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At the culmination of the 20th century, the American landscape had been transformed with an unprecedented speed; industrial and technological advances especially in transportation and communications had codified time and conquered physical distance. As centuries of drudging human and animal labor gave way to the age of the machine, a landscape unique to modernity had been created. Called the American Century, perhaps nowhere else but in the landscape of the American City can this parable of transformation be better illustrated.
As our nation of towns became a nation of cities and agrarian roots receded under the inexorable rise of urbanization, new populations of industrial and professional classes emerged that inevitably required popular amusements and distracting spectacles. Characteristic of this period the settings, buildings and infrastructure to house mass spectator games rapidly evolved. The landscape of many American cities is currently witnessing a sixth generation of developments in the design and building of stadiums that big league teams call their home.
Today's stadiums have reached new pinnacles of technological sophistication and user friendly luxury that would have been undreamed of in the 20th century's first decades. And it was the sports themselves, the teams that made them great and the fans that followed them that supplied the impetus for the unceasing refinements involved in the pursuit of finding "the perfect place to see the game".
Ancient Stadia
In the West it was the Greeks who built the first permanent architectural structures and spaces to support mass viewing of sporting events. In their lionization of physical prowess in games, they most fully realized a ritualized response to centuries of martial culture and were first in establishing a time-honored tradition of turning athletes into idols.
Architectural responses to this ancient fascination with games acted as a venue that at once inspired and unified the urban population of Athens. Thus was codified in the hellenized world a direct connection between the utility of encouraging mass spectator games which at once allowed a collective outlet and enjoyment of vicarious participation in "the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat".
These stadiums, built by hallowing out a slope and constructing rows of seats in a traditional u-shape, semi-circular at one end while open at the other, were designed primarily for events of track and field, and provided a length of 600 feet for the playing surface. The most famous of these begun in 331 BC and was the Stadium of Athens which was designed to accommodate 50,000 spectators. Its location beneath the famed acropolis placed it in direct proximity to the pedestrian populace of the city-state.
In a parallel development, the design of the theater, a circular arch built around a central orchestra, were developed to encourage public participation in religious and civic rights and drama. The Hippodrome, similar but for length of field to the stadium, was built for horse and chariot races. The Greeks transplanted these architectural forms in the many colonies of their empire thus popularizing their love of games throughout the Mediterranean and near eastern world.
The political and cultural ascendancy of the Romans demonstrated a distinctly different take on the forms of popular sports while maintaining some architectural continuity with Greek forms. The Hippodrome "the speedway of its time" is the direct antecedent to the Roman circus, the most famous of which was the Circus Maximus of Rome, which continued to be used as popular venues for horse and chariot competitions.
In contrast the development of the amphitheater is a uniquely Roman architectural contribution, as were the sports developed to be seen in them. Foremost in this class is the Coliseum of Rome. Ordered built by the Flavian Emperor Vespasian in 72 AD, a system of interlinking arches were utilized to provide structural support for the vertically inclined rows of seating that accommodated 50,000. Designed with an oval shaped game surface of wood upon which sand, or in Latin Arena, was distributed and accompanied by subterranean support spaces for gladiators and animal. The Roman engineers were true innovators in design, while also learning by default some serious lessons in drainage and related infrastructure issues.
The end user was intentionally awed by the scale of the edifice with the exterior concourse arches lined with imposing statuary of Gods and Emperors, while the interior seating configurations and the type of games themselves left no one in the audience guessing as to their relative social position. Entering via ticketing, another roman marketing innovation, spectators walked through corridors of vaulted arcades, constructed of concrete, brick and stone. The seating configuration with the Emperor and entourage closest to the action, acted as a symbolic microcosm for the strata of Roman society. Behind the royals were the "courtside" oligarchy, above and behind them the enslaved and foreign born, and farthest from the action in the upper concourse was the spectator space provided for women. Combine this with the violent character of Roman sports such as man to man, and man to beast gladiatorial battles, among other popular "amusements" thus was created true spectacle which allowed the state to solidify symbolical social controls, by at once fascinating and horrifying the masses.
