Analyzing the Renovations that Saved Fenway Park and the Urban Baseball Stadium

Introduction

Opened in 1912, Fenway Park is the oldest active stadium in Major League Baseball and one of Boston’s most iconic landmarks. It is seen as a relic of a time gone by, and considered completely untouchable to many baseball fans and historians alike. Fenway Park is representative of baseball’s history as a truly urban game, one that is affected by the space around it. Despite the near-holy status the stadium now holds, its future wasn’t always so secure. In the 1990’s, team ownership was seriously considering tearing down Fenway Park and replacing it with a new, modern ballpark. A grassroots movement, primarily under the name “Save Fenway Park!” came together, with the goal of doing just that. Their efforts eventually proved successful, and after a new ownership group took over at the turn of the century, they announced a desire to modernize the existing park. Beginning in the year 2002, the Red Sox began a series of renovations that wholly transformed Fenway Park, while maintaining respect for the historic character of the ballpark and surrounding neighborhood. Completed throughout the first decade of the Twenty-First Century, the renovations have successfully brought the historic ballpark into the modern day. This project was of outsized importance, as preserving Fenway Park served to save more than just one stadium. It saved the idea of a truly urban ballpark, one that is fully incorporated into its neighborhood.

Spatial Description of the Stadium

Figure 1: Aerial view of Fenway Park, showing surrounding streets and seating structures. (Courtesy of Google Maps)

From the outside, the brick façades and small-scale makes Fenway Park look more like a warehouse or an office building than a modern stadium. Approaching the stadium going northeast, headed up Brookline Avenue, one would see the original two-story, red-brick façade of the building before noticing the modern, steel additions. Turning right down Jersey Street; which on game days hosts security, ticketing, and concessions, the historic façade continues at street level, while the modern additions, painted green, can be seen at the third floor and above. Taking a left at Van Ness Street, one can clearly see modern additions, with steel staircases and the right field roof visible. Along Van Ness Street, the brick façade is just one-story high. A further left onto Ipswich street reveals the Fenway parking garage, a two-story brick building, and further down a construction site for a new concert venue. One final left onto Lansdowne Street shows a number of modern additions to the park, including large video boards and the Green Monster seating. At the corner of Lansdowne Street and Brookline Avenue, one returns to the historic red-brick façades and two-story scale. 

Moving around inside the park is not quite as easy as it is outside, as the concourses at Fenway Park do not make a large, continuous loop. Beginning at the Green Monster, the left field wall that runs parallel to Lansdowne Street, one must move counterclockwise, as the left field seating does not connect to the bleachers in centerfield. Moving clockwise from the Green Monster, one would next encounter the left field grandstand, which begins moving parallel to Brookline Avenue. The third base grandstand seamlessly continues on from there, running nearly parallel to Jersey Street, intersecting with Van Ness Street at what is called the home plate concourse. Home plate at Fenway Park is near the corner of Jersey and Van Ness Streets. The first base and right field grandstands move essentially parallel to Van Ness Street. At the approximate location of the interaction of Van Ness and Ipswich Streets, the stadium turns north, towards Lansdowne Street. It is at this point that fans empty into what is referred to as the “Big Concourse”, behind the bleacher seats. The bleachers, which are made of concrete and steel similar to the grandstands, have no second deck above them, and feature longer, continuous rows in comparison to seating sections in the grandstands which are sectioned off at different points. An upper deck of the park, which features luxury boxes, a press box, and additional seating, runs above the grandstands from left field to right field, stopping at the beginning of the bleachers. While there is no circulating connection for fans to walk through, the stadium structure connects the bleachers to the Green Monster on Lansdowne Street.

Early History of Fenway Park

The storied history of Fenway Park can be, and has been, told a number of times through a variety of longer formats, including books, documentaries, and journal articles. To limit this history to one section of a paper would not be doing it justice. Specific on-field events, as well as the emotional connection between the fans and the stadium, certainly have had a major impact on the history of the stadium, however they will not be discussed in depth here. This historical overview will focus on only aspects of the construction and renovations that took place at the ballpark prior to the year 2000.

