Architect Breaks Down Iconic Baseball Stadiums | Architectural Digest

hi i'm michael weitzner and i've been an architect for 35 years and today we're going to look at the architectural evolution of baseball stadiums here in north america so baseball has been around since like the 1840s in fact soldiers played it during the civil war but major league baseball didn't start until 1869 with the first professional team the cincinnati red stockings and in that era the stadiums were built out of wood but one of the most notable wooden ball parks was actually built in 1902 and that was the palace of the fans in cincinnati so what jumps out at me immediately is the symmetry they employ putting this pediment sitting on these columns almost like a little greek temple directly behind home plate then the wings of the stadium extend out they have what appear to be like opera boxes which you can see here are in a serrated sort of pattern supported on brackets and these are sort of a precursor of today's luxury boxes that you find in stadiums all over the country and then extending just beyond those boxes are the columns that support the grandstand and stadiums of this type and of this time always had columns supporting them and if you had to sit behind the column your view was impeded but typically those seats were cheaper and so these columns support this extended capital which supports the entablature which runs all around and that in tablature is supporting the upper grandstand and the upper grandstand has a very similar quality in that it's supported on brackets which by itself becomes a kind of ornament and then there's these very small columns holding up the roof and they have a very simple sort of bracing like you would find on any farm structure so even though it appears somewhat grand it's actually not at all it's actually a really small scale this stadium only held about 6 000 people so this is a precursor to what stadiums are going to become where instead of just being this utilitarian grandstand that just holds people to watch a game they actually try and become pieces of architecture next up shy park in philadelphia so here's what jumps out at me about shot park it's built inside the city grid so it's part of the city you can see all these row houses that are surrounding it those are all places where people lived and the row houses almost become an extension of the seating because people would stand on the roofs to watch the game very similar to what people do in wrigley field in chicago the other thing about being built into the city grid is that because it's this huge open expanse it becomes almost like this grand plaza or a park hence the name ballpark and the other thing that stands out is it's got this very classical french renaissance facade i mean it's a real building it's no longer just a ballpark it has a manshard roof staying with the french idea with these stormers sticking out of it let's get a closer look at the facade it's made out of brick the lowest floor is a more rusticated arrangement of brick closer to the earth a little rougher and then it gets more refined as it goes up these columns support this beautiful entablature with the dentals all along the edge that runs itself into the rotunda at the corner that rotunda has this wonderful dome where you could see the ribs of the dome are expressed in these double columns so from this angle you would never know that there was a ball field beyond here it just appears to be like any other office building at the beginning of the 20th century in philadelphia so this is really the beginning of the jewel box era of baseball stadiums in america and what i think they meant by jewel box is two things one i think they meant these buildings are very ornamented and very decorated but the other thing i think they mean is the small scale of them almost like a jewel box they fit within the city so while all these ballparks were being built there was another half of baseball being played out and that was the negro leagues and the negro leagues existed because people of color were excluded from the major leagues this wasn't always the case up until the 1880s there were black ball teams and integrated ball teams that played in the major leagues they encountered and endured discrimination but they were still part of major league baseball but in the 1880s they were no longer permitted to and it wasn't until 60 years later that this was remedied with the coming of jackie robinson so starting in the 1880s there was a flourishing other baseball league the negro leagues and they hosted some of the greatest players to ever play the game josh gibson satchel paige cool papa belle and the gregarious buck o'neil who was a great rack on tour with the kansas city monarchs today finally negro league baseball is recognized by the baseball hall of fame and a lot of these players have been inducted posthumously as well as their records are now recognized as part of major league baseball and a prime example of a negro league's baseball stadium is rickwood field in birmingham alabama built in 1910 it's the oldest extant professional baseball stadium in the united states so the thing i really like about rickwood field is that it's of its climate it's in the south where it's hot and humid and the building is reminiscent of a spanish-style building made of stucco and a red tile roof stucco is ideal for a warm weather climate because there's not a lot of freeze thaw so the stucco doesn't crack it just feels like a building it's not necessarily a stadium yet so the other great thing about this stadium is that a 16 year old willie mays who grew up nearby played in the 1948 negro league world series for the black barons that's how great a ball player he was so the thing about a baseball field is there's very little that is prescribed other than the distance between the bases and the distance from home plate to the pitcher's mound everything beyond the infield is basically malleable a baseball field is called a diamond for a reason because it's basically a square turned at a 45 degree angle the distance between these bases is 90 feet and this is first base second base third base and here's home plate and the other distance that's prescribed is the distance to the pitcher's mound which is essentially in the middle and that's 60 feet six inches to the center of the circle and when you turn that you get a baseball diamond beyond those bases back then the outfield could be whatever dimension it needs to be to fit into the city grid and also note that home plate is actually shaped like a house so of course this malleability leads to some very funky shaped ballparks the polo grounds in new york hinch lift stadium in