With the ban of pagan games in 391 AD and a general decline of the Roman world in response to internal political collapse and external barbarian threat, the day of the permanent installation for mass spectator sport would take a hiatus of a millennium and a half. Thus the descent into the localism of the European Middle Ages put a stop to these forms of public games and the architecture designed to support them. When reinvented at the close of the 19th century, the Olympic Games were merely a symbolic recreation that borrowed form a legendary and seemingly golden past. Thus the existence of similarities between modern and ancient stadia exist between in approaches to engineering and functional solutions to intended usage and size, rather than to a continuity of tradition. The stadiums we know today are particularly modern in that they've been adapted to the needs of sporting games that have only been codified since the mid-nineteenth century.
The American Experience
Inheriting a myriad of cultural traditions from the British Isles, the adolescent United States though the scene of much cricket playing, well into the mid-nineteenth century, evolved as a recreational sport that cut across class lines but its blatantly British origins. Eventually gave way to a nationalistic patriotism that contributed to its popular demise. Another British sport introduced to American life via the form of a child's game was of batting and base running, called Rounders. At mid century, after the baseball's codification by the New York Knickerbockers in 1845, it was generally understood and acknowledged that America's game had so originated. It wasn't until the turn of the 20th century that a virulent strain of "Americanism" led to the creation of commonly held myths about the peculiarly American origins of their pastime.
Mid-nineteenth century America had already witnessed the transformative changes called forth by the industrial revolution. Cities especially after the Civil War became the central hearth of American culture. As centers of commerce, trade and manufacturing, swelling urban areas also became chief sentinels in the production of media and as symbols of progress and change. The newly developed populations of industrial workers and of burgeoning managerial and professional classes gave rise to a type of personal wealth made possible only in a cash based society. This rise of relative affluence of more and more members of the population, coupled with newfound discretionary income to be expended upon recreation and leisure, greatly contributed to the conditions prerequisite to give rise to popular sport. With contributions made by the New York gentlemen who helped nurture the establishment and codify the form of the game, baseball's earliest popularizers were those who saw in it untapped commercial potential. This push towards commercializing sports as entertainment formed the basis of the eventual professionalization of the game, while also encouraging the spreading its form to towns and hamlets throughout the nation.
Thus it was the enclosing of the field and the building of early wooden grandstands and bleacher pavilions that created the architectural nucleus of the ballparks known today. In regard to baseball, as we shall see, the buildings and spaces surrounding the sport have changed far more than the very traditional game played in them.
Basic problems inherent in the earliest ballparks were their susceptibility to fire and structural weaknesses that made them dangerous. In Cincinnati, Ohio the reformed Cincinnati Reds began to play at the site of a former brickyard at Western and Findley Avenue in 1884. This first incarnation of a ballpark at the site, later occupied by Crosley Field, was known as League Park. The history of the site provides an interesting case study in the evolution of ballpark design. Originally the grandstand and pavilions of League Park were found at the corners of Western and Findley, where the positioning of the diamond in the southeast corner of the parcel placed batters at the mercy of the afternoon sun. A fire in 1893 led to the correction of this problem, when the original diamond was replaced by a new grandstand in the southwest position of the field, until yet another fire in 1900 caused a temporary return of the diamond to its original position.
Many new ideals and ambitions had been fostered regarding design of buildings and landscapes in American cities. The 1893 Columbian Exposition at the Chicago World's Fair and the ensuing arisal of the City Beautiful Movement broadly impacted the style and design conditions of American cities. By the time home plate was again located into position in the fields southwest, the simple wooden ballpark had been replaced by a Palace of the Fans. Fireproof and structurally sound the steel and concrete of Cincinnati's newest ballpark was also the scene of a new aesthetic approach to architectural finish. In a high style usually reserved for public buildings, the opening of the Palace signaled the dawn of a new era for fans and players alike. Aside from its contributions of specialized spaces such as prominent scalloped shaped box seats, the building succeeding in elevating the prestige of the game and pastime.
