instead, a decision he now regretted. McAleer planned to go to Hot Springs soon as well, but before he did he wanted to make sure that work on Fenway Park was on schedule.
While the January cold spell had made it impossible to pour concrete, work elsewhere on the ballpark had progressed nicely. Underneath the grandstand, in areas that could be temporarily heated, masons used hollow tile brick to build partitions and create rooms for the umpires, storage, concessions, and other uses. The clubhouses for each team, complete with shower baths, had been roughed in, as had the team offices. Now that the weather had broken, the pace picked up considerably, and work resumed on the stands.
Concrete workers began to build forms and pour concrete for what were known as the "treads," or steps, upon which would sit thirty-two rows of grandstand seats, not including the box seats. Tied to the main structure by reinforced steel, the treads had a design that was unique in several ways. For one, instead of using stone aggregate in the concrete mix, workers used cinders, which lowered the weight by nearly one-third, from 150 pounds per cubic foot to only 110 pounds, reducing both the cost and the weight load on the deck. The size of the treads also varied. Toward the front of the grandstand, where seats would be more costly, each tread was forty inches in width, giving patrons ample leg room. But as one went higher up in the stands the width of the treads narrowed, first to thirty-two inches and finally to only thirty inches, a variation that would trip up generations of fans. Each tread step rose from between eight and eleven inches and for drainage purposes was angled ever so slightly back so that water ran down toward the field, where it could be carried away by drains at the base of the stands. Each box seat section was truly a box, separated from other seats by a poured concrete wall and from other boxes by a pipe rail. Unlike today, the box seats did not go all the way down to field level—the floor of the first row of box seats sat three feet above the field.
As the stands rose from the field the slope of the grandstand deck gradually became steeper. The Fenway Park grandstand utilized what is known as a "rising floor," not one built at a uniform pitch from the field to the back of the stands, but one that was slightly concave. At the base of the grandstand the pitch was only 15 percent, but as the stands went higher—roughly every eighteen to twenty feet, or each time a pier was crossed—the pitch was increased by one degree. The top section sat at a twenty-degree pitch in relation to the field. The result was better sightlines and more seats, and the back of the grandstand stood six and a half feet higher than if the grandstand had had a uniform pitch.
Increasing the pitch in this manner also allowed the grandstand roof to match the height of the pavilion and, by keeping the same roofline, made it appear more like it was part of the same overall structure (albeit separated by an open alleyway between the two stands). Despite its appearance, the pavilion was a completely separate structure, and while Fenway Park was credited as being a concrete-and-steel ballpark, that was true only in regard to the grandstand. The pavilion rested on concrete piers, and the roof was supported by structural steel columns that started at grade, but the pavilion stands were not supported by or built of reinforced concrete.
The rest of the pavilion, including the seats, was built of wood, some recycled from the Huntington Avenue Grounds. The old wooden pavilion structure at the Huntington Avenue Grounds had been carefully taken apart, and much of the lumber was reused in the construction of the stands for the Fenway pavilion. Apart from the steel roof supports, the pavilion was really nothing more than a glorified section of bleachers, with bare wooden plank seats resting atop a maze of robust wooden scaffolding, as prone to fire as the old
While the January cold spell had made it impossible to pour concrete, work elsewhere on the ballpark had progressed nicely. Underneath the grandstand, in areas that could be temporarily heated, masons used hollow tile brick to build partitions and create rooms for the umpires, storage, concessions, and other uses. The clubhouses for each team, complete with shower baths, had been roughed in, as had the team offices. Now that the weather had broken, the pace picked up considerably, and work resumed on the stands.
Concrete workers began to build forms and pour concrete for what were known as the "treads," or steps, upon which would sit thirty-two rows of grandstand seats, not including the box seats. Tied to the main structure by reinforced steel, the treads had a design that was unique in several ways. For one, instead of using stone aggregate in the concrete mix, workers used cinders, which lowered the weight by nearly one-third, from 150 pounds per cubic foot to only 110 pounds, reducing both the cost and the weight load on the deck. The size of the treads also varied. Toward the front of the grandstand, where seats would be more costly, each tread was forty inches in width, giving patrons ample leg room. But as one went higher up in the stands the width of the treads narrowed, first to thirty-two inches and finally to only thirty inches, a variation that would trip up generations of fans. Each tread step rose from between eight and eleven inches and for drainage purposes was angled ever so slightly back so that water ran down toward the field, where it could be carried away by drains at the base of the stands. Each box seat section was truly a box, separated from other seats by a poured concrete wall and from other boxes by a pipe rail. Unlike today, the box seats did not go all the way down to field level—the floor of the first row of box seats sat three feet above the field.
As the stands rose from the field the slope of the grandstand deck gradually became steeper. The Fenway Park grandstand utilized what is known as a "rising floor," not one built at a uniform pitch from the field to the back of the stands, but one that was slightly concave. At the base of the grandstand the pitch was only 15 percent, but as the stands went higher—roughly every eighteen to twenty feet, or each time a pier was crossed—the pitch was increased by one degree. The top section sat at a twenty-degree pitch in relation to the field. The result was better sightlines and more seats, and the back of the grandstand stood six and a half feet higher than if the grandstand had had a uniform pitch.
Increasing the pitch in this manner also allowed the grandstand roof to match the height of the pavilion and, by keeping the same roofline, made it appear more like it was part of the same overall structure (albeit separated by an open alleyway between the two stands). Despite its appearance, the pavilion was a completely separate structure, and while Fenway Park was credited as being a concrete-and-steel ballpark, that was true only in regard to the grandstand. The pavilion rested on concrete piers, and the roof was supported by structural steel columns that started at grade, but the pavilion stands were not supported by or built of reinforced concrete.
The rest of the pavilion, including the seats, was built of wood, some recycled from the Huntington Avenue Grounds. The old wooden pavilion structure at the Huntington Avenue Grounds had been carefully taken apart, and much of the lumber was reused in the construction of the stands for the Fenway pavilion. Apart from the steel roof supports, the pavilion was really nothing more than a glorified section of bleachers, with bare wooden plank seats resting atop a maze of robust wooden scaffolding, as prone to fire as the old
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