the other is that football doesn't fit downtown the way baseball does. well not with seating, but they would use it as a practice field. > like they would turn the baseball field into a football field? > right. one, my understanding is the chiefs would actually want to acquire kauffman as a practice field. > i'm quite sure they would leave arrowhead where it is for a couple reasons. One is my understanding that the chiefs would acquire kauffman as a practice field. so it's not like they would say, eh, these are just local guys, we better go to some big guy from new york or chicago when the biggest in the industry happened to be the local people. so it would be hard to imagine that the team would not select the local architect given that the local architect happens to also be the most famous sports architecture firm in the world. but populist has done some wonderful stuff, including the ballpark that i think is my very favorite among relatively recent ones, which is pnc in pittsburgh as well as camden yard in san francisco which is fantastic and quite a number of others. in fact, bjork engles, a very interesting and talented new york architect is now doing the new ballpark for oakland, which is actually one of the most interesting and promising projects around. there are a couple other people doing stuff. > i think it would be awfully hard for kansas city to not have - > let's get that firm from denver. but now is the time when i want you to talk about the downtown stadium in kansas city which we should have built, obviously, with the architecture from populist. > you could never get in.Īnd have paul sign books for you. > is that the one they had only one entrance and you couldn't get everyone in the ballpark at the time? there was a rotunda? > there was a rotunda and it was designed too small. > is that the one where you said, though - there were also funny things where they screw things up in these parks which i find amusing. but i think it was probably the very best, actually, both because of its history and just its physical qualities. kansas city plays an important role in that history. > does everybody know what ebbetts field is? > where the dodgers played and baseball was integrated, major league baseball because jackie robinson was actually, let the record show, seen by the dodgers when he played for the league team in kansas city and was signed in kansas city to come to brooklyn and play for the dodgers in the '40s. and, of course, a lot of important history happened there. > it's so legendary because it was lost in essence, right.
in a way, also the beginnings of it, maybe even specifically a new york game. > i'm an urban mid westerner, so i'm fine with that. > despite "field of dreams," which is everybody's favorite tear jerker, but it's not an accurate statement of what baseball has been about.
> one of the things i loved about ballpark was the research you did into the earliest ballparks and how emphatic you are that baseball is an urban game, not a game played in iowa corn fields. > yeah, the world trade center where they've now been for a few years, yeah. i've been to the offices that are down in the replacement of the world trade center. then it moved into the headquarters of conde nast and became not quite just another magazine, but not quite as special and different. owned still the magazine company, for several years, they allowed it to operate as a separate entity and then gradually they started folding it into the rest of the magazine company to save money on, you know, back office stuff and accounting and all the other stuff. i thought i was a decent writer so i went that route.īought by the newhouse family, which owned conde naste. i thought the world had enough second-rate architects and didn't need another necessarily. i toyed with the idea of going to architectural school. little to the north in a place called connecticut. those of you who went to princeton don't always acknowledge. > did you study architect? > i studied architectural history. so i found a place where the two of them intersect and spent most of my life writing about architecture. i always loved journalism and architecture and i'm not very good at making choices.
whether either way you like talking about it. > i've spent most of my life - i've been lucky because i've spent most of my life writing about things that interest me. > have you talked to the audience about who you are and what you've done prior to writing about ballparks which is a long story. right? > you've had this distinguished career as an architectural critic which maybe not everybody - i mean people are here really to hear you talk about kauffman stadium in the end.