- Hi, I'm Michael Wyetzner
and I've been an architect for 35 years
and today we're gonna 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 ballparks
was actually built in 1902.
And that was the Palace of the Fans in Cincinnati.
So what jumps out at me immediately
is this 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 entablature 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, Shibe Park in Philadelphia.
So here's what jumps out at me about Shibe 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 mansard roof, staying with the French idea,
with these dormers 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 can 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 Bell,
and the gregarious Buck O'Neill,
who was a great raconteur 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 ballplayer 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,
cause it's basically a square turned at a 45 degree angle.
And 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,
Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson, 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 grandstand surrounding it.
The stadium was built in 1912,
and at the time they fit it 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 formally 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 Colosseum 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 all 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,
is 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 could not only make it out of a perfect shape
like they wanted,
but they could also build it to whatever size they wanted.
And 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 can see in the upper deck here
part of it is cantilever,
but most of the upper deck is beyond the columns
and fans still had 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,
cause most games now are starting to transition
into night games.
- [Reporter] San Francisco's Candlestick Park
is a setting for an historic sports -
- 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
Nervi would've 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 Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh,
and Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, to name just a few.
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 this synthetic grass
which they call AstroTurf.
So the Astrodome was actually inspired
by the Palazetto Dello Sport in Rome,
which was designed by the great Pier Luigi Nervi
for the 1960 Olympics.
This building might have been inspired by Nervi,
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.
Well, let's take a look at the stadium
and let me tell you what jumps out at me.
So the first thing
is this warehouse that runs along the back
and that is an old railroad warehouse,
cause the tracks used to run by here.
Originally, the architects were gonna 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 waterline,
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 the 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 Ebbets Field, which was in Brooklyn.
Ebbets Field 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.
Ebbets Field 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 mullions,
breaking down the scale.
It has these lovely column capitals,
these Corinthian capitals that sit atop the pilasters,
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 Citi Field takes that
and they do this sort of enormous
watered down version of it
and they blow it up in scale.
And you can see, compare the size of a person here
to the size of a person here,
and you get an indication of how much bigger Citi 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 Loandepot 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 can still be part of the city.
But as you can see, this stadium's part of the city grid.
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 treelike columns
it's 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 Bluejays.
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.