baseball park

Baseball parks became important local civic monuments and repositories of collective memories. The first parks had been jerry-built, flimsy wooden structures, but between 1909 and 1923 some 15 major league clubs constructed new, more permanent parks of steel and concrete. These edifices were akin to…

Many of the ballparks had fallen into disrepair, were outdated, and were inconvenient for surburbanites driving in for a game. Despite exciting play on the field, attendance began to wane. The added revenue from radio and television broadcast rights could not offset the losses at the gate. The…