In time the seating limitations of the Palace of the Fans took its toll on park revenues and when it was replaced in 1912, the motifs of high styled sophistication were supplanted by strictly utilitarian approaches. The new park known as Redland Field, later renamed Crosley Field, would along with the other great ballparks of its era stand the test of time until urban decay and the intrusion of the automobile spelled its demise in 1970.
Utilizing bridge trusses to support an upper deck, and with right field bleachers known as the sun deck where home plate used to be, the basic form of this ballpark was set. The landscape idiosyncrasies that created an asymmetrical and in its case terraced outfield were determined by the footprint laid out by neighboring streets. Until, like others of its generation, the old park was replaced by the multi-purpose Riverfront Stadium, it stood as a cultural gathering spot in the landscape of Cincinnati made more meaningful in the sentiments of Reds fans than any other single place.
In this period other cities built what have come to be known as classic ballparks. Philadelphia's Shibe Park, Boston's Fenway Park, Washington D.C.'s Griffith Stadium share a common architectural heritage with Brooklyn Ebbet's Field, Detroit's Tiger Stadium and New York's Polo Ground. These parks built between 1909 and 1915 came into being in the years before WWI; an age when people took the trolley to the ballpark and general social optimism held sway.
In the period after the war, and before the stock market crash of 1929, only Yankee Stadium "the house that Ruth built" was constructed for Major League Baseball. Other trends in stadiums were those designed for a resurgent interest in Olympic sports and the venues erected to support a college version of a little known professional sport called football.
Three cultural currents of that era came together to ignite a new movement of athleticism that would itself reach back into the past, while envisioning new occasions for the benefit of sporting culture, which called into being a new generation of stadia. The late nineteenth century fascination with archeological discoveries in Greece, including that of the site of the ancient Olympic games, contributed greatly to its revival. In France's Baron Piere De Coubertin, the passion for amateur athleticism became a rallying point from which he spread the ideal that physical exercise amounted to creating a noble and chivalrous character. These factors, combined with the bruised national pride of the French, defeated by the Prussians in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, and with a general continental push towards national consolidation among most of Europe's ethnic peoples, maps were redrawn and fresh identities created.
Thus by 1896 De Coubertin and his fledging International Olympic Committee had accomplished the formation of the first international games. Held in Athens, and coinciding with the 75th anniversary of Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire, the event found support in Greece's Crown Prince and was greatly financed by private contributions, including the capital required to rebuild Athen's Stadium. These games were a great success, attended by 60,000 spectators and with 200 athletes from 14 nations competing in nine events of track and field. In an enduring contribution to modern sports culture, a long distance race of 26 miles from Athens to the field of Marathon, the ancient Olympic home, has revived as a sport what was once a military exercise, and when a Greek runner took this prize, he immediately became a national hero.
Thus a vitalized and universal sense of nationalism, a profound and popular interest in architecture and art of the classical period, and a highly vaulted ideal of amateur athleticism contributed to a new international impetus that stimulated the building of stadiums equipped to house mass audiences. Though the following early games struggled for recognition, and resided in the shadow of World's Fairs not even the calamitous events of World War I could extinguish the Olympic torch.
Though American athletes had competed from the first games at Athens, and took home gold medals, the movement itself wouldn't come to the U.S. until 1932. Originally conceived as a method of popular diplomacy and as an example of multi-cultural cooperation, the games proceeded in the mid 1930s despite growing international tensions surrounding renewed threats of militarism and aggression.
