so we discussed baseball in american cities, exploring the relationship between american cities and the growth of baseball. the changing architecture and locations and home or's over the years. what they reveal about society and culture at large. the kansas city public library hosted this discussion and provided the video. >> thanks, carry. i want to thank the library for putting on this event.

jonathan camper and the staff who worked with us. the libraries a fantastic institution. we are very lucky to have. it would get this awesome auditorium. speaking of great public spaces -- >> yes. yes. >> all right, paul. >> library to ballparks. doug >> you had this incredibly distinguished career as an architectural critic, which maybe not everybody -- i mean people are really here to hear you talk about stadiums in the end, but i first want to have you talk to the audience about who you are and what you have done prior to writing about ballparks. it's a long story, but we can get some of it anyway. >> i spent most of my life -- i've been very lucky because i spent most of my life writing about interests me. >> so have you,. >> it interest to whether it

ticks you off or you like it. i have always loved architecture and journalism. i'm not very good at making choices so i found a place where to intersected. i spent most of my life writing about architecture. >> did you study architecture? >> i studied architectural history. i went to yale. for those of you who went to preston, i know you don't always acknowledge it, but nonetheless -- a little bit to the north. a place i call connecticut. i studied architectural history. art and architectural history. then became a journalist. i toyed with going to architecture school but i thought the world had enough second grade architects. it is not need another, necessarily. i did think it was a pretty decent writer, so i went that route. >> what was it like working at

the new yorker, for instance? >> that was the second chapter of my career. i started with the new york times and went to the new yorker. >> i mean, what's the difference between working at the times and new york? those are two great jobs. >> yes there to great institutions. the difference is kind of like -- the new york times is like a huge university. it does everything and has amazing people and a huge range, that not everybody is necessarily -- >> there are some stone hours. >> exactly. it's a mixed bag. everybody says a certain level obviously but not necessarily the most amazing. the new yorker was like -- where everybody was as good as the best people in the big university. that's how it sort of felt to me when i went from one to the other. i had great times there.

>> did you office in the old new yorker building? >> i moved over there in the late 90s when they were still on 43rd street. >> murals? >> in the second old building, but they moved the murals there. >> maybe you could tell us more about that. >> s james thoreau, the cartoonist famously started drawing on the walls. there were kept us this kind of almost sacred object. and when the new yorker moved across the street name managed to cut out a piece of the wall taken across the street. then the new yorker was bought by the new house family which owned condé nast magazine company for several years. they allowed it to operate as a separate entity and gradually they started folding it into the rest of the magazine

company to save money on back office stuff and all that other stuff. then it moved into the headquarters in condé nast, a dinges become another magazine but not quite a special. >> i've been to the offices that are down in the replacement of the world trade center. >> yes where they've been there for a few years now. >> one of the things i loved about ballpark was the research he did into the earliest ballparks and how emphatic you are with baseball as an urban game, not a game played in iowa corn fields -- >> despite field of dreams which is everybody's favorite tearjerker. but it is not an accurate statement avoid baseball really is about. >> i'm an urban biden which -- i'm an urban midwesterner, but even specifically in new york you talked about this according to some historians who were nearly 100 baseball teams in brooklyn, new york by 1858.

>> new york was a huge center for baseball. not the only one that huge. one it was a game that in the early years was -- it really grew big in a lot of the both northeastern and mid western industrial cities, and it was played a lot by working class immigrants. >> yeah! >> we had all these teams and it was sometimes made up of men from within a few blocks residential areas or sometimes they were connected with a factory or something like that, and they all played each other. >> these early chapters in the book, which to meet really totally new information, stuff that i really did not know at all and i loved and i think people will love when they read the book. and that's the connection with the population growth of brooklyn, specifically and you talk about brooklyn, was 25,000 people in 1835. there were 200,000 by 18 --