Between 1901 and 1911, the Boston Red Sox played at the Huntington Avenue Baseball grounds, located on what is today the campus of Northeastern University. Despite a few quirks, such as an unusually deep center field and patches of sand and dead grass, the ballpark served the team well, even playing host to the first World Series game in 1903. A major drawback of the park however, was that the team did not own the land, and Red Sox owner John I. Taylor had to lease it from the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad, which had tracks adjacent to the park. Wanting to sell the team soon, Taylor believed having a park on land owned by the team would make it a more valuable asset. As he already owned a stake in the Fenway Realty Company, which served to sell land in the newly drained Fenway neighborhood, Taylor was able to easily purchase a plot of land (from himself) near Kenmore Square, one with easy access to Boston’s streetcar lines. The plot that Taylor purchased was defined by five bordering streets; Brookline Avenue, Jersey Street, Van Ness Street, Ipswich Street, and Lansdowne Street. A newly built park would have to be tightly squeezed into those city streets, and the same streets continue to limit the development of the park today. The short distance between home plate and the left field corner, as well as the overall size of the playing surface in the park are both products of fitting a ballpark into the surrounding street layout. Designed by James E. McLaughlin and built by the Osborne Engineering Company, construction broke ground in 1911 and the park opened on April 20, 1912. Additionally, John I. Taylor’s scheme to increase the value of the team paid off, as he sold off his interest in the team in 1914.

Figure 2: Sanborn Fire Insurance Map of Fenway Park, circa 1938, showing the stadium after initial renovations. (Courtesy of Boston Public Library/Atlascope)

Ownership of the Red Sox changed hands several times in the two decades after Taylor relinquished control. On February 25, 1933, 30-year-old old Thomas A. Yawkey purchased the team, and reversed the trend of changing ownership, as the team stayed in his family until his wife’s passing in 1992. By the time Yawkey bought the club, Fenway park had begun to show signs of wear. To offset this wear, Yawkey chose to invest in a series of major renovations to the ballpark. It was during these renovations that what is possibly Fenway’s most iconic feature, the “Green Monster”, came to be as it is known today. Prior to 1933, a 10 foot mound of grass sat in front of a 25-foot wooden wall in left field. Yawkey leveled the mound, raised the wall to 37 feet, and had it, and the rest of the stadium’s interior, painted green. Further changes included replacing most of the stadium’s wooden grandstands with concrete and reinforced steel structures. Replacing wood with concrete ensured fire protection, which was important as other ballparks had previously fallen victim to fires, including Fenway itself during the renovations in January 1934. Despite the fire-induced setbacks, work remained on schedule and the ballpark was ready in time for opening day. Yawkey’s renovations, which cost an estimated $1.25 million in total (over $27 million in 2022 dollars), gave Fenway Park the look and feel that is largely retained today.

Architectural & Urban Analysis

In his book Ballpark: Baseball in the American City, architecture critic Paul Goldberger suggests that “ballparks are rarely on the cutting edge of architecture, but … where other architecture went, ballpark architecture would soon enough follow.” Fenway Park is not exempt from this trend. The Fenway Park façade is constructed of red brick, laid in the Tapestry style, meaning that the bricks are placed in ornamental patterns, and feature trim of stucco or concrete. The brick is reminiscent of some of the oldest parts of Boston, and seems as if it would fit in nicely in Beacon Hill or Back Bay. The façade is “framed” by paneled brick pilasters, which show a further influence of traditional Boston architecture, particularly that of brick row houses. Original entryways to the park consist of brick segmental arches. Modern additions to the park, such as the supports holding the Green Monster seating, and new pavilions on the right and left field roofs, are constructed of concrete and steel, painted green to match the interior of the park.

Figure 8: Fenway Park’s Tapestry brick façade. A neighboring building in the background matches the scale. (Lewis, 2022)

From an urbanist perspective, Fenway Park’s most important feature is its scale, both in terms of the building’s height and the size of the plot of land it sits on. The one and two-story historic façade of Fenway Park matches the size and materiality of many surrounding buildings that can be seen from the street level, allowing the park to blend in well to the neighborhood. While recent renovations have increased the height of parts of the park, the materiality matches the steel construction of many other new, tall buildings in the surrounding areas. The renovations therefore act almost as a transitional architectural feature, providing a “step” that brings together the historic brick buildings and the newer, larger steel and glass buildings. Saving Fenway Park was instrumental in retaining this scale, as a new park would have been built on a larger footprint and at a taller height. 