The Great Depression was in full bloom by 1932, and this general financial downturn had put a serious dent in stadium construction as a rule throughout the country. But hard times also call for entertaining diversions, some much-needed spectacle to distract away from a period of general social malaise. The refurbing of the Los Angeles Coliseum, built in 1924, and simultaneously of Cleveland's Municipal Stadium, a would be competitor for the games, had been constructed in a traditional form that hearkened back to Athenian examples. Designed to house 100,000 spectators, who came to Los Angeles in over flowing numbers, those privileged to be there witnessed the drama of over 1,400 athletes from 37 nations compete in an expanded venue of competition. Innovations from these games included such lasting contributions as the introduction of the three level podium. But its most lasting impact, besides providing momentary respite in the doldrums of the depression, is that Los Angeles was left with an enduring landmark that provided housing for U.S.C. football. In a response reflective of prevailing attitudes of the era, college football and its politically powerful allies were able to bar the Los Angeles Rams from the venue until after WWII. In the (1958-1961) seasons the L.A. Dodgers played baseball there and acutely demonstrated that the track and field layout was miserably suited to accommodate the diamond.
Soldier Field with its architectural _expression based on an muted if monumental classical revival style was originally built as a potential Olympic venue, years before it housed the Bears, who played in Wrigley Field until 1970. Soldier Field owned and operated but the city of Chicago has long served the diverse needs of the windy city. Indeed designed with multi-use intentions like Cleveland's Municipal Stadium and the L.A. Coliseum it has hosted events such as boxing matches, Rock and Roll concerts and religious convocations.
These facilities built during the relative prosperity of the mid 1920s and initially conceived for track and field have demonstrated great longevity. Soldier Field now home to the Chicago Bears, and the Los Angeles Coliseum which has been revisited for possible use by NFL franchise hopefuls, is now a venerable landmark, and despite sharp critics who argue about its future utility, it is the only facility in the world that has hosted two Olympiads, two Super Bowls and a World Series.
College Ball
The oval shape of Notre Dame Stadium resembling in many ways, Yale Bowl, became the stage through which college football, bolstered by other public universities of the Middle West became a sport that drew national attention. The stadium partially blueprinted by famed coach, Knute Rockne, and made famous by his teams of the 1920s, coincided with the rise of radio broadcasting and growing national print distribution of sporting news, to planting the seeds that later contributed to the rise of what was then derogatorily known, as a post-graduate game.
The University of Illinois' Memorial Stadium was built in an open-ended horseshoe configuration flanked by stands located between the goal posts, and as such it is essentially linked in form to the style reintroduced by Olympic venues. Sharing a heritage with other notable college stadiums such as UPenn's Franklin Field, these stadiums created the third contributing factor that provide the historical architectural basis of the venues that have since been built to house the pro-game.
Memorial Stadium however was far from the University of Illinois' greatest contribution to the game. Upon the stadium's official dedication day in 1924, spectators witnessed what is still considered the greatest performance ever staged by an individual football player. Soon known as the Galloping Ghost, Red Grange accounted for six touchdowns in the game. In the game's first twelve minutes, Grange ran for 265 yards and scored 4 touchdowns. In the days and weeks that followed an electrified nation registered the feat. In an era of smash mouth, low scoring football where every yard became a contest, Grange single handedly elevated the status of the game.
After his final college game, Grange signed on with George Halas' Chicago Bears for a whirlwind road trip that drew attendance upwards of fifty thousand spectators per event, a feat that is credited with saving the then financially insolvent New York Giants. Criticized by many religious figures because of its being played on Sundays and considered sort of side show sport compared to baseball, it wouldn't be until the decades following WWII that football came into its own. With sightlines all wrong for the rectilinear sport, NFL games and championships were played in the hallowed confines of Wrigley Field, Griffith Stadium and the Polo Grounds as well as upon the fields of Olympic venues.
With a dearth in stadium construction caused by the economic disaster following 1929, through the recovery of the 1930s and the diversions of resources during WWII, it wasn't until the 1950s that stadiums began to be built with pro-football in mind. The post war return of human and economic resources combined to create the climate in which the sport of football was popularly reassessed.
With innovative new coaching furthered by George Halas and Cleveland's Paul Brown, the game began to take on its primary forms as recognized today. With the development of the passing game and with explosive star players such as running back Jim Brown and legendary quarterbacks like Norm Van Brocklin, Otto Graham and Johnny Unitas, the game experienced its golden decade. Ironically football teams continued to play as secondary tenants in venues designed for baseball. With the exception of Green Bay's Lambeau Field, an anomaly in the general pattern of the era, which lacked major league baseball franchise, it would be more than a decade before most football teams found markets responsive to tailoring facilities specific to their sport.
But it wasn't the venues that inspired the game so much as it was the introduction into the sporting arena of television. Television as a medium had come of age by the late 1950s and it was television's galvanizing power, following a dynamic decade led by Lombardi’s Packers, that football began to eclipse the venerated game of baseball. It wasn't television alone and its delivery of new audiences that created football's preeminence; in an adverse trend early television broadcasts of baseball took a knick out of that game's gate receipts, but it was another modern invention that also impacted the game and the culture. The rise of the automobile and the subsequent post war build up of suburbia put a serious crimp in the viability of streetcar ballparks like Ebbets Field, which though considered a near shrine in Brooklyn, had by the end of the decade become untenable to its owners. As the primacy of the need for parking an ever more apparent infrastructural consideration, Walter O'Malley tempted by the lure of the untapped markets of southern California, took the Dodgers from their ancestral home. In time other teams would follow this lead as dreams of new facilities and responses to new demands created dislocations within other primary franchises. And with the advent of Dodger Stadium in L.A., San Francisco's Candlestick Park, and suburban Shea Stadium for the Mets, it spelled the end of baseball's greatest decades. Though "the house that Ruth built" has stood the test of time housing everything from heavyweight boxing matches to the Pope's sermon on the mound, waiting in the wings were two new trends that put previous notions of sports facilities on their head.
Age of Domes
In concurrent developments, reappraisal of the revenue generating value of football and in devising new methods of funding mass sport facilities the mid 1960s saw the construction of a giant experiment, Texas style. Hailed as the Eighth Wonder of the World, Houston's millionaire entrepreneur Judge Roy Hofhienz spearheaded the construction of the Harris County Domed Stadium later named for its premier team, the Astrodome. Conceived as an architectural and engineering response to Houston's annoyingly Texas sized mosquitoes, who plagued fans under nightlights, the Astrodome will always hold its place in history, not only as the first of its kind but as a structural experiment that yielded by necessity, solutions to problems unique to its environment. Originally designed and built with extensive outlays of glass panel roof emplacements, the overall visual impact proved a bit to dazzling to some of the properties most important users. The Houston sunlight created a serious drawback for the dome, when it came streaming in. A glare was created that caused outfielders to lose sight of the ball and concerned parties soon realized something had to be done. Painting out the glass was a relatively easy, if costly answer to the dilemma, but how to field a team without the ability to grow grass demanded some high tech solutions. Astro Turf, a surfacing developed to solve this problem brought its own set of drawbacks. Though originally hailed as a brilliant step forward and adopted by many facilities that followed, it has long been controversial. From a financial and maintenance viewpoint, the new synthetic turf was highly valued, but players complained that it compounded injuries and contributed to general physical strain. Some critics went so far as to point out that the artificial turf also changed the very games it was designed to enable, by lessening many player's willingness to slide in for a catch, the synthetic nature of the substance also alienated some traditionalists who believed the game should be played as it had been conceived, on a field of grass.
The skybox, another design idea that came as an afterthought, eventually revolutionized the way stadiums were built and permanently altered the way they were funded. With leftover spaces in the upper decks, Hofhienz created these private places for elite audiences, where in club like boxes with amenities such as food and beverage service, select groups could experience the games in an untrammeled atmosphere. Becoming wildly popular, these boxes acted as a model for an important innovation in the future of sporting venues.
