Dodger Stadium Was Cut Into a Hillside, Not Set on a Block

Dodger Stadium looks like nothing else in baseball because it was cut into a hillside to be a destination, not set on a city block to be a neighborhood ballpark, and because it is the one park of its era that committed to midcentury modern. Janet Marie Smith, the Dodgers' executive vice president of planning and development, makes that case in a film for Architectural Digest that traces the 1962 ballpark from its design to the changing Downtown Los Angeles skyline beyond the outfield.

The evidence for her argument sits in the dates, the site and the person who drew it. Dodger Stadium architecture is a series of decisions, and most of them were made by refusing to copy.

April 10, 1962: A Bowl Cut Into Chavez Ravine

Dodger Stadium opened on April 10, 1962, after a groundbreaking on September 19, 1959, and it is now MLB's third oldest ballpark. The site is the first reason it looks different. Ballpark Digest describes it as built into the side of Chavez Ravine, more like a classic auditorium built into a hillside than a ballpark springing from the ground.

Most parks of the era were set into a street grid and shaped by it. This one was shaped by a slope. Concrete, folded roofs, corrugated metal and pastel colored seats are the materials and colors listed in descriptions of the original, and none of them is a brick facade. Smith has said that Dodger Stadium was the only ballpark of its era to embrace midcentury modern architecture, and the hillside gave that style room that a city lot would not have.

Praeger Toured the Parks and Copied None

The Los Angeles Conservancy credits the stadium to Emil Praeger of Praeger Kavanagh Waterbury, Engineers and Architects, working in consultation with Walter O'Malley, the Dodgers owner. MLB's history page also credits the Los Angeles architect Edward Fickett with support, and sources differ on how the work was divided: a Walter O'Malley Foundation interview with Dick Walsh calls Waterbury the architect and Praeger the engineer.

What the sources agree on is the instruction. Praeger reportedly toured several ballparks while designing Dodger Stadium and decided not to copy any of them. O'Malley wanted something closer to a destination, with tram transport, water features, a thick landscape of trees and futuristic architecture, in the Conservancy's account of his plan. A park designed to be driven to and walked up to does not need to resemble one designed to be walked past.

That decision to differ is why the comparison keeps failing. Set it next to the Generali Stadium that Inter and AC Milan presented on October 29, a 71,500 seat Foster + Partners and Manica design with steep 37 degree stands and a frame of 80 diamond shapes. One is a new stadium built to be a landmark from the street. The other was a landscape project before it was a ballpark.

Three Neighborhoods Came Down for the View

The site had residents. PBS SoCal reports that three Mexican American neighborhoods, Bishop, La Loma and Palo Verde, stood in Chavez Ravine before the stadium, and that their residents were forcibly evicted in 1959. The hillside site and the open view beyond the outfield exist because of that clearing.

Any honest account of why the park looks the way it does has to include it, because the ravine that gives the stadium its shape was a place people lived before it was a place people parked.

Smith's Method Was to Add Without Touching

Smith joined the Dodgers in 2012 as senior vice president of planning and development, hired to oversee renovations to the ballpark, and was promoted to executive vice president in December 2020. She arrived with Oriole Park at Camden Yards (1992) and the Fenway Park renovation behind her.

At Dodger Stadium she went back to the original instead. The team's $100 million offseason project ahead of the 2020 season centered on a Centerfield Plaza of about two acres with food, a beer garden, sports bars, a children's play area and a live music area, and it opened to fans in 2021. Reports on the work quote Smith describing the aim as amenities that other ballparks have, added in a way that respects the original architecture.

The counterpoint is fair. A two acre plaza is a large addition to a protected style, and the project cost $100 million. But the plaza sits out beyond the outfield, away from the folded roofs and the seating bowl that carry the 1962 look, so the design of 1962 is left to do the talking where it matters.

Sixty four years on, the ballpark that Praeger would not let look like anyone else still frames the Downtown Los Angeles skyline beyond its outfield.