Kairos Shen likened the ballpark to a “tight fitting pair of jeans”, in reference to the oddly-shaped parcel it sits on and how it is nestled into the neighborhood. The five streets that contain the park all contain buildings of similar heights and brick façades, which allows the ballpark to blend in even more. The ballpark does not dominate the neighborhood, and instead feels like an equal partner to other buildings in the area. Retaining the size of Fenway Park was necessary to keep the neighborhood intact. Shen referred to the project as one of the best preservation projects in Boston in the last 20 years, as it “kept the scale and feel of a Boston from a different era.” Like many Boston neighborhoods, such as Beacon Hill or the North End, walking around Fenway Park sometimes feels like taking a step back in time. To quote Goldberger, “Boston swirls on around its ballpark, as it has for more than a hundred years.”

John I. Taylor chose the location for Fenway Park in 1911 in part due to its proximity to new streetcar lines feeding into Kenmore Square. Over a century later, the ease of access to public transit remains one of Fenway’s biggest amenities. The B,C, and D branches of the MBTA Green Line trains stop at Kenmore station, located just over a quarter mile from the Fenway Park entrance gates. Green Line trains can take passengers from the suburban towns of Chestnut Hill, Newton, and Brookline to Downtown Boston and across the river to Cambridge, with connecting lines that can travel further out into the suburbs. Additionally, the Lansdowne commuter rail station is located one block, or one-tenth of a mile from the ballpark. The Lansdowne station is a stop on the MBTA Worcester line, allowing fans to travel up to 40 miles west of the city by train, with 14 stops along the way. Finally, ten separate MBTA bus routes make stops within walking distance of the park, allowing for efficient travel to the venue from within the city of Boston. Without sacrificing valuable urban land for the creation of surface parking lots, Fenway Park remains convenient to travel to and from. 

Notions for Demolition and Preservation

Tom Yawkey’s 1934 renovations sustained the ballpark for decades, and save for a few small additions such as luxury boxes and an electronic scoreboard, Fenway Park remained relatively unchanged. While to many it gave the ballpark a certain charm, others saw it as outdated in comparison to other stadiums of the late Twentieth Century, as it lacked luxury boxes, featured cramped seating arrangements, and views from certain points in the ballpark were obstructed by support beams. By the mid-1990’s, few ballparks of Fenway’s age remained, and with the closing of Detroit’s Tiger Stadium in 1999, only Feneway and Wrigley Field were left. Red Sox ownership announced their desire to follow this trend in 1999, hoping to replace the existing stadium with a “New Fenway Park''. Aside from being old and worn down in some places, what really worried team ownership was the financial viability of the stadium. At that point in time, Fenway Park had the lowest seating capacity of any Major League Stadium, seating just 33,000 at a time when the average Major League park held over 50,000 spectators. Being able to fit more fans in the ballpark was of course crucial for profit margins as they all needed to buy a ticket to enter. In order to remain a financially viable operation, the Red Sox believed that a new stadium would be a necessity. Without it, they believed they would need to relocate.

As an employee of the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), Kairos Shen first became involved in Fenway Park during the proposal to tear down the old stadium and replace it. As the official planning arm of the city government, the BRA was responsible for approving all major development projects within the city. The Red Sox came to the city with their wishes for a new ballpark, and the BRA (and Shen specifically) was tasked with finding a new site for a stadium. Shen scouted out a number of possible sites, including the Seaport district of Boston, where a proposal included building a new ballpark for the Red Sox, football stadium for the Patriots, and convention center for city use. After scouring the city for potential options, the BRA concluded that the best place for a new ballpark would be on the site of the old one. According to Shen, the land that would need to be acquired for the new park would be less if built atop the older one, and furthermore, “the neighborhood was already comfortable with a ballpark.”

Once the site for a new ballpark was chosen, the next question concerned how it was to be paid for. The new stadium proposed by the Red Sox was expected to cost nearly $550 million, quite a price tag for an ownership group that was worried about the economic viability of their current park. To ease this cost, and to convince ownership not to relocate the team, in 2000, the Massachusetts Legislature passed Chapter 208, an act that allotted $100 million of state funds, with additional funding coming from the City, to the team for the construction of a new stadium. While this was a difficult decision, and upset many taxpayers, Shen explained that the threat of relocation put the state and city government in a difficult decision, having to decide between potentially “preserving the ballpark structure or preserving the team in Boston.” Shen further noted that the legislation and financing plan was “groundbreaking,” as it called for the team to pay back the local government for their initial investment over time.