Built as a home for the Astro's and the Oilers, the leviathan in Houston's southern outskirts became a beacon for later multi-purpose domes that drew from its successes but perhaps more from its mistakes. The decade after its completion in 1965 was witnessed the greatest period in the completion of domes, built upon the same basic premise. The Pontiac Silverdome, the only dome constructed specifically for football and the gargantuan Louisiana Superdome were both completed in 1975 and were followed a year later by the Seattle Kingdome. Though years in development and considered state-of-the-art upon completion, the revenue generating promise of these multi-purpose facilities soon found that bigger isn't always better. Construction overruns and a higher than projected cost of maintenance coupled with a spectator perception of being diminished by their enormous scale spelled trouble for the future of such ventures. New innovation such as further developments in dome roofing systems, including air supported structures and newly developed opaque membranes, such as that provided for the Indianapolis Hoosier Dome, now RCA Dome, facilitated a decreased sensation of interiority while in addition to housing football, provided cover for a host of multi-purpose uses such as the hosting of the 1984 NBA all American team vs. the U.S. Olympic squad.
The next logical step in the development of domed stadiums was conceived for Toronto, where inclement weather posed serious limitations to year round sport, a team of architects and engineers with an army of workers created the world's first retractable roofed facility. Designed to rotate along steel tracks, the Dome roof has 4 movable parts operated by 54 separate motorized mechanisms called bogies. Ironically its first scheduled public opening occurred during a rainstorm, but the marvel of the engineering wonder and the city's expectations were so high that no amount of rain could quell their enthusiasm. The Toronto Sky Dome also built with an attached hotel and shopping mall became a popular and renowned addition to its metropolis and became the site of the first truly international World Series when the Blue Jays took back-to-back pennants in 1992 and 1993.
Multi-purpose Era
Running concurrently with the advent of the dome was the design and realization of the multi-purpose stadium. Designed to accommodate both baseball and football in the 1960s and 1970s, the landscapes of cities on both coasts and points in between were dramatically changed. The new multi-purpose stadiums, seemingly generic in their overall sameness, originally excited their contemporary audiences with their stark modernity. However in replacing many beloved older ballparks, these facilities despite their many benefits, aroused fan critics, who came to regard them alienating and as spaces which lacked intimacy. Teams as well as fans also came to realize that in the attempt to accommodate the two sports, both in the end were compromised. These innovations of the 1960s and 1970s have proven over time to be failures, and have been as rapidly replaced as they were built. With their capital tenants choosing not to renew the 25 and 30-year leases attached to them. In the current age of big money sports, the lifetime of stadiums have exponentially decreased. But one architectural experiment in the midst of the multi-purpose stadium wave has stood the test of time.
The Arrowhead Stadium Counter Trend
In the midst of the rush to build multi-purpose stadiums and domed facilities in cities throughout the nation, there was one example of a team, a city and designers who took the opposite fork in the road. This design counter trend would, unlike the cookie cutter stadium, stand the test of time and eventually act as a beacon light for cities in the following decades who sought to find their way back to providing structural solutions that tailored themselves to a single sport - specific environment.
For the Kansas City Chiefs this journey towards their field of dreams was symbolic of the transitions encountered by most major leaguers during this period of great change. As the former Dallas Texans, the AFL brainchild of the visionary entrepreneur Lamar Hunt, the Chiefs initially played their schedules in Kansas City's Municipal Ballpark. Former home of the renowned Negro League Monarchs and home to controversial Charles Findley's Kansas City Athletics, the Chiefs faced a situation that had been taken in stride by generations of pro-footballers. Playing the gridiron game in an infrastructure designed for the diamond was never anything but a necessary compromise for the sport. Kansas City's Municipal Stadium was already, by the mid 1960s, facing criticism and reevaluations. Its antiquated infrastructure and what seemed at the time to be a less than desirable location were among a plethora of reasons that the stadium seemed on its last legs. It just wasn't designed with infrastructure convertibility necessitated by the popular rise of spectator sports. Charles Findley for one made this message clear when he threatened and eventually did pull stakes for the gold fields of California.
