Congress Street Grounds

This article is about the baseball park in Boston, Massachusetts. For the ballpark in Chicago that is sometimes called Congress Street Grounds, see West Side Park.

Congress Street Grounds' pavilion nearing completion, 1890.
Only known photo of the exterior of the ballpark.

Newspaper sketch of interior, 1890

Congress Street Grounds is a former baseball ground located in Boston, Massachusetts. The ballpark, as the name implies, was along Congress Street, near the intersection of Thompson Place, and not far from the Fort Point Channel on South Boston Flats, a newly filled in piece of land on Boston Harbor. The ground was home to the Boston Reds, that played in the Players' League in 1890 and the American Association in 1891.

Although a short-lived facility, the ballpark witnessed some significant history. First, its occupants won league pennants in their two years of existence. Despite its success, the club was dropped during the NL-AA merger of 1892, as there was already an NL entry in Boston.

Then, between May and June 1894, Congress Street Grounds was the home to the Boston Beaneaters while their home grounds, the South End Grounds, were being rebuilt after the Great Roxbury Fire of May 15, 1894. It had a close left field fence, which benefited Boston's Bobby Lowe just a couple of weeks later, on May 30, 1894, as he became the first batter to hit four home runs in a single game, all of them down the line in left field.

In parts of the years between 1892 and autumn of 1896, the field was used for various local sports, including Gaelic football, hurling, and track-and-field events.[1] By the end of 1896, the ballpark had been dismantled and urban development took over the property.

The location is now occupied by several office buildings, and the alley behind them, which would go through the area of the outfield, was used in the 2006 film The Departed, in a key scene where Martin Sheen's character is pushed off a roof.

Historic New England has a photo of the interior of the park.

• Historic New England

Gallery

• 
  Congress Street Grounds plan, 1889
• 
  Congress Street Grounds pass, 1891

Further reading

• Tourangeau, Richard Dixie: "Remembering the Congress Street Grounds: Boston's Ball Yard of Champions from Rebel Origin to Final Clutch Swing" in The National Pastime magazine, 2004 issue, published by the Society for Americal Baseball Research.

External links

• SABR's Baseball Biography Project
• Project Ballpark
• An 1899 map showing the site of the grounds
• SABR article about the ballpark