Figure 3: Architect’s Model of New Fenway Park (Courtesy of Boston Globe, 1999)

The “New Fenway Park” plan progressed far enough along that architectural designs were created and released to the public. On May 15, 1999, the team held a press conference at Fenway Park, where they officially unveiled the plans and models for the new ballpark, which they hoped at that time could be open by 2003. The team brought in the architects from HOK Sport, a firm that has designed a number of major league ballparks, including Coors Field in Denver and Progressive Field in Cleveland. The proposed ballpark hoped to include many of the most iconic pieces of the old Fenway, including a reconstructed Green Monster and even digging up the old grass playing surface and replanting it at the new park. Modern amenities would have included wider seats with more leg room, no steel supports obstructing the view of the field, and three levels of seating, to allow for much higher capacity. 

Figure 4: Save Fenway Park! Bumper Sticker (Courtesy of Boston Preservation Alliance)

While ownership desperately pushed for a new ballpark, fans and preservationists alike banded together to save the old one. A grassroots effort to gain support for the old ballpark spurred the creation of an official organization, “Save Fenway Park!” (SFP). Members of SFP included historic preservation professionals and activists, and the group was affiliated with the larger Boston Preservation Alliance. One major part of their campaign was spreading awareness and information about the ballpark, why they believed it was important, and how it could be saved. Support for SFP was clearly seen through green “Save Fenway Park!” bumper stickers that were handed out by the group and proudly displayed on cars throughout the Boston metro area. The preservation group went further than just advocating for the stadium to be saved, they proved how it could be. SFP worked together with architects to create a renovation plan, showing exactly how the ballpark could be altered and updated for the modern fan. 

In the end, Fenway Park was saved. The amount of influence that the Save Fenway Park! group had on this decision can be debated, as ultimately it came down to ownership. On October 6, 2000, Red Sox CEO John Harrington announced that the team (and along with it the stadium) would be put up for sale. A number of groups bid for the team, but they were eventually sold to a group known as New England Sports Ventures, with John Henry as principal owner. Of all groups who sought to purchase the team, Henry and his partners were the only ones who committed to trying to save the ballpark. To do so, and make it viable for years to come, was a big commitment, as major renovations would need to be made.

Major Renovations to the Park

Upon purchasing the Red Sox in December 2001, the new ownership group proved their dedication to preserving the park by bringing in noted stadium architect Janet Marie Smith. According to Shen, this was “the most important thing the new ownership did.” Smith, “someone with vision” as Shen described her, had gained attention in the baseball world for her role as architect of the Baltimore Orioles stadium, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which had opened in 1992. Smith was first contacted by Larry Lucchino, a part of the new ownership group and a former Orioles executive, who “asked [Smith] if they were crazy to think they could save the stadium”. Smith did not think they were crazy, and joined the Red Sox as Senior Vice President for Planning and Development, becoming the lead architect for the renovation project.

According to Smith, one of her main goals in the renovation was to “keep the spirit of the place”, as there were certain quirks about Fenway Park, such as its size and the fans proximity to the field, that could not be replicated. This meant making as few architectural changes as possible, especially to the exterior of the park. A variety of groups had input on the designs that Smith, along with the architects from Somerville-based firm DAIQ, came up with. First the preservation minded group, Save Fenway Park!, offered professional guidance from those in the field of historic preservation, providing “confidence and enthusiasm” to Smith and the Red Sox. Additionally, the size of the project required approval from the Boston Redevelopment Authority. By the time renovations began in 2002, Kairos Shen had risen to the position of Director of the BRA, and therefore after his former involvement in the proposal to demolish the stadium, Shen was now integral to the plan to save it. The BRA worked together with Smith and DAIQ throughout each step of the renovation process, which took place over the course of ten years between 2002 and 2011. 