half of them were immigrants -- it's interesting to me the way that you talk about the connection between immigrants and this american pastime. >> absolutely. it was fascinating to me when i read it, because i had not known as much about it as i do now that in fact so much of the game was built on immigrant laborers, i know that makes it sound like -- immigrant players. exactly. yes. yes. the early years, it transitioned into being a spectator sport, but it did not start out that way. it started out as a thing people played and then i got more and more organized and people started going to see it and a lot of the early games, the new york teams played in across the hudson river. it was a field called the

illusion field. but then -- >> you mentioned in the book, they played a lot of games in madison square, because it was an open space. i was like oh, that's where madison square garden is now. no? i'm wrong? >> the first madison square garden was in madison square. the one that is there now is the third. but, they moved away because in fact development was coming up all around it and it was too hard. i talk a lot in the book and the theme of the book is really about how baseball is more of a city game. nevertheless it tended to be played kind of on the outskirts because even in those 19th century years, even when land was cheap, cities were also growing and developing really fast in this country. you did not put a ball field right in the very center of the central business district next to the bank. even then you needed more land

and it was too expensive, so they would be kind of on the edge but the cities are growing so fast that those parts of land were off and then surrounded by development and became the center of the neighborhood. >> so speaking of -- >> fenway park is a good example of that. >> yes, we will get to that. i've never been there but you're going to tell me all about it. speaking of immigrants you have interesting facets in the book where you talk about the bifurcated world of baseball spectators. just a little bit later than what we are talking about now. in your book, half of this world is represented by chris, a german immigrant who but the st. louis browns and -- did you introduce people to him? >> yes it's a great story. this is a missouri story and even though it is the other side of the state crisps was a german immigrant, a tavern owner. >> who had like a -- sorry. go ahead. i interrupted. he had a beer station!

>> he bought the st. louis browns because he thought it would be a good way to sell more beer. he opened up a kind of branch of his ty vergne, i guess. like a little beer garden in the outfield's. it would be a branch of his tavern from down the street. then he had -- he was good at cross marketing, because he also had the waiters in the actual tavern dressed up in rounds uniforms. he was pushing both directions. he had a lot of other things to entertain people. he billed sportsman's park in the old st. louis ballpark as the corny island of the west. it was all about entertainment. if we think that there is too much destruction and ballparks today, it has a long history. >> but he was like a working class. if you wanted a working class audience, he kept prices down

to a quarter. he served beer. he did all this other stuff to draw when -- >> it was all about entertaining the working class. >> that was like american -- >> he was part of some of a group of teams that were officially called the american association. it was colloquially known as the beer and whiskey lead. >> that is the lead i wanted to be. and >> yeah that league was a cool thing. their opposite number was the national league. the american association is not the route of today's american league but the national league is today's root of the national, and it started out trying to make to push baseball in the opposite direction. it was all about making it more -- >> presbyterian? >> presbyterian. good word. exclusive, virtuous. they had rules that there was

no baseball played on sunday. there was no alcohol served in any of the ballparks. and it was all about how baseball represents virtue and uprightness and every noble thing in the american character, but a lot of those things were actually code words for a certain kind of elitism. and keeping out the riffraff and so forth. they would allow the riffraff -ing where they could make money from them, but in fact in many of the ballparks then, particularly the national league ones, there was a very rigid economic segregation. the bleachers were completely separate from the rest of the ballpark. you could not walk from a cheap seat into the grandstand area because you had a separate entrance, separate bathrooms and so. fourth yes, it was a very rigid economic segregation, but some of that, to be fair, was kind

of the weird way people did things in those days. the old metropolitan opera house in new iraq which was built in 1883 around the time that baseball was getting bigger and bigger and a lot of the very stuff we're talking about was happening, the upper balcony, the cheaper seats were called the family circle. you entered them from a separate door on the street through their own lobby and their own staircase. it never connected to the main lobby so that the fancy people did not have to mix with the for poor people upstairs. there was a kind of expectation and economic segregation in those states that was considered strangely normal by both sides of the equation for a while. >> we know in kansas city that nothing good comes from chicago. william whole bergh who owned

