- 4 hours ago
Architectural Digest explores the history and architecture of Dodger Stadium, one of Los Angeles' most iconic landmarks. Join architect and urban planner Janet Marie Smith as she reveals how the legendary 1962 ballpark was carved into Chavez Ravine, its innovative mid-century modern design, and how Downtown L.A.'s skyline developed in its view.
Credits
National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
Cooperstown, N.Y.
Artist Renderings of Dodger Stadium Courtesy of http://walteromalley.com
Credits
National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
Cooperstown, N.Y.
Artist Renderings of Dodger Stadium Courtesy of http://walteromalley.com
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00We talk a lot about the architecture of ballparks, but it's more than that.
00:07Baseball refers to itself as America's pastime, and there's a certain romance to it.
00:13I think the pace of the game allows for a camaraderie that is really special,
00:19a shared experience that baseball allows over the course of 81 home games a year.
00:27Sports allow you to reflect the city you're in, the culture of the city.
00:32Teams have a personality, and that often transcends ownership, which is kind of amazing.
00:38I enjoy the challenge of trying to give it life.
00:43I'm Janet Marie Smith. I'm Executive Vice President of Planning and Development for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
00:53I'm trained as an architect and an urban planner, but along the way,
00:57baseball was my pastime, and I enjoy going to ballparks because that's what baseball fans do.
01:02The projects that I think of as being my babies are Oriole Park at Camden Yards,
01:08the transformation of the 1996 Olympic Stadium in Atlanta, which became Turner Field,
01:12the renovation of Fenway Park in Boston, the oldest park in the major leagues. And here I am at beautiful
01:19Dodger Stadium and just having a blast. Dodger Stadium stands alone no matter what lens you look at.
01:27It's the third oldest in the major leagues behind Fenway Park in Wrigley Field.
01:32It is such a reflection of the 1960s. It's the only stadium I know of with pastel color seats.
01:39It's the only one that has these crazy folded roofs and corrugated metal that's really a reflection
01:45of the attitude about that kind of architectural style. I think we often think of baseball parks as
01:51being red brick and beautiful steel trusses with a coat of either blue or green paint. But there's
01:58something equally powerful about being the antithesis of that, and this is the antithesis of that.
02:04But it's perfect in this site surrounded by Elysian Park and the sunshine of Southern California and all
02:12the planting that has grown up over the years. I think I could have been the team historian when I
02:18was a kid. My very first time coming to the ballpark was when I was seven years old, and I
02:23remember it
02:24like it was yesterday. And that's the amazing part working here because what other place do you get to
02:29visit your childhood every day? The city of Los Angeles was the ultimate plan B for the Brooklyn
02:35Dodgers because Jackie Robinson joins the Dodgers. And from 47 to 56, they're in the World Series or
02:41knocking on the door every single year. So they're a success on the field. But a ballpark that they
02:47played in had been built in 1913, and it's a neighborhood ballpark. And that means there's no chance for
02:53expansion. And so when Walter O'Malley takes over as the president of the team in 1950, he sees that
02:59we've got to get bigger. Walter O'Malley sees all the freeway access, and he sees this place Chabez Ravine,
03:06and he immediately thinks that that would be the perfect place to have a stadium.
03:11I think Dodger Stadium and Disneyland, they go hand in hand. Disneyland opens July 17, 1955. Disneyland
03:20sets the standard for entertainment. Walter O'Malley knew that Southern California fans were used to
03:25great venues already. He was going to do it on a big scale. Every building in baseball says that they
03:32have perfect sight lines, but this building really does. I mean, it's one of the byproducts of the use of
03:39the concrete. Before concrete became a regular building material, columns were used to bring
03:46the seating ball closer to the playing field. Those columns gave the ballpark intimacy,
03:50but it also gave you obstructed views. And the parks that still have them, Wrigley Field and Fenway Park,
03:56sort of popular to groan about sitting behind a column. But that column is your friend. That column
04:01is pulling you closer to the playing field. But here at Dodger Stadium, one of the first buildings that was
04:06built as a baseball park with the kind of cantilevered levels, you were able to avoid those columns.
