respecting the city environment.  

If you have 19 minutes of time, watch the whole video which covers how stadium architecture has evolved in both good and bad ways over the past 100 plus years.  It's very well done and while you may or may not agree with all of the conclusions, it is a viewpoint many of us never considered with this level of detail from the standpoint of a professional architect.  Hats off to Michael Wyetzner for taking the time to put this together.