the chicago -- >> he was the founder of the national league. >> it was recognized because of spalding. >> yes, he actually founded spalding sporting goods. they were the great advocates of the national league and virtue and this whole, and the kind of mythology that led to ultimately field of dreams. >> some of spalding's writings looks like -- >> he was wildly over the top about american character and nobility and manhood. >> yeah, all that. stuff >> all that virtuous stuff. but it also led to wet was later revealed to be an entirely and completely fake history of the origins of baseball. the national league commissioned a study. all of major league baseball studied commission on the

history of baseball and they determined that it was invented by this man on the field in rural cooperatives cooperstown new york that's why the baseball hall of fame is in cooperstown. it started subsequently you know that was basically a fiction created to further this miss of rural virtue. because in cities they were considered dirty and messi, and a gang full of immigrants and all that. this noble gang could not possibly you know have this there, so they divides devised this history. and they carried the day enough to get to the the hall of fame building cooperstown. even now the hall of fame itself has acknowledged it is pretty much made up. >> so one of the actual origins? do you know? i don't know? >> there's a wonderful guy name

john -- who is a fantastic writer. and he is now starting in major league baseball. and he wrote baseball in the garden of eaton. it traces the early years of how the game itself developed. and in fact, it developed from many games. some of which are english games, like not only cricket light but rounders. and there were different versions played in different areas. a lot of it wasn't new england. >> like james mason or something? >> no no. and they try to pretend that it was that in double day but apparently it wasn't. and then it gradually came together, and it became more and more popular, and there was apparently one set of rules in new york, and another in boston. and at one point we as the game became more and more comic common and more popular, and intercity games began to be

played. there was a kind of a big summit meeting and they brought together representatives of teams from various cities into new york, and they codified a set of rules. if i remember correctly, i think the number of innings were not you know everywhere. and certain other key things were different versions were played differently. then beginning in the late 19th century and onward, those things were more codified. >> okay so there is a section in your book would you talk about the golden age. >> right. >> i want to talk a bit about that so when did the golden age of american ballparks arrive, and why was it golden in your point of view? what makes gold? and >> so the golden age and i guess i should say i guess it was time before the golden age as things were getting bigger

and bigger and baseball was becoming more popular, and more of a spectator sport, the field and a few seats became more and more elaborate. the constructions became more elaborate. >> it started burning down. >> yes he started bringing down, and the most elaborate of all is this amazing thing in boston called south and grounds, that had these huge victorian towers. >> beautiful way. >> yeah it only lasted i think eight or nine years and then it burned down. and it seems like the owners had under insured it so they can afford to rebuild it. but then as fireproof construction became possible, steel, concrete and so forth. they began to be built that way. and baseball was becoming still bigger. to remember it was other than a little bit of boxing, he was essentially are only professional sport in this

country. and another thing, and let me digress for a second, another thing that contributed to its growth by the way, and this is another wonderful reminder of how baseball connects to everything. as was the development of intercity train service. it was when there were train connections between various cities, that the leagues actually developed and professional baseball came there. >> also people could travel to play. >> yes. >> you couldn't didn't drive your horse ride your horse down there. >> yes a team in brooklyn could only really play another team in brooklyn are maybe across the river in new york, you could not play a team in boston or chicago or whatever. not if it was going to take three or four days to get their back each time. and you certainly could have a reliable schedule. so once there was intercity train service, then suddenly everything began to fall into

place. then real modern baseball developed. and by the same token just to jump ahead, it was only at the moment of fidget travel, permitting fast coast to coast travel in this country, that baseball professional baseball or major league baseball expanded to california. we >> yes. >> it's not an accident that those two things coincided. >> so of these classic stadiums you know abbots field we all know, we all know but really in chicago, so shied park? what is that. >> yes shied park was incredible. >> they are beautiful pictures in the book. >> yes right right wing. >> shied park was 1909, and it was one of the earliest of the golden age. and one of the most ornate. it was like an elaborate with exposure on the outside, and