04:12There's also a configuration. It's not a horseshoe. It's not round. And it's not this sort of expanded
04:19V-shape. It's really perfectly focused on the infield.
04:26Not only did they build it from concrete, but the company that built the stadium had never built a
04:32stadium before. It was Vanell Construction in Alhambra. They had a six-acre casting yard
04:38beyond center field. So just imagine more than 25,000 pieces of concrete being precast and numbered
04:46in this center field area. But before, they had to move eight million cubic yards of dirt to be able
04:52to
04:52dig a bowl into the landscape. The actual groundbreaking was September 1959.
04:59The original architect of Dodger Stadium was Emil Prager. Now, he also served in World War I and World
05:06War II. And where the concrete comes in, he took part as a naval captain in the invasion of Normandy
05:13in 1944.
05:14And the concrete breakwaters were part of that invasion. Now, somehow you're able to tie the concrete
05:21breakwaters from the invasion of Normandy to Walter O'Malley and Emil Prager getting together in 1953.
05:28And taking that same concept of using concrete, and they built a little ballpark named Holman Stadium
05:34in Burrow Beach. But that's how it started. And so, of course, you're going to get the expert in concrete
05:39and the company that had never built a ballpark before. And somehow it all came together.
05:45In 2012, there were some areas of Dodger Stadium that were 1962 and not in a good way.
05:51We needed to find a way to modernize it without changing its vibe.
05:58Here we are at the top deck of Dodger Stadium. One of the most dramatic views in all of baseball
06:04and certainly the most dramatic view here. The original design of the scoreboards were these
06:09hex shapes, one over each pavilion. We realized that we really needed places for sponsorship signage.
06:15So we worked really closely with our graphic design team to create a composition of these hexagonal signs
06:22that mimic the scoreboard. One of the things that's so beautiful about mid-century modern architecture is
06:29not everything like hits you over the head with how artfully designed it is. These light towers,
06:35for instance, these slender poles that taper at the top are so unique and something that probably
06:41engineering standards would never let you do today, but they're still holding up our lights and we're
06:46still so proud of how they look sitting on the horizon. One of the other things that I love about
06:52Dodger Stadium is the location of our bullpens. It's unique to baseball. In many parks, they sit parallel
06:59to the field or maybe their positions are stacked. At Dodger Stadium, they separate the pavilions
07:05from the main body of the stadium and uniquely the picture is always throwing essentially the same
07:11direction as when they come out on the mound. You see that the choice of the colors was selected to
07:18mimic the sunset. If you're here late enough for the sun to set, you'll see that when the sun goes
07:25low
07:25enough in the sky that it throws light underneath these folded roofs. It creates a pattern and a rhythm
07:33and we ask our electrical engineers to position the lights so that they do what the sun does naturally
07:40when they're turned on. If you look at the photographs of the way this site was literally carved into the
07:47hillside of Chavez Ravine and designed so that every level you enter at grade, even though there's 110 feet
07:54from the top to the bottom, you enter the top deck at grade, you enter the lower level at grade.
08:00So that's a
08:01really interesting way of looking at the site as doing the job of circulation for you. Everything
08:08that we love about baseball parks is that they don't have a script to follow. Now the infield has set
08:14dimensions, but the outfield, no. There's a range that's considered acceptable in baseball. I think
08:20we've always appreciated that the early ballparks of the 1900s, Ebbetsville, Scheib Park, Fenway, were a
08:27result of the tight urban sites they were on. It's sort of legendary that Ebbets Field had 297 down the
08:33right field line and a kink in the scoreboard. And of course the green monster in Boston is because
08:38they ran out of real estate down the left field line. And Dodger Stadium is one of the few parks
08:43that
08:43has symmetry to it.
08:53There are dramatic views at Dodger Stadium no matter where you look, and this view to downtown is really
08:59phenomenal. People often come here and they're like, oh so cool, they sighted the stadium on axis
09:05with downtown. But that's not true at all because when this building was sighted in 1958, City Hall would
09:10have been the only thing on the horizon. So the orientation is the traditional baseball orientation
09:16of putting the third baseline due north and then everything else fell into place and downtown grew
09:21up for our benefit here. This Japanese lantern was something that was in a garden that the Dodgers
09:28had created in the early 60s and was a gift from Japan and we gave it a place of honor.
