A League of Her Own
Remember when Fenway Park felt crusty, creaky, and unsafe? The woman behind its extreme makeover isn't done yet.
Janet Marie Smith, the architect transforming Fenway Park, works in an office that, at first glance, could be confused with a large storage closet. But look again, past the clutter and the mementos, and a few telling tools of Smith's trade lie scattered about this room overlooking Yawkey Way. Slightly unrolled blueprints lean in one corner. Architectural renderings of future changes at the hallowed ball yard hang from the opposite wall. A hard hat is set by the window.
If this unkempt cubbyhole of a workplace is meant to impress, the impression is not one of complacent corporate power. It's an impression of a work in progress, and Smith - the architect who jump-started the retro-revolutionary movement in American ballpark design and the mind behind the renovations that have saved, improved, and polished what might be Boston's most recognizable landmark - insists she has no timetable for completion. "I guess it's hard to know what 'finished' means," Smith says, the words drawn slowly with a lyrical accent that speaks of her native Mississippi. For 2007, Smith says, there's a plan to build a new batting tunnel for visiting teams. For 2008, there's a plan to extend the left-field pavilion along the third-base line toward the Green Monster, providing more amenities and space for fans. And although Smith, 48, won't reveal the team's closely held hand, it wouldn't be a surprise if its owners were to add to their growing real estate portfolio in the neighborhood.
In Smith's view, part of what makes Fenway Park special is its neighborhood, where many of the buildings are as old as the oldest ballpark in the major leagues. And although Fenway is fundamentally a baseball park, Smith says, its significance transcends the game. What fascinates her about this work is the challenge to make space where a city can breathe, interconnect, and share experiences. "I like seeing how people use a place," she says, whether it's a city sidewalk, a small urban park, or a river filled with boats.
Smith helped make that vision of common public experience a stunning reality on a shabby piece of Baltimore waterfront, where the 1992 opening of Camden Yards ushered in an era of aesthetically pleasing and fan-friendly ballpark design. Later, she helped convert the main stadium for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics into a home for the Braves. And when new ownership bought the Red Sox in 2002, Smith was lured north to rethink Fenway by Larry Lucchino, her old mentor in Baltimore who had become Sox president. Almost immediately, the new team - whose owners include the parent company of The Boston Globe - began turning on its head the generally accepted notion that Fenway was outdated, unsafe, and overdue for a wrecking ball. The changes, which have ranged from new seating atop the left-field wall and the right-field roof to the demolition of the glass-enclosed .406 Club behind home plate, have won raves from fans, many of whom had previously been clamoring for a new park.
Ticket prices at the small park remain the most expensive in the major leagues, making them a financial stretch for all-important younger fans, whose support will be critical for future teams. An upper-box seat at Fenway costs $85, compared with $45 for a field box at Camden Yards and $38 for a terrace box at most Chicago Cubs games at Wrigley Field, the second-oldest ballpark in the major leagues. But the Red Sox, on pace to sell out every game this season for the third consecutive year, have maintained their torrid love aff air with the fans.
Despite the team's popularity, Smith is able to sit in the stands unrecognized. During the dozen or so games she watches as a fan each season, Smith is sometimes joined by her husband, F. Barton Harvey 3d, and their three children - Bart Harvey 4th, Nellie Grace, and Jack, respectively 12, 10, and 8. Sox games are a test of allegiance for the family, which lives in Baltimore and has season tickets to the Orioles. "At least the Red Sox and Orioles have a hatred of the Yankees in common," Smith says with a laugh. While she's in Boston, usually Tuesdays to Thursdays, Smith lives in a hotel. Then she shuttles back to Baltimore to help her husband, the president of a nonprofit foundation that funds affordable housing, with domestic responsibilities and to share the children's activities, including Bart's baseball games.
"His baseball is really starting to look like baseball, and that's refreshing," says Smith, who recalls being drawn to games at Mississippi State University, where she earned an undergraduate degree in architecture. In an aside, she states with pride that all her education came at public schools, including those in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1960s and early 1970s, when many other white families were fleeing forced integration. After Mississippi State University, she received a graduate degree in urban planning from City College of New York, where she selected Baltimore as an urban case study.
"Why would you run from something that's been so good to society?" she says of her family's decision to keep her in public schools in Jackson. "I think it made me aware of a bigger world." Forging a connection with a piece of that larger world, Smith says, is what continues to motivate her. "What I really like about architecture is what I like about planning - the fabric more than the individual pieces," she explains. "It's the public realm that really makes things special."
When Red Sox fans appreciate the work that has transformed Fenway, they should know that the architect who helped concoct those improvements was thinking past the pennant chase, toward turning a cramped, creaky shrine into a vibrant New England agora where strangers could enjoy a game and one another's company at the same time. "I don't think of myself as working in sports," Smith says, "but of working in a city."
Brian MacQuarrie is a Globe staff writer. E-mail comments to macqua@globe.com. 