Fenway 1912 by Glenn Stout Page B

was built in sequence until the structure reached the level of the sloping deck that would form the floor of the stands, only three feet high at the edge of the field but forty-two feet at the rear of the stands. The structure rose like a wave from third around toward first, the columns and girders along the third-base line already extending into the air while piers were still being excavated and poured down the first-base line. As construction extended above the surface grade hordes of workers erected scaffolding to allow other workers to rise with the structure, and to enable carpenters to build formwork both for the columns and for the "false work": the forms beneath the deck slab that created and supported the underside of the seating deck during construction. Thousands of board feet of lumber, primarily pine, was used to construct the forms. Virtually every original concrete surface in Fenway Park, except for the floors, was once encased by wooden formwork. In fact, there are still places in Fenway Park today where it is possible to see the wood grain from the formwork on columns, girders, and the underside of the grandstand deck, even though much of it has recently been obscured by other structures and paint.
    Now that Stahl was on board, McRoy and McAleer began planning for spring training. Although the Sox had trained in California in 1911, that was primarily due to the wishes of John I. Taylor. McAleer saw no reason to cross the country, so in mid-November he traveled to Hot Springs, Arkansas, the traditional Red Sox spring home, to secure a ballpark and hotel space. McAleer planned to open camp on March 10, and he arranged to share training facilities at Majestic Park with Cincinnati, at least until the Philadelphia Athletics left town, at which point the Sox hoped to take over the Athletics' Fogel Field. Sharing facilities and switching fields would not be much of a hardship, for at the time players trained more by taking long hikes and mineral baths than they did on the field.
WORK ON PAVILION AND GROUNDS GOES ON APACE
    By the start of December the piers, the footings, and the reinforced-concrete structure of the grandstand were complete and workers were rapidly forming the underside of the deck and the accompanying ramps—an innovation not yet used in any other big league park, where fans entered at the bottom of the stands, then climbed up aisles to their seats. McLaughlin's ramps allowed fans to enter at street level and reach the grandstand either by going through openings at the lower end of the grandstand or by wending their way up ramps to the top promenade and then walking down to their seats. Because fans could exit the park in reverse by the same means, the stands could be cleared more quickly. Tests later indicated that the entire grandstand could be emptied in only five minutes.
    After the formwork was completed, the next major construction stage, the pouring of the concrete deck, ideally had to take place all at once. In any large construction project "continuous" concrete pours are preferable to pours that stop and create a seam between poured sections, which can weaken the entire structure. (In the 1911 construction of the Polo Grounds, for instance, the concrete for the entire grandstand structure was a continuous pour that took six full days and nights.) But that is not to say that the deck surface would be an unbroken surface. Even cured concrete expands and contracts according to changes in temperature. To allow for this expansion joints were built into the plan for both the deck slab and the ramps.
    After the false work and scaffolding were complete, the undersurface of the deck slab was interlaced with rebar. By a few days before Christmas the slab was ready to pour. The procedure was so unique that a contingent of more than fifty members of the Boston Society of Civil Engineers traveled to Fenway Park on December 20 to witness the process.
    Unlike today, concrete was not mixed and then hauled