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Elysian Fields Quarterly, Spring, 1992
By Bob Warrington
Informally known by various names including Philadelphia Base Ball Park and the Huntingdon Street Grounds, National League Park—as it was officially called—was the home ballpark of the Philadelphia Phillies between 1887 and mid-1938. It gradually came to be known as Baker Bowl after William F. Baker, owner of the Phillies between 1913 and 1930. Baker Bowl was located on a square block in North Philadelphia. The right field line ran parallel to Huntingdon Street; right field to center field parallel to Broad Street; center field to left field parallel to Lehigh Avenue; and the left field line parallel to 15th Street.
There were actually two Phillies ballparks at this location. The first existed from 1887-1894. It was built at a cost of $101,000 and had a seating capacity of 12,500. There were 5,000 seats in a pavilion behind home plate and 7,500 seats in grandstands that extended down the left and right field lines. This original ballpark was the first to offer pavilion seating for customers and the first with outside walls built entirely of brick instead of wood.
Virtually the entire ballpark burned to the ground on August 6, 1894. Fans were seated in temporary stands for home games during the rest of the 1894 season. Only part of the exterior outfield wall remained and was incorporated into the newly constructed stadium.
The second ballpark was built between 1894-95 and was dedicated on May 2, 1895. It seated 18,800 and is judged by historians as the “first modern ballpark” built for baseball. The expanded stadium was the first one constructed with a cantilever design—at the time a radically new architectural technique in stadium construction. Using cantilevered concrete supports eliminated many of the support columns in the pavilion that had made for so much “obstructed view seating” in the original ballpark and other existing stadiums. Use of the cantilever design, according to one baseball historian, was “ a defining moment for the future of ballparks.”
In addition, Baker Bowl was the first ballpark to be constructed primarily of steel and brick. The double-decked grandstand was built of steel, brick and concrete to prevent future fires. The ballpark featured outer brick walls on all four sides, three wide steel stairways between decks, and a series of fifteen 30-foot heavy iron girders supporting the platforms and roof of the upper deck. The latter was made possible by the use of the cantilever system.
Built on an oddly shaped parcel of land, Baker Bowl had unusual dimensions. From home plate to the bleachers down the left field line was a healthy 341 feet, to dead center field a respectable 408 feet. However, many a ball was rocketed off the right field wall because it was only 280 feet from home plate down the right field line, a neighborly 310-320 feet in the right center field power ally. Because of the cozy right field wall—60 feet high with a 20-foot screen on top—Baker Bowl was often described as a “cigar box” and “band box.”
Noteworthy Events & Achievements
Unfortunately for the Phillies, their record for the years they played at Baker Bowl was primarily one of failure. While a fairly competitive team at the turn of the century and the early part of the 20th century, the Phillies finished higher than 5th place only once between 1918 and 1938 (a 4th place finish in 1932), and the club usually could be found in the National League’s cellar during that period.
THEORY AND BALLPARK DESIGN IN BASEBALL'S GILDED AGE
Gilbert Chesterton, in a brief essay on the practicality of theory, noted that a defense of theoretical thinking exposes one to the cheap charge of fiddling while Rome is burning....There has arisen in our time a most singular fancy: the fancy that when things go wrong we need a practical man. It would be far truer to say that when things go very wrong we need an unpractical man. Certainly, at least, we need a theorist....It is wrong to fiddle while Rome burns; but it is quite right to study the theory of hydraulics while Rome is burning.
"Rome, burning" has been the state of the baseball stadium art for more than thirty years; and is, of course, directly related to the ill-conceived theories and destructive practices of Modernist (sub-) urbanism. The new Comiskey Park represents only slight relief; it is to a serious theory of baseball park design what the silliest historicist excesses of Post-Modern architecture are to the theories of Colin Rowe and Leon Krier, and "succeeds" for the same reason that PM has succeeded--because its clients believe that it will help sell their product.
Architects, if we are to avoid demonstrating Philip Johnson's contention that architecture is but a variation of the world's oldest profession, need good theory. We especially need theory that identifies the nature and purpose of architecture with respect not only to its intrinsic "internal" goods, but also to the common good. This is an inherently tricky task, however, and not only because of a lack of consensus about "the common good." It is also because architects have immediate obligations to clients, whose foremost concerns may not include--and may even conflict with--a concern for the public realm.