Kansas City was at a crossroads, and its civic, business, and sports leadership plus the general public clamored for solutions. With a promise for a new franchise by Major League Baseball in response to the adverse PR calamity created by the controversial Findley, the city embarked on a bold new plan. A dual complex with facilities designed specifically to accommodate each sport, with shared parking infrastructure.
Aside from being the first dual sport complex in an era overwhelmingly bent on single venue multi-purpose solutions, Arrowhead was also the first football stadium designed specifically for the burgeoning enterprise, in a major big league market. The phenomenon of fielding a team in antiquated municipal vs. the broadly modern and updated Arrowhead was like a journey into a strange new world that seemed like the dawn of a new era in when opened in 1973. Thirty years later, despite some lingering critiques regarding the suburban site selection, Arrowhead is a season ticket sell out venue that continues to be one of the NFL's most popular destinations.
Its popularity among the NFL and with fans helped propel its example of design excellence throughout the world of football. Following its lead other football stadiums were built for franchises in Buffalo, Dallas, The Meadowlands in New Jersey, and Miami. The completion there of Joe Robbie Stadium in 1987 brought with it innovations that, like sky boxes of the Astrodome, created an addition to the architectural vocabulary of sports stadiums that has influence all succeeding facilities of its scale. For Joe Robbie wanted a stand out stadium for his dynasty of perennial contenders, and with luxury suite revenues in mind he and his designers innovated the introduction of the club seat level. Using this mezzanine level seating opportunity as a revenue generating device, he was able to pull together financing through advance seat sales that became a lynch pin of his financing plan. This intermediate level of luxury seating bolstered by club lounges and seat side food service have become a popular and permanent feature that will continue to leave its mark far into the foreseeable future.
The Retro Park
By the late 1980s the glamour of the multi-purpose facilities had begun to fade, and no amount of paint or finish retouch could repair the breach. Just as the oil crisis took its toll on the full sized car, the wisdom of demolishing historic cityscapes to make room for futuristic and utilitarian experiments had begun to cease. The early accolades bestowed on the utility of suburban sites and upon the automobile reliant culture that sustained them had eventually aroused many doubts. And just as the baby boomers rediscovered the antiques, their parents had discarded, some American cities began to rethink policies in regard to urban planning. By the late 1980s historic preservation concerns like environmental ones had ceased to be thought of as the exclusive domain of political fringe elements and historic society antiquarians. Sometimes it takes middle-sized cities and minor league clubs to take the leap of faith associated with experimental ventures, to lead the way. These forces came together in Buffalo, New York, and when Pilot Field opened in 1987 the impact registered in the minds of planners and developers from the big markets and among the many organizations within the majors.
For Pilot Field exhibited many of the general elements that would later be expanded to inform a new generation of ballparks. Sensitivity to historic preservation districts, the evermore apparent need to refocus development in disintegrating urban cores; and in developing up-to-date responses to enhancing amenities for fans and players, a benchmark was established.
By the time Baltimore's Oriole Park at Camden Yards came on line for the 1992 season, it was heralded far and wide that a new era had dawned in baseball. With its now famous warehouse, Camden Yards was the first major league ballpark in decades that drew its inspiration and design impulses by getting in touch with the built environment and cultural heartbeat of a city, and for many baseball purists and preservationists alike the feeling of relief was widespread. Finally a city, an owner and an architect had taken a step back, and had in one fell swoop started a trend that would restore the lingering national broken heart about the loss of the soul of the game. Following in the award winning footsteps of Camden Yards, other cities began to bring ballparks back downtown, sparking revitalizing impacts in both city morale and in business development.
Denver's Coors Field, built on a site reclaimed from a defunct rail yard, provided the impetus that launched a turn around in its LoDo. What had formerly been a post industrial warehouse area has become a vibrant restaurant, entertainment and residential district. The then newly formed franchise Rockies benefited from sound planning and good design sensibilities that reinvented a pattern for that city more reminiscent of the old parks of the east than the suburban models provided by the west.
