Read Online Fenway 1912 by Glenn Stout - Free Book Online Page B

like a building.
    His solution was to create an illusion. Only a portion of the structure, a triangular-shaped wing that housed the team offices, would look like a building when viewed from the street. The remainder would look, well, like the grandstand of a ballpark, albeit one faced with brick and featuring open arches behind the upper stands. The wing containing the offices would also be off-center to the larger structure, not evenly balanced behind home plate but down the third-base line, essentially parallel to that side of the infield. The ballpark's front door, in effect, would actually be a side entrance.
    It was not a particularly elegant solution, but then again, given Taylor's requirements, there was very little room for elegance. Still McLaughlin tried to come up with an aesthetic response. The only other area where McLaughlin could express any real creativity was on the facade of the office wing that faced Jersey Street.
    Beginning in 1901, the influential furniture maker Gustav Stickley, a proponent of the Arts and Crafts style, began designing homes. The designs of the Wisconsin-born child of German immigrants, who probably never attended a professional baseball game in his life, would nonetheless prove to be an inspiration for Fenway Park.
    Stickley featured his designs in his magazine,
The Craftsman,
and these homes soon became known by an architectural style of their own—Craftsman. Craftsman-style homes were usually built with materials native to the region, and their decorative details often depended on the exposure of structural elements. The variety of these structural elements, combined with the various building materials, created textures that were revealed under changing light conditions, creating interest in surfaces that might otherwise appear bland.
    Over the course of McLaughlin's early career the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement became more and more pronounced, for even as he built structures that can correctly be identified as Georgian Revival and, later, as in the Commonwealth Armory, Gothic Revival, his materials and ornamental use of texture on the Jersey Street facade echo the Arts and Crafts and Craftsman aesthetics.
    For the veneer of the office facade McLaughlin chose Tapestry Brick, a patented, rough-faced red brick design made by Fiske and Company of New York, and a Stickley favorite, but one rarely used on the exteriors of his homes. Not only did the dark red brick provide a nice contrast with lighter-colored building materials, but the rough face was inviting, changed under differing light conditions, and could be treated like a mosaic and arranged in design patterns, either alone or in combination with concrete.
    When the park was first built, it is important to recall, there were no buildings across the street or trees to block the sun. The building faced southward and thus was exposed to an ever-changing display of light as the sun crossed the sky every day. The face of the building was designed to take advantage of these changing conditions.
    Although it would be incorrect to say that Fenway Park is a Craftsman building—its architecture is far too eclectic and utilitarian to fall easily within a single definition—it nevertheless exhibits elements and echoes of the Arts and Crafts and Craftsman movements. McLaughlin might also have been inspired by the nearby Fenway Studio Building, artists' studios and residences built in 1905 at 30 Ipswich Street, an influential building whose ornamentation architectural historians have determined is derived from the Arts and Crafts movement.
    It was a fortunate choice. The facade, while handsome, does not call attention to itself, yet by incorporating such forward-looking design elements, it has aged without becoming dated. In contrast, Shibe Park's French Renaissance facade, even when new, looked like a product of the previous century. Fenway, even today, seems merely quaint.
    McLaughlin used one more sleight of hand in regard to