Huntington Avenue Grounds

Huntington Avenue Grounds, Boston (3)

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Half of a panoramic view of Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston, in 1903. The other half can be found here. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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The scene in 2014:

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The photo at the top is the other half of the panorama from this post, and it shows the home plate area of Huntington Avenue Grounds, the original home field of the Boston Red Sox.  However, when the first photo was taken during a game against the Chicago White Sox on September 22, 1903, they weren’t the Red Sox; they were the Boston Americans, and in their third year of existence they had already clinched the pennant and were soon to face (and defeat) the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first World Series.

According to the research conducted by the writer of the Baseball Researcher blog, the batter in this scene is Nixey Callahan, Chicago’s manager and third baseman.  Behind him is Boston catcher Duke Farrell, a journeyman catcher who had been playing in the majors since 1888, and was now playing in his fourth major league.  He only played in 17 games in 1903, and was likely starting in order to allow the regular catcher, Lou Criger, to rest now that the pennant race was no longer in doubt.  Behind Farrell is the umpire, Frank O’Laughlin; he would go on to umpire in the American League until 1918, when he died from the Spanish Flu that spread across the world that fall.

Today, no distinguishing features from the 1903 photo remain today, and Northeastern University is now located on the site of the former field, where the team played until after the 1911 season.  The actual location of home plate is now located underneath Churchill Hall, the building seen in the 2014 photo.

See the Library of Congress site for the complete panorama.

Huntington Avenue Grounds, Boston (2)

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Half of a panorama view of Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston, in 1903.  The other half can be found here. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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The scene in 2014:

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A lot has changed at the site of the original home of the Boston Red Sox. It seems as though they have played at Fenway Park for forever, and for good reason – they just finished their 102nd season there.  However, before Fenway Park, before Babe Ruth, and even before the name Red Sox, there was Huntington Avenue Grounds.  The first photo was taken on September 22, 1903, and is one half of a panoramic photo (see this post for the other half) that was taken by the studios of Elmer E. Chickering, a Boston photography company.  See the “then” photo in this post for a very similar scene showing pitching legend Cy Young.

Thanks to the efforts of the writer of the Baseball Researcher blog, we are able to identify not only the day that the photograph was taken, but also the players who appear in it.  Boston’s pitcher is Tom Hughes, an average pitcher who was in the midst of what would be a career year for him, with a 20-7 record.  The first baseman is Candy LaChance, with second baseman Hobe Ferris visible to the left, and right fielder Buck Freeman can be seen in the distance.  Freeman would go on to lead the American League in home runs, with 13, and Ferris came in third, with nine.

Boston would end up losing this particular game, 7-0, but it probably didn’t phase the team too much – they were up 14.5 games with eight left to play, so they had already clinched the American League pennant and were just over a week away from hosting the Pittsburgh Pirates here in Boston for the first World Series, which Boston would go on to win five games to three.

Today, the site is part of the Northeastern University campus, but all is not forgotten; there is a statue of Cy Young on the left-hand side of the photo in the distance, in front of the bushes.  It was largely thanks to Young’s pitching that the Red Sox won the 1903 World Series, and the statue made in his honor is placed approximately where the pitcher’s mound once was.  There is also a home plate marker, 60 feet away from the statue, around where this photo was taken.  However, this was not the actual location of home plate – the real location was about 90 degrees to the right, under what is now a campus building.

See the Library of Congress site for the complete panorama.

Huntington Avenue Grounds, Boston (1)

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Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston, around 1903. Photo courtesy of Boston Public Library.

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The same location in 2014:

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The first photo shows the stands along the third base line at Hunting Avenue Grounds and its expansive outfield. The field measured 350 feet down the left field line, and at the time of the 1903 photo center field measured an almost unheard-of 530 feet, which was later expanded to 635 feet in 1908. Beyond center field is the apartment block that is visible in the photos on this post, although none of the buildings are visible from this spot today, and there is no evidence here that a ballpark ever existed. The building that dominates the foreground here is the Cabot Center, an athletic facility on the campus of Northeastern University.

Huntington Avenue Grounds Groundbreaking, Boston

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The groundbreaking ceremonies on March 12, 1901 for what would become the Huntington Avenue Grounds, the first home of the Boston Red Sox. Photo courtesy of Boston Public Library.

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The scene in 2014:

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Today, the Boston Red Sox are without a doubt the most popular baseball team in New England, but in 1901 they were merely another upstart team attempting to challenge the well-established Boston Beaneaters. The American League itself wasn’t officially established until January, but after that things started to happen fast.  The team leased land along Huntington Avenue, right across the railroad tracks from the South End Grounds where the Beaneaters played.  Then, on March 12, presumably with the ground just beginning to thaw, the official groundbreaking ceremony occurred and construction began, less than two months before the May 8 home opener.

The field, which became known simply as the Huntington Avenue Grounds, was home to the Red Sox (a name they officially adopted in 1908 – before that they wore blue stockings) for 11 seasons, before the construction of Fenway Park not too far away.  Today, the site is part of the Northeastern University campus, but there is at least one structure visible in both photos – the brick apartment building in the background on the left-hand side of the 1901 photo is still there today, with newer buildings on either side of it.

Cy Young at Huntington Avenue Grounds, Boston

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Cy Young, warming up at Boston’s Huntington Avenue Grounds in 1908. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Bain Collection.

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The scene in 2014:

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Finding the precise location of this photo is tricky, since nothing in the 1908 photo still exists.  The top photo was taken of Cy Young, the winningest pitcher in baseball history, during his last year with the Red Sox.  At the time, the Sox played a few blocks south of what would become Fenway Park, at the Huntington Avenue Grounds.

The site of the field is today part of the Northeastern University campus, and in this courtyard is a tribute to Cy Young and the old baseball field.  In the foreground is a granite home plate marker, and 60 feet away in the distance is a statue of Cy Young.  The Cy Young statue is on the approximate location of the pitcher’s mound (which can be seen behind and to the left of Cy Young in the 1908 photo), but home plate would have actually been further to the right of where the 2014 photo was taken (which is now a building).

Because of that, it is likely that the 2014 photo was taken from approximately the same location, looking in roughly the same direction, as the 1908 photo, although the lack of any landmarks makes it difficult to be exact.