patterson new jersey league park in cleveland and of course fenway park in boston so here's an overhead shot of fenway park and of course parts of the boston grid are not orthogonal and lansdowne street slices off left field and that's why you get the great green monster that wall that separates the stadium from lansdowne street but the rest of the grid allows it to have very deep grandstands surrounding it this stadium was built in 1912 and at the time they fitted into where they could fit it in now let's talk about one of the great iconic stadiums in baseball and that's yankee stadium in new york so yankee stadium was built in 1923 it was built on a 10-acre site that was formerly a lumber yard and it was built with a short right-field fence to suit the batting style of the famous babe ruth yankee stadium is sort of the first that no longer looks like a regular old office building in the city all of a sudden it's starting to look like a stadium like its own building type it was much bigger than all the previous stadiums it held like 58 000 people in 1923 which was enormous and the whole scale of it is bigger now it's almost reminiscent of the coliseum in rome with these big arched openings between these very prominent vertical columns but it's stripped down they don't have any capitals in fact the whole thing is sort of this stripped down classicism and it's made completely of limestone which is basically the yankees flexing their muscle even back then to show that they were the richest team in baseball and that they could build a stadium while out of limestone and it's got this great big entrance gate which is very reminiscent of like a triumphal arch and the other thing it has which is very distinctive it has this big plaza out in front so it's part of the city grid at 161st street and river avenue but at the same time it's a big enough piece of property that they were able to set the stadium back and create this sort of plaza for people to mill about before and after the game it's no longer looks like just a regular old office building in the city that's concealing this big beautiful field now when you approach yankee stadium you know what goes on inside its walls next up cleveland municipal stadium so the thing about cleveland municipal stadium that makes it unique it's the first stadium built not inside the city grid so it's the 1930s now and they've moved just outside the city it's still next to the city but it's just sort of touching it and what they were able to do is it's no longer formed by the city grid they can not only make it out of a perfect shape like they wanted but they could also build it to whatever size they wanted and in here they went a little crazy with the scale and they actually built it too big so now this stadium holds 78 000 people and they had to bring in the outfield fence because nobody was able to hit a home run in the original stadium and the other thing that is interesting about cleveland municipal stadium is the word municipal and it gets that name because it's the first stadium built that included public money previously the owners of the stadiums all paid for their own building but this is the first time where the taxpayers also contributed okay so let's take a look at the building it's sitting without any context other than the city beyond it's got this regular pattern of large-scale windows surrounding it and unrelieved and it's got these little triangular pieces which i assume hold the ramps and the stairways for people to get out and the other thing is it still has columns you could see on the upper deck here part of it is cantilevered but most of the upper deck is beyond the columns and fans still have to contend with that blocking their view so let's look at another stadium that sits even further outside the city limits candlestick park in san francisco so now stadiums are their own typology they're their own distinctive kind of building and they have very distinctive sorts of architectural gestures that express this you can see it's got this pretty cool triangular truss with all these diagonals that go around it's got this really distinctive roof where the ribs are exposed that grow out of those triangular trusses and it's got these big grandstands they're all now cantilevered there's no more columns essential light poles that are also part of the architecture of the stadium because most games now are starting to transition into night games san francisco's candlestick park is a setting for an historic sports event so it's 1960 it's post-world war ii the economy in america is humming along cars have now replaced the railroad as the main means of transportation not only are the stadiums being built outside the city limits but a lot of people have moved outside the city limits and so these stadiums are built in a sea of parking in just a sea of asphalt which is terrible for the environment for one and secondly there's no urban life around these stadiums anymore so there's no corner bar there's no cafe there's no pizza place to go to before or after the game and in a sense the game itself becomes the only event it's now cut itself off from the life of the city so this concrete and steel structure which is very reminiscent of italian rationalism something that italian engineer and architect nervy would have done it's also sort of a foreshadowing of the real brutalist stadiums to come that are all made out of concrete veterans field in philadelphia three river stadium in pittsburgh and riverfront stadium in cincinnati to name just a fear now let's look at a totally different kind of stadium type and that's the astrodome in houston so the thing about the astrodome is it's built in 1965. nasa and the space program are huge in america at that time houston wanted to capitalize on that so they changed the game completely by creating and building the first indoor baseball stadium they created this enormous dome that spans about 462 feet which is huge and they create an indoor room to watch baseball in it is air conditioned so it's always 72 degrees inside and because it's inside they can't grow grass so they invent the synthetic grass which they call astroturf so the astrodome was actually inspired by the palisetto dello sport in rome which was designed by the great pierre luigi nervy for the 1960 olympics this building might have been inspired by nervy but it has very little of sort of his grace and inventiveness this concrete armature that surrounds this perfect circle of a stadium actually has the tapered beams so that the lintels above these entrances almost become triangular at the top which is very reminiscent of something yamasaki who is the designer of the world trade center would have done baseball