This dilemma is particularly acute in the design and construction of new baseball parks. This is in part because: a) virtually all such buildings today are publicly financed; and b) virtually none of them generate revenues sufficient both to pay for themselves and to profit the tenants for whom they are built. But it is also in part because both the public agencies who commission and finance these buildings, and the owners of the teams who create their programs and for whom they are built, conceive a formal (i.e. "suburban") model for such buildings that guarantees conflict between the legitimate economic and aesthetic objectives of both teams and public agencies. This places civic-minded architects in the aforementioned dilemma, one that will not be resolved until architects begin to articulate to themselves and their clients both the problems with the existing suburban model and an urban alternative to it.
This is not the place for a detailed account of the features of that alternative model, an earlier version of which is thriving even today at and around the intersection of Chicago's Addison and Clark Streets. But it is worth noting that attempts to articulate its features have been occurring for more than a decade, and coming from at least two different directions. From a relatively small segment of the design community has emerged a renewed general concern for the practical and aesthetic virtues of traditional urbanism. From the larger community of baseball fans has emerged a renewed appreciation for, and detailed accounts of, the character and qualities of old ballparks--features directly related, we now understand, to their location in traditional urban settings. This has made possible the positing of a new model for ballpark design, one that is "traditionally urban," but that also takes into account contemporary realities such as parking and luxury seating requirements. The features of this model would include:
1) treating the ballpark urbanistically, as a public building the shape and playing field of which is shaped and constrained by a network of streets and blocks;
2) distributing rather than concentrating its associated parking;
3) attempting to encourage a variety of uses, including retail and commercial, in the vicinity of the ballpark;
4) diminishing the scale of the ballpark by locating non-essential program functions in buildings adjacent to rather than within the ballpark;
5) paying close attention to the cost and aesthetic implications of the ballpark section, particularly with respect to seating intimacy and the treatment of vertical circulation; and
6) discreetly handling class-related issues by neither monumentalizing luxury seating nor building it at the expense of good seats for the middle- and working-class fan.
Because corporate "sports facilities" architects tend to define themselves first and foremost as members of a "service profession" (which is their polite way of saying that for their fee they will do whatever their clients tell them), they have not generated, and are unlikely to soon embrace with conviction, such theoretical concerns. That the best recent ballpark work (in Buffalo, in Baltimore) has been done for clients who have insisted that some of the aforementioned issues be addressed is telling. What remains to be seen is whether new ballpark design will be (as it is not yet) solidly grounded in good urban design, or whether it will continue to be defined in terms of image and nostalgia--the hulking new Comiskey Park and its pre-cast arches in a giant parking lot.
Architects who deal in architectural theory necessarily have long-term objectives, because it is impossible for architects to eliminate completely the tension between our immediate obligations to clients and our theoretical aspirations. In the realm of ballpark design, a serious engagement by architects and their clients of the issues outlined above might resolve some of that tension. But this will happen only if there is some reciprocal interest in these issues from the public agencies who typically pay for and build new ballparks; and especially from Major League Baseball (MLB), the 700-lb gorilla for whom new ballparks are built. That public agencies should be so interested is clear; that MLB should be so interested is less obvious, because its financial interests are already being addressed by tax-payer funded suburban model stadiums made ever so appealing by the architectural applique of nostalgia.
Indeed, professional baseball has never been more popular, in spite of an apparent increase of disaffection between players and fans commonly attributed to the latters' resentment of the formers' rising salaries. But baseball's moguls have rarely been known for taking the long view; and both among the smaller population market teams inside baseball (the Milwaukees, the Seattles, the Cincinnatis, and the Pittsburghs); and generally, for different reasons, to observers outside baseball, there is concern that the economics of baseball may be out of control. Assuming that the escalating salary structure of MLB has not topped out of its own accord, it is possible to imagine a couple of plausible scenarios for the very near future. One is that baseball will regulate its economy internally, by means of features such as salary caps and revenue sharing. The other is that baseball will at last, and against its will, be subjected to the regulation of the marketplace, a condition that they have heretofore managed to avoid by their exemption from federal anti-trust laws--an exemption sustained by the now virtually unsustainable fiction that MLB is a sport rather than a business.
If we are indeed approaching an era of limits in the economy of baseball, and in the public sector's willingness to subsidize that economy, architects ought to have ready specific ideas about how to design less costly and more intimate ballparks that are both good for baseball and much better for the formal and economic order of cities. This will necessarily reintroduce the notion of physical constraint into ballpark design. Major League Baseball is a noble creation; but, as the new Comiskey Park demonstrates, it needs to be constrained if it is to dwell among civilized people. Such constraints, whether internal or external, should be liberal, allowing baseball to do best that which baseball does; but constraints there must be. We want to admire 700-lb. gorillas for their grace and strength and power, not be terrorized by the fury of their passions.
Still, the Phillies ballpark did have its moments of glory and singular achievements. In 1915, one of those moments took place when the Phillies hosted their only World Series at Baker Bowl. The club played Boston in the Series that year. In the first contest, Babe Ruth made his initial World Series appearance, grounding out as a ninth-inning pinch hitter for the Red Sox. Woodrow Wilson became the first US President to see a World Series game when he attended the second game of the 1915 World Series at Baker Bowl. Although the Phillies lost the Series to Boston, they won the opening game behind the pitching of Grover Cleveland Alexander. The Phillies would not win another World Series game until 65 years later in 1980.
Babe Ruth’s association with Baker Bowl would also be highlighted at the end of his career. On May 30, 1935, Ruth, now a member of the Boston Braves, took himself out of the lineup after the first inning of the first game of a doubleheader at Baker Bowl. He never again played in a major league game.
For Phillies fans, Ed Delahanty, Chuck Klein, and Grover Cleveland Alexander mostly earned their Hall of Fame credentials while playing with the team at Baker Bowl. On October 2, 1916, Alexander pitched his sixteenth shutout of the season—still a record. In 1932, Klein was selected the National League’s Most Valuable Player, leading the senior circuit in hits (226), runs (152), home runs (38), stolen bases (20), and hitting a remarkable .348 and driving in 137 RBIs.
Baker Bowl was also the sight of some highly unusual events in baseball history. On Opening Day in 1938, Brooklyn outfielder Ernie Koy homered in the first inning in his first major league at bat. In the bottom half of the same inning, Phillies second baseman Emmett Mueller homered in his first big league time at bat!
Baker Bowl was also the site of many Negro League baseball games. The Hilldale Daisies from Darby, PA often played at the ballpark in the 1920s-1930s. Indeed, Negro League World Series games were played at the ballpark in 1924-26.
In addition, between 1933-35, Baker Bowl was the home field of the Philadelphia Eagles football club—the team’s first three years as a franchise in the National Football League. Thus, Baker Bowl became the first dual-use stadium for professional sports in Pennsylvania—an idea that would be formally resurrected with the construction of Veterans Stadium for both the Phillies and Eagles.
Other Uses
Because of their meager finances, the Phillies always had to seek ways to produce extra income, and one of the best ways to do that was by renting the ballpark for other sports activities as well as for non-sporting events. The State Police staged an annual rodeo at the Baker Bowl in the 1920s. The Philadelphia Police and Fire Departments held annual parades at the ballpark in the teens and twenties. The photos that accompany this article were taken in 1916 during a police parade. Shot from the third base side from just beyond the infield, the photos show the infamous rightfield wall of Baker Bowl. The Phillies would rent the wall space to advertisers, and the wall is adorned with advertising for Moerlein Beer, Young’s Y.P.M. Whisky, Boston Garters, B.F. Keith’s Vaudeville Theatre, and other products. One photo shows the flagpole that was a prominent feature of the ballpark, and it also depicts the corner of the centerfield clubhouse. None of these photos have ever been published before.
Years of Decline
Despite the revolutionary design and construction methods Baker Bowl incorporated when built, the ballpark was badly outmoded and in serious disrepair by the 1930s. With mediocre teams, scant attendance, and poor finances, the Phillies had no money to put into renovating—or even maintaining—the stadium. The club finally abandoned Baker Bowl after the 1938 season was underway and moved down Lehigh Avenue to Shibe Park—home of the Philadelphia Athletics—where the Phillies would remain until after the 1970 season.
Baker Bowl was used for many activities after the Phillies left including midget auto races. Finally, in ramshackle condition and with parts of the old ballpark falling down, Baker Bowl was razed in 1950.
© 2002 Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society, Inc
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