then you go in through this huge rotunda and then you are in the field. and then you see it from the other side is just a field, but if you saw it from the home plate side, it look like a monumental building. you know it look like an opera house or something like that. and that was an incredibly important moment in the evolution of this. then came forbes field in pittsburgh, and then fenway, you know regularly it's extra. >> which of those is the greatest? and we're or your standards of judgment. you do develop a way of thinking about this. so if you could explain that to people and what you think is good? >> well it's a combination of things really, first on the exterior is a really nice piece of architecture that feels like the home of the city, and like it belongs in the city and

enrich is it? we because a ballpark among other things, is an important part of public space. you know is it's to say that along with parks that we are beginning to develop in the mid 19th century, and even cemeteries the ballpark was one of the ways in which is working class immigrants, or just working class people in general, could experience some bit of the countryside. remember if you worked in a factory, you probably worked six days a week, had nothing but sundays off and you had no way to go to the country. i'm going to the ballpark was one of the experiences that you had. and that's why there was a ban on sunday games, that's why it had a whole other agenda, it was about keeping immigrants out. because it was the only day they could go. but it's also the field itself and the seating and how close you felt to the action and how

you saw it. and the way in which the whole thing work together as a communal that's a communal space. >> one of the things of these feels the united never seen really bad jog around it in it's amazing how much it fits into the neighborhood that it's in it doesn't feel over imposing it's just right there. and i expected it to be a big deal and it's like no no it's right here. >> exactly exactly. but there is this ignore miss saying that seats all these people, and yet it just kind of fits there with all these houses around it. and it all seems absolutely normal. you put it very well i think by saying that. probably although in never saw it, we -- field was probably the best of all. >> it is so legendary, because it was lost in essence. >> yes and also a lot of important history happened.

there >> is everybody know what edits feel is? >> yes baseball was integrated there because jackie robinson you don't let the record so he was seen by the dar jurors when he played for the negro league team in kansas city. and he was signed in kansas city to come to brooklyn and pale and play for the dodgers. so kansas city plays an important role in that history score and i think it was probably the very best because of its history and its physical qualities. we >> there's also funny things where they screw things up here you know and was that the one where they had only one entrance and you couldn't get everyone in the ballpark in time? there was a rotunda. >> yes it was designed to rotunda and was actually too small. >> how do you get in? >> you would never pass the fire wall today.

and they did make some tweets tweaks to it, and they fix it over time. and they also forgot a press box which you know but all that eventually got taken care of. but they were you know the early ballparks, while they were kind of grand and beautiful buildings, they also were kind of creatures of circumstance. and their shapes were often determined by the streets of the neighborhood. or by how much land the neighbors could buy. in washington d.c., griffiths had an amazing notch cut out of right field. a because there were two houses, that would not sell. and so they kind of shaped it around it. and it was far enough out. >> it's like that bugs bunny cartoon, where he refuses to sells out. >> right right and so the most

famous example, is green monster at fenway, which has to do with the way it's cut right close to the edge of the site. and not allowed the field as much base in left field as in right field. that kind of symmetry and difference and idiosyncrasy you know it's a key part of baseball. and baseball history. unlike a hockey rink or basketball. we or football. every ball field is a little bit different. but diamond is exact and precise. the outfield varies and there are no rules about the outfield, and theoretically it could go on forever. it could be infinite. it was so far. but there are no absolute rules

>> they had idiosyncrasies and they were weird and strange as you mentioned. and we enter when i call the empire strikes back period of baseball stadiums which you called the era of concrete donuts beginning in the fifties. could you set that up for us? >> another part of the thesis of the book it is that baseball reflects our whole culture and attitude about cities over the years. as we were everywhere in this country pretty much rejecting cities and moving out wherever the automobile would take us in the post war era where we started with baseball. >> this is like cleveland's mistake -- >> cleveland's mistake by the lake is almost any category by itself. it was built in the late

thirties. would it actually did was it's actually the beginning of a very pernicious trend, which was municipal financing of stadiums. nobody else was doing that. cleveland just decided to do it. it opened a lot of back doors and it was not a good stadium, because it was far too big. 80,000 seats. it was bad on so many levels. cleveland is -- >> but it led to one great movie. >> yes. >> i just recently watched it with my son. you guys are familiar with it. would our other concrete donuts that were the most egregious offenders? >> most egregious offenders were probably rfk in washington. veterans stadium.

