Rooftop Seating Throughout History

With the Cubs/Mets LCS in full swing and the series coming to Wrigley Field, let's take a look at rooftop seating throughout history.

Boston's South End Grounds, built in 1894. On everyone's list of one of the most picturesque ballparks of all time. A somewhat slipshod fence was built to prevent the properties on the first base side outside the park from getting a good view into the park.

With the help of Tom Shieber of the Baseball Hall of Fame and their virtual reality tour of the ballpark, I created this image of South End Grounds with the rooftop seating clearly shown on the left.

West Side Park or West Side Grounds, home of the Chicago Cubs 1893 - 1915.

They even had their own inside the park version of rooftop seating, when they expanded the bleacher seating that was built in front of their centerfield clubhouse to include a section on top of the roof.

Here's my image showing locations of the rooftop seating.

Bennett Park, home of the Detroit Tigers from 1901 = 1911. The owner of the Tigers disliked these so much that he came up with a novel solution.

This is from Marc Okkonen's excellent "Baseball Memories 1900 - 1909". 

I can't recommend this book enough.

And here's my rendering, based on Marc's drawing in his book (with his permission).

Shibe Park, Philadelphia. Home of the A's. That is one solid street length set of non revenue enhancing bleachers! Ownership despised these freeloaders and set out to build a spite fence to thwart them. These photos are screen captures of a Modern Marvels video posted by SultanOfWhat on Baseball-Fever.com

 Take that!

Which brings us to today. With the construction of the large video boards and signage, Cubs ownership is being forced to buy the properties across the street whose view is blocked, after previously squeezing them for a cut of their revenue several years ago.

PetCo Park in San Diego created a built in version of rooftop seating with the inclusion of the Western Metal Supply Co. Building into the footprint of the park. What's not to like about this?

And now, with the Ballpark Village construction complete, St. Louis has gotten into the mix with this "officially a part of the ballpark" addition.

As always, check out my ballpark prints and posters at ThereUsedToBeABallpark.com

Announcing a New Line of Posters

There Used to be a Ballpark and Ballparks of Baseball. New 11 x 14 posters, each devoted to one ballpark. This way I'm not limited to the four ballparks per poster rule of my previous offerings. I've got  some renderings of some pretty obscure dead ball parks that ballpark nuts will surely appreciate!!
ThereUsedToBeaBallpark.com

There's more than 56 ballparks available as of right now, and I'll be working on some more dead ball parks coming up too. Take a look!!!!

West Side Grounds

Here's a great photo of the main entrance of the West Side Grounds. I'd love to see a better pic of the statues on the roof. The flags are celebrating their 1908 championship.

And here's a look at the unique dugouts they had there. The stands at one time stopped at the line of the dugouts, and when they extended them, they put fabric triangles up to keep the fans from interacting heavily with the players.

This photo shows the bleachers that were constructed over the center field clubhouse. Take note of the differing rake of the grandstand. Once it reaches the roof of the building, it becomes shallower. The championship flag has just been raised on the flagpole. These three photos are from the Chicago Daily News collection at the Library of Congress website.

And finally, here's a HUGE file of a panorama from the LOC's panorama photo collection. It's even larger on their website (a 128mb tiff!) That championship flag is out there waving proudly.

Google SketchUp

This is a rough shadow study of the West Side Grounds in Chicago. It's based on a 1917 Sanborn Map. The shadows start at about 9 or 10 in the morning and proceed from there. The date is set for September 26 so as to get some longer shadows.