stadiums essentially starting with yankee stadium were all about looking forward and doing the next new thing let's jump forward now and take a look at a stadium that starts to look back and that's oriole park at camden yards in baltimore so now it's 1992 and it's almost 30 years since the astrodome has been built up to this point stadiums starting with municipal stadium in cleveland in 1932 had been moving away from the city and now this is an attempt to return the stadium back to the city and it's the first and the best of what becomes known as the retro era of ballparks let's take a look at the stadium and let me tell you what jumps out of me so the first thing is this warehouse that runs along the back and that is an old railroad warehouse because the tracks used to run by here originally the architects were going to knock that down but the efforts of janet marie smith the project manager for the whole thing for the orioles insisted actually that they keep it so that becomes a backdrop to the stadium and so now the city becomes a backdrop to the stadium and the ballpark now has sort of returned to the city where before it had left so it has this very prominent stone base closest to the earth it has these brick arches which are interrupted by this water line which ties the whole thing together it has these clock towers which are concealing the exit stairs and then it has this very utilitarian steel structure that sits atop the brick structure which is also sort of reminiscent of the very early stadiums that were built somewhat in the jewel box era and so they deliberately kept the scale down it only holds 45 000 people in which case it doesn't have to be super tall and it really acts like a good neighbor in the city this is a great example of the retro era of stadiums but it inspired a lot of bad examples and let's take a look at one of them right now and that's citi field in new york like camden yards citi field has this brick base and then they have this sort of utilitarian steel structure atop for the grandstand and the light towers but it lacks this small scale of camden yards and it's not part of the city grid and its design is based on a stadium that was very connected to the city and that's abbott's field which was in brooklyn ebbisfield was built on an old garbage dump called pig town just east of prospect park this is the place where jackie robinson broke the color barrier by being brought up to the dodgers in 1947 one of the great milestones in baseball history ebitsfield is very much a product of the city grid it's surrounded by sullivan street and bedford avenue it's built in that era when the stadiums were still just buildings that surrounded a big baseball field and because of that it's got ornamentation and scale and refinement that a nice brick building of that era would have so built in 1913 it's got these beautiful big windows but those windows are divided into much smaller millions breaking down the scale it has these lovely column capitals these corinthian capitals that sit atop the pile asters that are all made out of brick it has these large double hung windows on the level above that which is very reminiscent of a domestic scale it's got the brick spandrel over here with these indentations and then the capitals again from which the arches spring and then within those arches it again has these small scale refined windows so everything about it is beautifully scaled city building that belongs in the neighborhood and then city field takes that and they do this sort of enormous watered-down version of it and they blow it up in scale and you could see compare the size of a person here to the size of a person here and you get an indication of how much bigger city field is and when they make it that much bigger they don't give it any of the sort of small scale details that ebbets field had so now let's look at a stadium that brings baseball back to the city but does it in a different way and that's lone depot park in miami florida where the marlins play so the thing i love about this stadium in miami it's its own thing and it's not trying to be what it isn't in fact the first thing that jumps out at me are these huge columns that support the tracks that are there solely for the retractable roof when it pulls back the other thing that i love about this the ramps are outdoor they're not covered it's miami they don't need to cover them they express the shape and the function of the ramps and then it has this huge window along the back that can slide open so even when the roof is closed the stadium could still be part of the city but as you can see this stadium is part of the city grid there were streets running by here there were streets running by here there's a park out in front and it's a real amenity for the city it's not built in a sea of parking out in the suburbs so the other really nice part about this retractable roof is that when it's pulled open and it's sitting on these huge tree-like columns is that it actually forms a covered porch for the entire stadium which is also just a very nice sort of transition space before you get into the big stadium so the first retractable stadium to be built was the rogers center in toronto which was built for the blue jays there it was necessitated by the extreme cold but in miami it was built for the opposite reason the extreme weather is in the middle of the summer in the heat and the hurricane season so in miami it's like a logical conclusion from all the elements we've looked at they've taken the best of stadium design and they've tried to incorporate it into the city they have everything there they have indoor and outdoor they have a park right outside of it for the public they've accommodated parking with parking structures taking advantage of the verticality of the city they've returned the stadium and the game to the city grid itself so these are some of the most interesting architectural details i noticed in the evolution of north american ballparks let me know what other kind of buildings i should analyze next in the comments below

Channel: Architectural Digest

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Keywords: arch digest, architectural digest, baseball ballpark details, baseball stadium, baseball stadium details, baseball stadium history, baseball stadiums, best ballparks, best baseball stadiums, best sports stadiums, best stadiums, citi field, history of baseball, history of baseball stadiums, mlb ballparks, negro league ballparks, orioles camden yards, red sox fenway park, stadium architecture, stadium secrets, top ballparks, yankee stadium

Id: 3OkSW5qV7jQ

Length: 18min 53sec (1133 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 23 2022