Sports Stadiums

Sports Stadiums, Pre-1945

Germany laid claim to the largest stadium in the world at the turn of the twentieth century. Built for the 1916 Olympic Games—which were aborted due to World War I—the Deutches Stadion was built by Otto March and had a capacity of 40,000. In 1933, when the Nazi party took power in Germany, Adolf Hitler realized the potential of a spectacular stadium as a centerpiece for propaganda conceived for the 1936 Olympic Games. Again employing the March family, Hitler built a new Olympic stadium on the same site, with a capacity of 110,000. The stadium became the material base from which to express the ideological ambitions and significance of Nazism.

In North America, as cities grew as a result of accelerated urbanization, immigration, and industrialization, it was not until the 1920s that sports stadiums started to have a drastic impact on the urban landscape. Bound with the emergence of early sporting economies, space in which to watch sporting activities became gradually regulated and restricted as entrepreneurs started to capitalize on the profits to be derived from charging spectators. If by the late nineteenth century any major league city was expected to have a sports team, by the

1920s local officials began building public stadiums to provide facilities for these teams, promote civic pride and boosterism, and promote tourism. Early examples include the 1922 Rose Bowl in Pasadena, the 1923 Los Angeles Coliseum, the 1924 Soldiers Field in Chicago, and, in the same year, the Memorial Stadium, home of the University of Texas Longhorn football team in Austin. Aided by the development of infrastructure, communications, transportation, and eventually, the motor vehicle within the city, many early examples can be termed enchanted stadiums. Often designed to materially harmonize with the built environment, these early stadiums were often quirky environments and are the repositories of many of sports greatest historical moments. Examples include Chicago's Wrigley Field (ivy-covered batter's eye), Pittsburgh's Forbes Field (upper deck sun shade), and New York's Polo Grounds (wrought-iron row ends). Perhaps most notably, and similar to other stadiums from the early-modern era of stadium construction in North America and indeed within the designs of football stadiums in the industrial cities of England, Boston's Fenway Park (built in 1912) can be seen as the unique product of its circumstances, as the stadium is integrated into the neighborhood alongside office buildings, residential apartments, two schools, and various retail and entertainment establishments. Indeed, the stadium has been identified as having five historic districts under National Park Service guidelines for landmarks: the playing field itself, the main grandstand, the right field grandstand, the left field grandstand, and the left field wall, which, at Fenway Park, is also known as “the Green Monster.” Built in an era long before night games, television, suburbanization, and corporate boxes, and despite multiple updates and refits, many of these enchanted sports stadiums lack many of the amenities that have become familiar to sports stadiums in late capitalist consumption environments. However, Fenway Park remains as the oldest Major League Baseball facility remaining in operation, and, despite having the smallest capacity, is the most successful, with Major League Baseball's highest gate revenues.

...