09:35Every entrance is marked by something different. So many times people get to Dodger Stadium,
09:40they park their car and they can't wait to get there, pitter-patter their heart, there it is,
09:44let's go. And they never look to see where they parked. So we try to put some things at every
09:48entrance so that if you don't remember, you will remember the memorabilia you walked past. So here we
09:54have the retired numbers, other entrances we have oversized bobble heads. The other thing I love
09:59pointing out here is that the hexagonal signs over the stairs were designed in 1959 but not built until
10:072013. We found those drawings in Peter O'Malley's files and we're really pleased to have finally
10:13finished things that were authored half a century ago.
10:19As early as 1963, a year after the stadium opened, Walter O'Malley invested in landscaping
10:26the berms that had been created by carving Dodger Stadium into the hillside. And of course, 60 years
10:32later they've just grown up to be these beautiful lush botanical gardens. And they're these crazy,
10:38huge concrete martini planters that we've lovingly restored. And we're so proud of having the only
10:44botanist on staff of any major league team. And it's become very much, as we hoped, one of our defining
10:51features. And that significant features like the palm trees that Ben Scully lovingly refers to as the
10:58three sisters are preserved in their original location. You know, a few other little special
11:03things like that that are yours to find as you walk around Dodger Stadium. We love that the beach balls
11:10are here. People make fun of Dodger fans throwing the beach ball around. We're kind of in on the jokes,
11:15so we put them out here in our seat colors. We really are excited about the fan base here and
11:22how
11:22international it is and what diversity we have. I think what's special about this place, it's a
11:28community. And so not just the players, the co-workers, the fans, and everybody has this common bond.
11:36But that's the beauty as far as the emotion. That's what you get from this wonderful ballpark,
11:41as far as these wonderful memories, the wins and the losses. It's a back and forth and the spontaneity.
11:47You absolutely never know what's going to happen when the umpire yells, play ball.
11:57We're underneath the pavilions at Dodger Stadium. And when we started thinking about
12:02this unbelievable proximity to the visiting team bullpen on this side, home team on the other side,
12:08we knew we had to do something with that. So we created a bar on each side that looks directly
12:13into
12:13the bullpen. So we wanted to create a little speakeasy vibe. And the architecture is inspired
12:20by the original 1962 Stadium Club designed by Edward Fickett. So we tried to replicate the wood
12:27detailing and the colors as best we could from the photographs. It's like walking into a time capsule to
12:33be in here. We're in Centerville Plaza, the two and a half acre plaza that we added in 2020,
12:45that completed the circumference of plazas around Dodger Stadium and gave us, as Stan Kasten,
12:50our CEO puts it, a new front door. I think the key feature of this plaza are these two bronze
12:57sculptures,
12:58one Jackie Robinson, of course, legendary throughout baseball. His number is retired by all 30 teams.
13:05And Sandy Koufax, the face of Dodger baseball and imported to both Brooklyn and to Los Angeles.
13:12Quotes from Jackie Robinson were chosen in consultation with his widow, Rachel Robinson,
13:17and his daughter, Sharon. His power and impact on America wasn't just on the playing field,
13:23but who he was and what it meant to be the first black man in uniform and a major league
13:28team and
13:29his impact on society. And it was just so moving when these statues were placed here to hear Sandy talk
13:35about what it meant to him to have Jackie Robinson as a teammate and for the two of them to
13:40grace this
13:41new front door at Dodger Stadium. Every generation had their heroes. I think it goes hand in hand,
13:48having a beautiful ballpark, having a consistent background as far as you're used to it,
13:53it's tradition, but you always have heroes. And that's the key.
13:58The player areas, we want them to feel that there's something special about Dodger Stadium too.
14:04In 2012, Stan Kasten said, look, I don't want our players to come here and hear about a new clubhouse.