>> yes i want to seeping floyd. they're >> pittsburgh. candlestick in san francisco. and there were plenty of others. actually, even worse was the later part of that generation when they foolishly thought that the way to solve the problems of those things was -- so we got things like the king dome in seattle, which is truly the worst place i've ever seen a baseball game in my life. and many others, so, that was a grim time. it was also based on a myth. talking a lot about myths tonight. >> it's all about myths. >> yes, there are good myths and bad myths. maybe i should have said fallacy. it's a fallacy that you can have football and baseball in

the same ballpark. you cannot without compromising both of them a lot. >> here's where we come off looking semi decent or even better than that. >> kansas city was the only smart city in america in the 19 seventies, actually, in that it is the only place, other than l.a., where the dodger stadium was built for baseball only, but between -- in the post war era for several decades, only dodgers stadium and arrowhead and coffin were built as baseball only places. everybody else thought you could do it all in the same stadium and we got this whole generation truly horrible places. >> you are very complimentary about the architecture of that. although you point out that one of the things it does not do is

be a -- irregular, because it is set in an open space. but one of the things that you think are good about coffin, what makes it work as a stadium? >> what makes it work -- i'm mixed about it, but the first thing that has to be said about it that is really good is that it was built as a baseball park and not a multi purpose stadium. kansas city deserves credit for making that decision and then there is this beautiful kind of lyrical flow in the way that the walls have curved down. >> it is pretty. >> it is quite lovely, really. if you see it from the home plate side it looks a lot like other big concrete stadiums. >> it's not so much when you're walking, it's not so beautiful. >> they've done a lot of work on it in the last generation where the team decided to stay their own and re-up --

i think it's actually better and more comfortable in some ways than it was before. but the nicest thing is that kind of lyrical thing in the outfield, the way the sides go down. and you know, the waterfall, the scoreboard, all that stuff. it's kind of a cool relic of a mid century style that i like a lot. but even though i like it i don't like it so much that i would argue against a downtown stadium. >> we are getting there. i would love there to be a downtown stadium. i have a couple of steps i want to lead you through. >> take your time. take your time. >> one of them is the next thing that happened after that year. canyon yards. >> cameron yards was transformational. >> is everybody familiar with this? it's in baltimore. cameron yards. how many have been there? >> the baltimore oriole's completely changed baseball in

1992 with the opening of that ballpark. >> we kicked their butts in the playoff. >> well, you know. unfortunately good architecture is not a guarantee of good baseball. that is a whole other discussion, but it is the only -- every building type evolves a certain amount. libraries, hospitals, schools, houses, everything evolves and changes overtime. baseball parks is the only example i could think of where one single building completely turned around a whole way of building things 180 degrees. >> everybody started building downtown after. that >> everybody started building. most, not all, but everybody started building baseball only. and fairly traditional in lay out, often more eccentric and idiosyncratic, which --

>> i mean it was like packed bell park. my wife is from san francisco. i've been to that place. >> fantastic. san francisco went from having one of the worst ballparks and major league to having one of the best. leaping over everyone else in one fell swoop. but cameron yards was transformational. it really was. >> was that an eight showcase stadium? >> there was an angel k stadium designed out of kansas city. >> so we had this amazing design of long tradition. you are very emphatic in the book about how important that has been. in fact i'm going to quote. you by happenstance, and became for all intents and purposes the nation center of sports for architecture in the last quarter century of the 20th century onward. many of the architectural designs for sports facilities all over the world would emerge from this medium sized midwestern city, but otherwise had no claim as an architectural center.

elaborate. how did this happen? >> it happened -- >> is this good? i mean why did they get all that business? >> well, it kind of goes back to the arrowhead coffin complex. and when that was originally done it was the basic idea was done done by an architect named charles. he came up with a notion of a rolling roof. >> he talked about it all the time. >> that would sit in between the two stadiums and could go role in one direction or the other depending on which one was in use and when it was not in use on either one would be in the center and create a covered plaza. and that was the early seventies where nobody was doing anything remotely like that. it was quite visionary.

everybody said that was really cool and they started building it and then discovered that not only was the technology not fully there to do it smoothly and easily it was going to be quite a bit more expensive than the county had anticipated. so it was value engineered out. and that might and they had already begun to build the two separate stadium so they just kept going. charles deaton ended up working for a local firm called myers which merged with another firm, but it got so much attention that they then started getting other jobs to do ballparks and other athletic facilities. then they attracted the attention of a chill k, which is an enormous international firm that was not strong and sports architecture and said hey guys, why don't you let us

buy you and become part of us and. we will be sports architect but you guys keep doing it, so several of their architects said okay and they became the sports division of hok but set the condition that they would not move to st. louis but remain in kansas city. that -- they were smart. they were aggressive. they got an enormous amount of work. they just kept growing. there weren't all that many ballparks and arenas and stadiums that get built and it's not as though houses or office buildings force cools or would have you it's not like we need 100 different architecture firms doing them because if we had 100 architecture firms doing them 90 of them would be out of work most of the time. so it is small and specialized and they were able to say to

clients we know how all this stuff works and they do. that firm, over the years, eventually broke away from the parent firm hok and then changed its name to populace. and they are still across the street. their success made kansas city, as i said, the world capital for sports architecture. it's one of the major exports of kansas city. >> we're going to open this session for questions in just one second. i'm going to try to end this at 7:30 so you could come up and sign and have paul sign books for you. i want you to talk about the downtown stadium in kansas city that we should have built. obviously the architectural -- populous. >> i think you would be obviously hard for kansas city to not -- >> let's get that firm from denver!

>> right. right. there is a couple of other people doing stuff. and interested in talented new york architect is now doing the new ballpark for oakland which is the most interesting and promising project around but populace has done some wonderful stuff. including the ballpark which i think is my favorite among the piano sea in pittsburgh as well as cameron yards, san francisco which is fantastic. and quite a number of others so it would be hard to imagine that the team would not select a local architect, given that the local architect happens also to be the most famous sports architecture firm in the world. so you know, it's not like they would say well, these are just local guys. we better go to some big guy from new york or chicago when

the biggest people in that industry happened to be the local people. i think the big question about it downtown ballpark is who the architect would be but precisely where the site should be, and how it would be paid for. for me there is no question that it is the right thing for kansas city to do. the thing that is least appealing about kauffman is the location and the fact -- that >> there was never any economic development around that stadium. you drive out there -- >> that's right. it's a nowhere place. you have to drive to and from it. it is surrounded by a sea of asphalt parking places. it's not connected to anything. what we have seen in the years since baltimore is how beautifully baseball integrates into a whole urban fabric. people want that, they like it.

they love to be able to walk or take a street car to a game. they love being able to have something to eat, drink, go to other places. combine it with other things. and so forth. >> all those things were available, by the way, which you write quite a bit about at the other stadium which i never saw -- >> the municipal. >> yes, the municipal. >> 22nd and brooklyn. >> that was the sight of baseball stadiums in kansas city up until the seventies. the chiefs played there. in fact i think they were playing their the last time they won the super bowl. >> the chiefs played there. but underscoring the point that a good ballpark is not going to work for football, because that stadium was so much a baseball park, so completely, in fact so good a baseball park in its layout and everything else, to make it work for football they

had to put huge rows of temporary seating into the outfield on one whole side. as a result of that the chiefs could not play any home games for the first month in the season. >> that's bad. >> they overlapped with the baseball season, so they had to wait for the baseball season to end before they could actually converted to football use, because it was naturally a baseball park. >> this is part of your book is about. by the way if, you have a question step up. now is the time. walk right up here. my dad remembers and has told me stories about going to that stadium when the days were leaving and it was known. nobody was there. getting a whole pile of foul balls. you would just run around and pick them up. that was his memory. >> right. right. >> here we have our questions.

>> thank you. i'm from chicago. i've been here ten years, so i'm fully behind the local teams. how much would you say the longevity of really field and fenway park has to do with the locations -- i know that the lights's and the cause it's keeper closed even though that place blocked the viewer no view -- that was dramatic for a lot of fans. how much their locations are so into the neighborhood. >> completely. i think it is a lot of different historical circumstances that led those to great ballparks from the golden age to be retained. we almost lost fenway. the red sox, under the previous ownership were working on plans

to replace it. then the team in the end -- there is no certainty would have happened but they were serious about doing it. then ultimately they sold the team, the subsequent ownership decided that was crazy and that they had a sort of great asset, that if they could only upgrade and modernize gently, a little bit, it would turn out to be absolutely the case. chicago, yeah, it's beautifully integrated as a neighborhood. it remains one of the most beloved places there is. on the other hand so are other places we were not lucky enough to keep. i mean it's ironic that ebbets field in brooklyn was lost. it could be spectacular today and now it went in the fifties because probably nobody cared about brooklyn and they moved to the suburbs.

today everybody wants to be in brooklyn. and if it had a ballpark that actually in some ways was even better then wrigley field and fenway, it would probably be the nicest place of all. there are always many factors that yes, location is a very big part of it. >> yes. >> pittsburgh, philadelphia, cincinnati, multipurpose games. they knocked those downs and built separate baseball in football stadiums while here we already have separate baseball and football stadiums. would if they were to build the ballpark downtown with necessarily following suit with football or just leave it where it is -- >> i'm quite sure they would leave it where it is for a couple of reasons. when my understanding is the chiefs would actually want to acquire kauffman as a practice field. >> like turning a baseball

field into a football field? >> not with seating but they would use it as a practice field. and so that is one reason. the other is that football does not fit downtown the way baseball does. >> football -- >> yes there are several reasons and tailgating is a very important one of those reasons. it is part of the culture of football. people do tailgate. you need a parking lot and so forth. also, a football stadium is invariably bigger, and therefore, i think a little more intrusive in a city. a baseball park, while it is hardly small, it's just enough smaller so that it kind of fits into a city nicely and we'll. then the final reason and maybe the most important is a football stadium is used eight times a year. a baseball park, at the minimum

is used 81 times a year, so it's ten times as often. the thing that kills a city is dead things that are not operating. >> right. >> it's enough that we have everything we need, but sadly their big boxes that are empty often, we don't want another big empty thing all the time. my strong argument would be leave arrowhead where it is. let them expand and take over the whole complex and move the royals into downtown. >> it's a testament to -- whenever i see the proposal on facebook, the facebook comments, what will people do for parking? how do we address that? >> they will figure it out. they figured it out.

san francisco has minimal parking and it seems to work. most of them do. you can have -- more and more people are living downtown and more and more people will walk or they will park in an outlying area and have a shuttle. it will work. wood has worked so well in a dozen or more other cities, including, by the way, houston, which is one of the most automobile-centric cities in the world, and they moved from the astrodome into downtown. so it would work here as well. yes, sir. >> in your book you argue that hok's original design for cameron we'd be -- without the pushback of jacob smith and geno, you would have a proliferation of concrete -- >> it's an interesting question. yes, it is definitely true that

the first scheme that hok presented to the oriole's -- it was not a dome but a more traditional concrete open stadium. in fact, the owner of the oils said to me i think what they did was run to chicago and give that to the white socks, because the new comiskey park looked a lot like wet they tried to -- indeed it opened the year before, so it's possible, given it to take longer to build. anyway, but then they got it. they produced something quite wonderful. i think if that hadn't happened somewhere, something else would've happened, because we were beginning to experience a huge resurgence of downtown living. downtown working.

