Charles Comiskey was the first owner of the Chicago White Sox. He purchased 15 acres of land between 34th and 35th streets, and Wentworth and Shields avenues, used by the city for a landfill. Comiskey commissioned Zachary Taylor Davis to build him and his club a stadium.
Davis was a recent graduate of the nearby Armour Institute of Technology, later known as the Illinois Institute of Technology. Davis toured ballparks across the country with White Sox pitcher Ed Walsh, taking note of desirable design features. Davis would go on to design the Weegham Park, later renamed Wrigley Field.
On July 1, 1910, the White Sox played their first game in their new stadium. Comiskey Park, nicknamed “Baseball Palace of the World,” housed 32,000 fans, 7,000 of whom could sit in the bleachers. Admission was just 25 cents. The ballpark was considered a pitcher’s park, with a deep 440-f00t center field. No ballpark in Major League Baseball today boasts a deeper center field. When the ballpark first opened, old water hoses were flattened and painted white to serve as foul lines.
If you’re looking for the whole story of the Chicago White Sox, Charles Comiskey and the ballpark he constructed and opened, check out Richard Lindberg’s Stealing First in A Two-team Town.
To learn more about Charles Comiskey and the longtime home of the Chicago White Sox, check out Comiskey Park by Irwin Cohen.
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