14:11I want them to show up in April 2013 and walk into a new clubhouse. And we're like, well, okay,
14:18because that gives us like, I don't know, five months to design and build something. And the idea
14:24we came up with was to take out the yellow field level seats, go down, build ourselves a basement,
14:29cover it back up, and voila, we've got a split level clubhouse. Being able to give the players the
14:35space that they need in a conventional location behind the dugout, but invisible to the rest of us.
14:42This hallway in the bowels of Dodger Stadium is the entrance to the clubhouse. And if you know Los
14:48Angeles and you know Los Angeles airport, you know, there's beautiful tile mosaics there that
14:53have been in so many movies and appeared on music albums. And they're just sort of a sign of welcome
14:59to Los Angeles. We wanted to give honor to Janet Bennett, who had designed the mosaics at LAX. And we
15:06shared with her our ideas to have our architect Brenda Levin interpret her vocabulary here at
15:12Dodger Stadium with the various shades of blue.
15:21Everybody thinks about baseball and Dodger Stadium, but also pop culture. There are so many moments.
15:27Would you believe 1966, the Beatles having their second to last concert in their history at Dodger
15:33Stadium, the same year that Elvis Presley filmed a car movie in the stadium parking lot. Elton John
15:38in 1975 had one of his famous concerts. We've had so many different things about the stadium. So
15:45even if you weren't a baseball fan, something always caught your attention in terms of what kind of
15:50event could be staged at Dodger Stadium.
15:56This is one of the things I remember as a kid, because back in the day, would you believe when
16:02a
16:02starting pitcher would maybe go eight innings, and this was more of a novelty?
16:06This was kind of like a chariot bringing somebody in. This is what you would bring the relief pitcher
16:12into the game, the bullpen cart. 1969, every major league team had one of these. And we're the last
16:18team to have our original bullpen cart. When people visit the stadium, they can take a look behind the
16:25Vince Scully press box. And there's so many things to explore. You've got the original lockers,
16:30back from 1962, which were used up until 2012. In this area, we try to wrap up so many little
16:37corners of Dodger history. And I don't think that the Brooklyn Dodgers realized in 1955,
16:42when they won the World Series 50 years later, the surviving members, the 13 came to Los Angeles
16:49for their 50 year reunion. So the Dodger script that started in 1938 was very simple. The only thing they
16:55had to do was add a red number for the 1952 season for television. And the great story about that
17:02was
17:02Walter O'Malley had a focus group. And the focus group was Mrs. O'Malley. She says, I like red. He said,
17:09okay, dear.
17:12Every time we put something out, fans will see it and they'll be like, oh, wait, I've got something like
17:16that. My grandmother's got the own deck circle from Ebbets Field in her basement. Would you like it? And
17:20pretty soon we have a new display. And you know, it's not truly curated the way a museum would curate
17:26that, but we don't mind. It's like a three-dimensional scrapbook for us.
17:31We're in the Vin Scully press box. Back in the day in 1962, you'd have the print in the front
17:37row,
17:37you'd have the columnist in the second row, radio and TV in the back row. And it was just more
17:42of a
17:42functional area. And the great Vin Scully in his Hall of Fame career, there was nothing fancy about his
17:48amenities. He made everything come to life with his voice, but you can see it's very spartan.
17:53A lot of people say you don't want to meet your hero because you could be disappointed. And mine
17:57was Vin Scully, and he just turned out to be the nicest guy in the world. So when you look
18:03around the
18:03stadium, sometimes you can get caught up in the motion. And that's what this place does to you as
18:07far as certain things you never forget. And that's the most wonderful thing when ball players can come
18:13back who maybe played 20, 30, 40 years ago and still feel like they're still in their home ballpark.
18:20Nothing's really changed. It's always tempting when you've had the privilege of working in sports
18:25to index as any fan would on the highlights of a World Series. But I think maybe my most special
18:32memories are more personal and or the satisfaction that I found in the winter when we're here and my
18:39team has been working seven days a week, 20 hours a day, making things happen, knowing what it's going
18:47to be like opening day and knowing that we'll have created something that is a gift to the city,
18:52a gift to Dodger fans and allows this place to continue on. And it is just the honor of a
18:57lifetime
18:58to be given the responsibility for caring for its future.