“You know what? They really love the lights now. “I jumped in a cab and went to O’Hare.”īut he notes that all these years later, the lights at Wrigley are still on. “If I’d have said yes, I would have been lynched on the spot,” Rim says. One asked if he was the out-of-town engineer working on the lights. Some neighbors weren’t happy about it, and Rim recalls leaving the stadium one day to find a swarm of reporters with cameras and microphones waiting outside. In the late 1980s, the firm installed lights at Wrigley Field in Chicago-the last major league ballpark with no nighttime games. Osborn’s work wasn’t always so warmly received, however. “I have not heard one unfavorable comment to date, and don’t think that we ever will,” Yawkey wrote. Tom Yawkey, who owned the Red Sox at the time, sent Osborn a letter thanking the engineers for their work. The design also included the imposing 37-foot-high left-field wall now known as the Green Monster. After a series of fires destroyed the wooden bleachers in the late 1920s, Osborn designed a steel and concrete grandstand for the left-field line in 1934. Osborn also had a major role in making Boston’s Fenway Park what it is today. The official MLB Ballpark application perfectly complements and personalizes your trip with digital. The MLB Ballpark app is your mobile companion when visiting your favorite Major League Baseball ballparks. Because the work was done in pen, mistakes were costly. From the New York Yankees Museum to Lobel's, Yankee Stadium has a lot to offer Yankees fans. It was painstaking work, assisted by the use of stencils and templates, but largely done freehand. The plans and blueprints for these stadiums were works of art, says Kurt Rim, Osborn’s CEO emeritus. By 1928, Osborn had designed 75 ballparks around the country, including Fenway Park in Boston, Comiskey Park in Chicago, and the football stadium at the University of Notre Dame. But the growing popularity of spectator sports created new opportunities. Osborn Engineering, the firm that built it, was founded in 1892 and got its start on bridges, roadways, and other civil engineering projects. Between opening day in 1923 and its demolition in 2009, the stadium became an icon of American sports architecture, home to baseball greats from Babe Ruth to Derek Jeter, and 26 World Series championship teams. It may have been known as “The House That Ruth Built,” but the original Yankee Stadium was actually built by an engineering company from Cleveland.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |