South Side Park #2, Brotherhood Park
Life Span: 1890-1893
Location: 35th and Wentworth
Architect: NA
Chicago Tribune, January 19, 1890
Having completed its team the local Players’ League Club will now proceed to put its grounds in order for the coming season. The site leased is 688 feet square, and extends from Thirty-third street to Thirty-fifth street, its eastern line being Wentworth avenue and its western the Rock Island railroad track. A space 450 feet wide and 600 feet long will be inclosed. The entrances will be on Thirty-fifth street, with ten turnstiles. A double-decked grand stand, having private boxes on the front of the upper deck, and a total seating capacity of 2,650, will be erected at the southern end of the grounds.
There will be no bleaching boards. From each end of the grand stand lines of covered seats will extend to the foul lines. These stands will seat 3,800 persons, making the seating accommodations, all told, 6,450. The men will bat from south to north and it is calculated that only the right fielder will be troubled by the sun. Plans for the buildings are nearly perfected and their acceptance at a meeting to be held Jan. 25 is a foregone conclusion. The grounds will require little if any grading. but need thorough drainage, which will be supplied
Facilities for getting to and from games will be abundant. The Rock Island, Lake Shore, and Fort Wayne roads may be depended upon to run special trains, and the State street cable line will make extra provisions to accommodate those who prefer to go to the grounds on its cars. The reason why the turnstile will be placed on Thirty-fifth street is the fact that the cross-town street railroad line passes the gates. The management counts on a large patronage from the army of men who do business at the Stock-Yards and have little or nothing to do in the afternoon.
Advices from St. Louis yesterday said the Cincinnati club was certainly after Latham, and if big money would induce him to break his contract with the Players club of this city it would be furnished. The brotherhood people were not inactive and took measures to head off the league emissaries. Latham will probably find himself provided with a couple of attentive escorts when he reaches St. Louis, where he is expected to-day.
Chicago Tribune, April 11, 1890
Brotherhood Park Stands.
Owing to the carpenters’ strike work on the brotherhood grounds has been suspended for the last few days. The management, however, has not been asleep and has prepared for every emergency. Should the strike continue over today the contractors will be relieved of all obligations and the club will finish the work itself with union men. In any event the pushed through as fast as possible, work will be and the grounds will be ready for occupancy on schedule time.
Inter Ocean, April 27, 1890
WHITE STOCKINGS OPENING.
By unanimous consent of all the clubs in the Players’ National League the Cleveland-Chicago game, scheduled for Cleveland, Ohio, Saturday, May 3, has been transferred to Chicago, and the Players’ National League championship season will therefore be opened on the new White Stocking Park at Thirty-fifth street and Wentworth avenue at 3:30 p. m. Saturday next. The park will be completed at that time, and will be furnished with seats for between 10,000 and 11,000 people. There are 2,800 opera chairs in the grandstand, 2,100 on the ground floor. 600 on the upper floor, and 100 im the private boxes. Eaco pavilion seats 2,500 people, and thero will bs about 2,-000 reserved chairs in the field before the grand stand. Whenever the crowd is too large for these seats, temporary benches in tiers are on hand, and will be pat up to seat 5,000 more people. These stands will run in continuation of the two pavilions. The park 1s beautiful even at this time. It is sodded far into the outfield; its base paths, position places, and lines have been carefully worked out in hard and elastic stone dust aud cinders by Billy Houston, the ground-keeper, and all the stands are painted in light green. EvEry seat on the ground gives a clear view of the field The means of reaching the new park are excellent. The State Street Cable Road runs within a block of the park, the schedule time from Madison street being twenty-five minutes. The facilities for handling the crowds likely to go out to the new park are first class. There will be four turnstile passages, all on Thirty-fifth street. The avenues to all the stands are broad and commodious, and exits of extra width behind each stand and pavilion. At this time the lower floor of the grand stand and both the pavilions are finished. So is the playing field. A game could be played at the park to-morrow and 8,000 people comfortably seated.
Seats for next Saturday’s game can be reserved at ay time before Wednesday at the club’s office, No. 927 Chicago Opera House, After Wednesday the grand-stand diagrams and tickets will be at Jenney & Graham’s new store, No. 102 Madison street. Grand-stand reserved seats admitting to seventy-one games, with a numbered chair, are also on sale at $25 each.
One of the greatest combinations of stars ever put together-Comiskey’s Chicago Brotherhood team of 1890.
Chicago Tribune, May 3, 1890
The Brotherhood Opening.
The Brotherhood’s championship season will open this afternoon at the new White Stocking Park, Thirty-fifth street and Wentworth avenue, The contesting teams will be the Clevelands and Chicago White Stockings, and the players in position will be as follows:
Game will begin at 3:45 o’clock. The umpires under the double system will be Knight and Jones. A base-ball train will leave the Union (West Side) Depot at 3 p. m. and wait at the side of the park until the game is over. Both teams arrive from Cleveland this morning and will go to the Tremont House. A parade through the business streets will start from the Tremont at 1:30 p. m. In it will be the teams in carriages and the Second Regiment band. At 2:15 the procession will start for the park via State street, and at 3 o’clock the teams will begin practice at the park.
The new grounds will be a revelation to the lovers of base-ball in this city. Its field is perfect and as green and smooth as a billiard table. Its handsome stands will seat 8,000 people and 2,000 chairs will be on the field before the grand stand. The new opera chairs are in position on the ground floor of the grand stand, but not on the second story, which will not be quite finished. There are but a few scattering seats left for sale. Over 2,000 tickets were sold yesterday. The stands will be handsomely draped and trimmed with bunting and flags, and a novelty in the form of a large clock faces the audience over the score board. The Chicago team will appear in uniform of white and its new uniform of white and black, and Cleveland in black with white trimmings. The umpires are uniformed in blue and white. The park will be opened at 2 o’clock, and the Second Regiment Band will play on the field during practice. The sale of pavilion 50-cent tickets does not begin until this morning. Not ore of the 5,000 seats have been or will be reserved. The stands are so arranged and their seats so pitched that every seat is good and commands the playing field. No ground rules will be necessary at the park. A home run can be made inside the fences to any part of the field. The route of the parade will be starting from the Tremont House to State, to Washington, to La Salle, to Madison, to Dearborn, to Adams, to the park at Thirty-fifth street.
South Side Park #2
Rand McNally
1890
Chicago Tribune, April 1, 1900
Proposed Park.
Plans for a public playground and park, to cover the site of the old ball park, between Wentworth avenue, Thirty-third and Thirty-fifth streets, and the Pennsylvania railroad tracks, have been prepared by Robert Seth Lindstrom. No. 3234 Princeton avenue, a young architect employed in the office of Jarvis Hunt, and will be submitted by him to the small park commission within the next few days. In addition to turning the old-time baseball grounds into a public breathing place, Mr. Lindstrom’s plans take in also the vacant ground immediately to the east, as far as La Salle street, and on the west side of the Pennsylvania tracks to Parnell avenue. Lagoons, tennis courts, public baths, and a baseball diamond are among the attractions which are included in the project.
The old baseball park site is owned by the Wentworth estate, and it has been the dream of people living in the neighborhood to some day see the spot made into a beautiful park. The project has been broached to the City Council on more than one occasion. Martin B. Madden, it is said, has offered to subscribe $2,000 toward the purchase of the ground, whenever the scheme is ready to be taken up seriously. Mr. Lindstrom has gone a little further in his plans, however, and has taken in the land to the east and west of the projected park, some of which already belongs to the city school system.
The chief feature of Mr. Lindstrom’s park is a great lagoon, large enough for boating, and covering a considerable part of the old baseball grounds. This lagoon would extend under the Pennsylvania railroad tracks nearly to Parnell avenue. A city ordinance for elevating the railroad tracks at this point has already been passed, but Mr. Lindstrom’s plan proposes carrying them over the park on a steel viaduct, similar to the ornamental subways where the tracks now cross the boulevards. Under the Thirty-third street end of the viaduct he has located a bicycle storage booth, at what would be the Thirty-third street entrance to the park.
The Webster School is already located on one corner of the block which Mr. Lind-strom would add to the park, and on the opposite corner of the same block, at Thirty-fifth street and Wentworth avenue, he would locate the new South Division High School, which is now being agitated. Between the Webster School and the high school, facing Wentworth avenue. Mr. Lindstrom has located a library building and a museum, which could be built at any time.
At each corner of this part of the park, also facing Wentworth avenue, is located a public bath. On the west side of the railroad tracks Mr. Lindstrom has planned to put baseball diamonds and tennis courts, as well as an arm of the big lagoon.
The lagoon is the central feature of the projected park. At the present time the children in the neighborhood have not even a good skating pond. The projected lagoon would give them a place to skate in winter and a lake big enough for rowing in summer. An ornamental boathouse is located on the Wentworth avenue side of the lagoon, and east of the boathouse a big pavilion with a refectory. Connection between the park to the east and west of Wentworth avenue is made by two subways under the street car tracks.
All the rest of the park is to be occupied by shrubbery, green lawns, trees, and tennis courts. courts. At present there is scarcely a blade of green grass in the neighborhood. This part of the plan, Mr. Lindstrom believes, would cost comparatively little, and the neighborhood could be beautified first and the buildings erected later. The chief need, in Mr. Lindstrom’s opinion, is for a park and a breathing place.
At present there is no park nearer to the neighborhood than Washington, to the southeast, and Douglas to the west. Both parks are so far away that the children of the neighborhood get practically no benefit from them. The small children of the flats and tenements in the vicinity have to take ther outings in the street or among the tin cans and other rubbish that cover the vacant ground
Leave a Reply