The urban planning ramifications had also been fully recognized, as Baltimore again took the lead in planning an urban version of the dual sport complex. In response, this trend has been taken up cities such as Cincinnati and Pittsburgh that demonstrate the wisdom of bringing people back to their historic cores, while also signaling a symbolic retreat from the precipice of suburban sprawl.
The many design and engineering lessons that arose from the era of stadium building since the 1970s have demonstrated a permanent foothold in shaping the American cityscape. From 1999 until the year 2005, the United States will witness the completion of yet another generation of state-of-the-art facilities. It’s no coincidence that the majority of them have found their footprints in proximity to their respective urban cores. All of them have to various degrees borrowed the success of their architectural predecessors while trying to learn from past failures. Of this current generation of football stadiums and baseball parks, several are introducing new approaches to retractable roof systems for while baseball has carved out the relative sanctity of its playing field, the football stadiums all seek to maximize potential revenues from year round events that add income necessary to compliment its relatively short playing season. From luxury suites, clubs and club seats, to improved concourse concessions and an enlarged palette of new recreational events demonstrate changes in the way Americans are approaching their recreational choices.
With a few of the oldest college bowls as exceptions, only Cubs Park at Wrigley Field will survive from the 20th century's first great stadium building period. The transformative impact of television and mass media form of the second half of the 20th century changed sports culture by lifting the popularity of football, while nostalgic and poetic nuances of baseball's siren song keep our traditional pastime alive and well. And while it’s the games themselves, the individual heroes, and the teams playing in fluid cohesion that has kept us inspired and praying for our favorites, the buildings and spaces that house them, have also found a niche in the American consciousness. .
The Futurist Projects
Today's audiences like the sports they follow and the facilities that house them have become increasingly complex and demanding. Over the course of the 20th century expectations of luxury and convenience in sports spaces had to keep pace with the peculiarly American quest for superlative comfort. From the simple rain deflecting canopies of early grandstands to luxury suites with attendant club lounges these changing adaptations in design couldn't be more profound or far reaching.
For its not just elite audiences, but every fan/spectator that desires maximum enjoyment per dollar expended. Everyone knows hot dogs cost more at the game, but they taste better somehow, beverages are colder and team jerseys more comfortable. For stadiums have become a collective home away from home, answering expectations for better access, sightline advantages, exciting food and merchandising opportunities; in essence furnishing spectacle to a loyal army of repeat patrons that are enticed to spend freely while inside the gates. Tomorrow's stadiums will be constructed with one thing in mind, integrated technological systems that allow for maximum future adaptability.
This open architecture design concept incorporates an intentional flexibility that will allow for future additions of high tech functional subsystems. From the sophisticated nature of synthetic turf to palletized grass to the elaborate drainage systems that now pull water away from the game surface, there is no end to high tech innovations in today's stadium industries.
The analysts of future projections in sports envision fault tolerant, multi-media communications systems supported by fiber optic backbones. With these systems virtual connections will be established to connect the playing field to remote coaching, stadium management and security, and to broad network interfaces that enable rapid information distribution.
This upgrade in automatic information transfer coupled with audio, video and projection screen installations will enhance the graphics and video displays of group viewing, while contributing in an overwhelming way to bringing each spectator closer to the action. These smart stadiums in conjunction with Intelligent Transportation Systems will increase the efficiency of getting masses of people into and out of facilities. E ticketing and entry will increase the efficiency of horizontal crowd movement while lowering revenue losses associated with inefficient fee collection. This isn't to mention the further ramification in the growth of advertising opportunities and broadcasting ventures with pay-per-view, Internet interaction and virtual reality apparatus...
The potential is limitless and only one fact seems certain, facility developers and operators in the future will spend more on micro processing software than upon nuts and bolts hardware. And in the world that today's children are dreaming of, we may see innovative strides in the future of sports culture, which change with a few broad strokes the very canvas we know today.
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