Figure 5: Green Monster seating on left, photo taken from new seats on left field grandstand roof. (Lewis, 2022)

The Red Sox had committed to playing each season in Fenway park, which allowed only the off-season, a five month period between November and March, to complete each stage of the renovation. The first major change was through an agreement between the city of Boston, closing of Jersey Street on game day, so that security and ticket booths could be moved from the interior of the park to the street. This opened up room for circulation both inside and outside the park, giving fans space to congregate and walk around. Additionally, it gave room for more concession booths and linked ticketed fans to the team merchandise store, providing an opportunity for increased revenue from ticketed guests. Another circulation change came with the incorporation of what is referred to as the “Big Concourse” into the rest of the park. This section of the concourse, located under the outfield bleachers, was sectioned off by a chain link fence prior to the renovation. The team removed the fence, allowing fans from all seating areas to interact with the space, and opening up even further room for concessions. Smith says that the Big Concourse renovation “made a huge difference in the way the ballpark behaved” and “felt like it belonged in Fenway.” Additional renovations to the circulation patterns inside the park included expanding the third base concourse, and adding additional entrance points on Lansdowne street.

Further renovations addressed Fenway’s historically small seating capacity. The first of these renovations brought fans closer to the park's most iconic asset, the Green Monster, than they had ever been before. The team first negotiated with the city to gain air rights over Lansdowne Street, which would allow them to build over the street. In 2003, the team added 280 seats to the top of the wall, with additional room for standing room only patrons. Additional seating was added around the dugouts and behind home plate, creating over 200 new seats. Seating areas were added to both the right field roof deck and the third base grandstand roof. Finally, expanding the concourses added extra room for standing room only tickets to be sold. In all, the renovations increased the ballpark’s total seating capacity from approximately 33,000 to over 37,000.

Figure 6: New Seating on right field grandstand roof (Lewis, 2022)

Due to the commitment not to change the architecture of the park in any meaningful way, Smith and her team had to get creative in order to achieve their goals. Smith and DAIQ figured out ways to reuse the structural assets available to them. In order to renovate and construct the “Big Concourse”, the team removed walls to the former parking garage and incorporated the space into the concourse. This same strategy was employed when creating the third base concourse. The (coincidentally named) Smith building was built adjacent to Fenway Park, on the corner of Lansdowne Street and Brookline Avenue, in 1914. The Red Sox purchased the Smith building in 1980, and used it as office space up until 2007, when the back walls of Fenway Park and the Smith building were removed to fully integrate the two buildings. While the two spaces are indistinguishable when walking around the grandstand today, Smith points out an homage to the history of the space that remains. The large columns that are located in what used to be the Smith building are painted off-white, whereas the columns in the rest of the park are painted green. This creative use of space allowed the team to expand the interior space of the park without increasing the overall footprint of the stadium. Smith refers to the joining of three buildings into one as “the most magical thing we did” in the renovation process. 

Figure 7: Off-white column signifies this portion of the concourse was originally the Smith building (Lewis, 2022)

Looking back on the Fenway renovations now ten years after their completion, Janet Marie Smith is incredibly proud of the work that was done. What makes her the most proud is reflecting on how much they were able to accomplish every offseason, and the fact that they were able to make improvements without radically changing the space. “[Fenway] is still your grandfather’s ballpark”, Smith reflected. She sees the Green Monster seats and moving the turnstiles to Jersey Street as the most impactful changes made during the renovations. Additionally, Smith was able to apply her experiences from Fenway to other jobs in her career. Since leaving the Red Sox at the completion of the renovations, Smith has worked for the Dodgers in renovating Dodger Stadium, and back in New England with the design of Polar Park, home of the Worcester Red Sox. She says that preservation has been a reappearing theme in her career since Fenway Park. Whether it's retaining the character of an old ballpark, or ensuring a city is not changed too drastically by the construction of a new one, Smith says that each project she embarks on “has a piece of historic preservation that comes with it.”

Jewel Box vs. Retro-Classic Ballparks

Figure 9: 3-Dimensional Renderings of Fenway Park (left) and Camden Yards (right), (courtesy of Google Earth)

Oriole Park at Camden Yards, home to the Baltimore Orioles, opened in 1992 and sparked a major shift in major league ballpark design. Camden Yards became the first of what would soon be known as the “Retro Classic” ballparks. These stadiums pay homage to ballparks of the past in their aesthetic design choices, while still providing ample seating capacity and modern amenities. They typically have a larger footprint than an older ballpark, and carry a considerably larger seating capacity, while prioritizing views and ensuring that steel beams and columns don't interfere with any lines of sight. Examples outside of Baltimore’s Camden Yards include Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, Coors Field in Denver, PNC Park in Pittsburgh, and both Citi Field and Yankee Stadium in New York. Many “retro classic” parks pay homage to an older ballpark in the town. For example, Citi Field, constructed in Queens in 2009, features a façade inspired by Ebbets Field, which opened in Brooklyn in 1913.