downtown entertainment. and so forth. it might not have happened in baltimore in 1992, it could've happened in another city five years later, ten years later, but some other team would have said at some point, we don't want a concrete donut that looks like a freeway overpass. we want a real baseball park. architects would have ultimately, i think responded. that is my assessment. we don't know 100 percent. what happened happened. >> what if the customer -- >> ultimately an olive architecture would clients want matters. so one of the things the people at populists are proudest of is that they serve their clients. they do with their clients wanted and happily here they hadn't light and client and

they want it's something important. but to the point about downtown revivals were just happening anyway and it would have made its way into baseball somewhere. one of the reasons they feel for kansas city is that maybe it's just as well that it did not happen 15 years ago when there was a minor push to move the oriole's downtown. be because downtown kansas city, not sure if it was truly ready for it yet. and we might have expected or you might have expected too much foot -- for a ballpark. you can't alone turn around to downtown. but where it can do is be a fantastic reinforcement of a larger revival and make it even stronger and push it forward even more, and connect to all the other things happening. today as opposed to 15 years ago there are so many more

people living in downtown, kansas city. there are more people working, there's more entertainment. there are only neighborhoods that are developing. the whole momentum in the city is more focused downtown than it used to be. so in fact, now it would not be all on the shoulders of a ballpark to turn around to downtown, which it would not have succeeded in doing anyway. >> we have time for two more questions. >> i'm a white socks guy. i was curious -- the old comiskey. >> the old comiskey? >> and the monstrosity of the new comiskey. >> i agree with you. it is the last of the concrete donuts. it opened one year before camped in yards before baltimore changed everything. it was out of date the minute

it opened. it is a sad story and i gather but i've not been back to it in a while and they a few years ago did some changes. people say they made it a little bit better but a better way to put it is they made it less awful. the best comment about it was from really a perceptive writer named john past year, another architecture writer of baseball. who calculated that front row of the upper deck is further from the field than the last row of the old upper deck and -- so much of baseball is about intimacy and how can you maneuver things so that the greatest number of people are the closest to the field and

the most connected to the field, which is again another important thing that camden yards did and baltimore. many of the concrete donuts are truly just circles. about this abstract shape of a big circle, because you could kind of put a diamond in it. you could put a football grid in it. it could all be plumped into a circle. but in fact, that does not work for baseball. >> the all the old comiskey? >> the old comiskey? i thought the old comiskey was funky and nice. it did not have quite the truly beautiful appeal of wrigley uptown. i did not have the magic of the brick wall, the ivy and all that stuff it. did not integrate into the neighborhood as well. it was a wonderful ballpark. the best of those early generation ballparks law -- they were among the only

buildings ever built that sort of combined funking us and monumentality. two things that are almost almost mutually exclusive and architecture. that one sort of exemplified that. there was something kind of grand and funky about, it but at the same time -- i find it very likable, but not lovable. not as really was always lovable. but it was still 100 times better than the new one. >> you get the last word. >> i was going to say i agree with you on everything, actually. >> not even my wife agrees with me on everything. >> i would love to have -- i'm all for downtown development. i live in kansas city. we would love to have the stadium downtown. we have this one cultural part of our city that isn't maybe not like other towns because we are from the midwest.

we are cattle and we are into barbecue, and you talk about football being a tailgating kind of sport. but here, tailgating is a really big part of baseball. i wonder how the general public that goes to those games and kind. >> i defer to the local. and his wisdom. i said i had a top with the

downtown council this morning. any city that is big enough to contain both arthur brian and the nelson museum has to be more interesting and complicated and wonderful and most of these in america. >> thank you. >> i still believe that. you know, just do your barbecues some other time. >> thank you. >> thank you. could we give a round of applause for paul? >> thank you.