The Significance of Fenway ParkA Brief History of Fenway ParkShoehorned into a ten-acre lot within the urban fabric of Boston's Fenway neighborhood, Fenway Park is the country's oldest Major League baseball park still in operation. Seating a maximum of 33,871, it is also the smallest ballpark in Major League Baseball. Fenway Park is a national baseball landmark, a veritable Mecca for Red Sox fans and general baseball aficionados alike. Its tangible and intangible qualities have made it the nation's romantic ideal of the glory of America's "national pastime." Its significance is also known far beyond the realm of the game of baseball, however. It could be said that it is the most recognizable sports facility in the entire country by both name and appearance. Fenway Park was built in 1912, hosting its first Red Sox baseball game on April 20 of that year. Notably, it is the last park from the "Golden Age" of baseball parks (1909-15). Parks of this era were notable for their convenient urban locations, a desire to place seats as close to the playing field as possible, classical architectural detail, and larger (for their day) capacities. As with many of these parks, Fenway Park was inserted into an existing street pattern, resulting in an oddly shaped footprint and a unique field configuration. At Fenway, seats line the field, limiting the amount of foul territory and bringing spectators close to the game. Parks built later in the century expanded the foul territory and placed many fans farther from the field through the use of upper decks. Today, the average seat in Fenway Park is closer to the field than in any other Major League baseball park. This feel of intimacy is readily apparent to Fenway Park visitors and adds to its uniqueness. It is for this reason that Fenway has been referred to as "the best place in the world to watch a baseball game" Besides serving as the home field for the Red Sox, Fenway Park has served multiple uses since its construction. It has been home to several professional football teams (the Redskins (1933-1937); the Yanks (1944-1948); and the Patriots (1963-1968); assorted athletic teams for Boston University and Boston College; various community events and fairs; concerts and music festivals and political rallies. The true legacy of the ballpark rests with the history of the Boston Red Sox, however. Significant events at Fenway ParkFenway Park is the oldest existing site to have hosted the World Series. The Red Sox won the World Series in the park in its first year of existence, and three more times by 1918. A number of other significant events in baseball and Red Sox history have occurred at Fenway Park. Among the more notable are:
The significance of the park is also closely associated with the rich lineage of baseball players who played there as members of the Red Sox. This includes Hall of Famers Joe Cronin, Bobby Doerr, Carlton Fisk, Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove, Babe Ruth, Tris Speaker, Ted Williams, and Carl Yastrzemski, along with other modern baseball legends such as Roger Clemens, Jim Rice, and Luis Tiant. Fenway's PhysiqueThe physical structure of Fenway Park has evolved a great deal since its construction in 1912. A major renovation took place in 1933-34, replacing wooden grandstands in right, left, and center field with the present-day concrete and steel. These changes added over 15,000 seats to the park and slightly reduced the outfield distances. The park was also painted its familiar green color at this time. Later significant changes include the moving of the bullpens from fair territory to right field in 1940, addition of lights for night games in 1947, installation of an electronic scoreboard above the center field bleachers in 1976, and the construction of premium seating in a glassed enclosure behind home plate (known as the "600 Club") in 1988. One of the unusual aspects of Fenway Park is the degree to which it retains the "feel" of the original baseball park. The brickwork and fenestration of the exterior walls along Yawkey Way and Van Ness Street have been left largely untouched since the park's construction in 1912. Inside, most of the original 1912 superstructure and additions from 1934 remain today, and the alterations that have since occurred have had little impact on the visual appearance of the structure's exterior, and minor impact on the interior. The 37-foot-high left field wall, now referred to as the "Green Monster," is probably the most character-defining feature of the park. The Red Sox themselves describe it as "one of the most recognizable features in all of sport." The wall was the direct result of the site restraints presented by its urban location. Because of the presence of Lansdowne Street, the left field wall had to be located only 315 feet from home plate (other baseball parks have a left field distance of a minimum of 340 feet), and thus the wall was built higher to compensate for this short distance. The wall was constructed at the time of the 1934 renovations, replacing a ten foot-high embankment known historically as "Duffy¹s Cliff." The wall is undoubtedly one of the most character-defining features of Fenway Park. A hand-operated scoreboard was built as part of the wall, and it continues to be manned by hand to this day. No other Major League park offers such a scoreboard today. Fenway's MystiqueThe quirky angles, intimacy, layers of history from eighty-one consecutive frustrating seasons of Red Sox baseball, and the generational links among diehard Red Sox fans all combine into a site bursting with history, memory, and associated emotion that inspires baseball fans, Bostonians, and bookish writers alike. John Updike, George Will, and other esteemed literati have elevated Fenway's significance even further through their writings and musings on the engaging qualities of the park. For example, consider Updike's description: "Fenway Park is a little lyrical bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus like the inside of an old fashioned Easter Egg. It was built in 1912 and rebuilt in 1934 and offers, as do most Boston artifacts, a compromise between man's Euclidean determinations and nature's beguiling irregularities." Rarely does a simple structure give forth to such evocative prose. Fenway is UniqueFenway Park's significance is heightened further when considering recent trends in the baseball industry. Many baseball teams are looking to replace their symmetrical, Astroturf-covered, multipurpose "mega-stadiums" built in the 1960s and 1970s (such as Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium and Seattle's Kingdome) with "retro-style," single-use baseball parks that emulate the irregular field configuration and wall heights, urban setting, and overall intimacy of Fenway Park. In fact, Fenway was looked to as a model for the vanguards of these newer parks: Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore and Jacobs Field in Cleveland. As other "classic" baseball parks disappear, including Comiskey Park in Chicago and Tiger Stadium in Detroit, the opportunity to experience a Major League baseball game in an authentic traditional setting is quickly fading away. In 1986, the National Park Service¹s National Historic Landmark program undertook a nationwide thematic study of historic recreational resources. The study included baseball parks in its research, and determined that Fenway Park was one of the country¹s most significant examples. The National Park System Advisory Board subsequently recommended that Fenway Park be designated a National Historic Landmark. Due to owner objections, however, the designation never became official. Save Fenway Park! is currently preparing a nomination for a determination of eligibility for the National Register of Historic Places. This document was written by Save Fenway Park!, 5/25/01. |