When speaking with Janet Marie Smith, she told me that during the design of Camden Yards, she took a lot of inspiration from Fenway Park, and when renovating Fenway Park, she took a lot of inspiration from Camden Yards. By closely examining both parks, the subtle inspirations become clear. The dimensions of Camden Yards (the distance from home plate to certain points in the outfield wall), are varied at different points in the park, just as they are at Fenway Park, and other parks of a similar age, which were constrained by the streets surrounding them. Similar to Fenway’s Green Monster in left field, Camden Yards features a tall outfield wall of its own, measuring 25 feet high. Camden Yards also calls on ballparks of yesteryear through its incorporation of surrounding urban elements. Camden Yards was the former location of a Baltimore and Ohio Railroad freight yard, and the B&O warehouse remained extant when the stadium was built. Smith and the design team chose to incorporate the warehouse into the park, and did the same with Eutaw Street, a major street in downtown Baltimore, converting a portion of it into a pedestrian-only path within the ballpark. 

While they may not be as obvious at first glance, the impact Camden Yards had on the Fenway Park renovations are easy to see when comparing the two parks. As previously mentioned, moving the turnstiles and security area from inside Fenway Park out onto Jersey Street allowed for improved circulation inside the park, and provided more space for food and merchandise sales. This strategy is similar to that employed with the inclusion of Eutaw Street in the design of Camden Yards. Both spaces allow fans to mull about during the game, and incorporate the city into the ballpark. The incorporation of the B&O warehouse into Camden Yards also inspired the Fenway Park renovation in my opinion. This set a precedent for using space inside already extant structures, which was effectively done at Fenway Park when the Smith Building and Fenway garage were adapted for increased concourse space within the ballpark. It is clear that both ballparks inspired the design of the other, but further analysis is required to understand which, if either, is a better ballpark. 

Using maps and spatial analysis tools, in this case Google Earth, we can see that the retro classic parks fail to capture the complete essence of ballparks of old. Fenway Park blends in well to its community. Other buildings are tightly packed around it, and the park is confined by neighboring streets. As noted, the scale of the original façade is similar to the oldest buildings in the neighborhood, and the larger additions offer a nice transition towards taller, newer buildings. The park is situated right on the edge of the street, and blends in with nearby buildings. Camden Yards, on the other hand, stands out amongst its surroundings, even with its incorporation of Eutaw Street and the B&O warehouse. It is much larger than residential buildings just across the street, but not large enough to blend in with taller buildings in the city skyline. A large surface parking lot isolates the stadium from the neighborhood, and a plaza sets it back from the street even more. While Camden Yards is a much more urban ballpark than those that were constructed in the decades preceding it, it still features some of the characteristics of those “suburban” ballparks. The unique spatial relationship that an older ballpark, such as Fenway Park, has with its surrounding neighborhood cannot be easily replicated by new design. While an old park can be modernized effectively, as seen with Fenway Park, we have yet to see a newly constructed park be squeezed into the city the way ballparks were a century ago.

Conclusion

Fenway Park truly is a uniquely urban ballpark. Due to its size, shape, and age, the only similar extant ballpark is Chicago’s Wrigley Field, which opened in 2014. While a movement in ballpark design trended in the direction of recreating the urban ballpark, it never quite achieved the connection that older ballparks had with their cities. To quote Paul Goldberger, “baseball parks were a part of the urban fabric because, up until the middle of the twentieth century, everything was a part of the urban fabric.” The amount of development that has occured in major American cities over the past 70 years has left little room for the construction of new stadiums, especially in lively neighborhoods that may be conveniently accessed by public transportation. Looking specifically at Boston, a number of potential sites were explored, but the development of the city made it so the only place a new stadium was recommended to be built was on the existing footprint of the old one. Renovating Fenway Park saved the structure itself, but more than that it preserved an idea. Architectural historian Philip Bess writes that “the intrinsic and self-evident goodness of baseball is best when it occurs within the confines of an enclosed part in the city.” Fenway Park shows that baseball can be fully a part of a city, and that a stadium can be an indistinguishable part of a city block. Without Fenway, we would lose the experience of going to a baseball game at its best.

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