One last look: Pittsfield prepares to say goodbye to Wahconah Park’s grandstand

PITTSFIELD — It’s the bottom of the ninth. Demolition is imminent for the Wahconah Park grandstand, which has been closed to the public since the city declared the structure unsafe in 2022. The takedown is expected to begin the week of April 13 and will take about two months.

Once able to host 2,000 bleacher-stomping fans at a time, the grandstand, originally built in 1950, was eventually bested by that same rival all great athletes must eventually concede to: age. Plans already have been drafted for a replacement grandstand, which awaits funding approval from the Pittsfield City Council. Designers hope to retain the details that made the original structure unique, from the building’s roof shape to its iconic central entrance.

But spectators will never again take a seat on one of the original grandstand’s wooden benches to munch popcorn as they watch the Fourth of July fireworks or cheer on the Pittsfield Suns.

“It sort of makes me sad that this is it for the grandstand,” said Jim McGrath, the park, open space and natural resource manager for the city.

“But I’m heartened by the fact we may have something new here sooner than later.” McGrath recently invited The Eagle to take a final in-depth look at the grandstand, whose well-loved design quirks were still evident despite the recent decline. The front-row seats are a stone’s throw from home plate, a proximity that would be perilous were it not for the protective mesh shielding spectators from errant baseballs.

The upper levels still feature old-school wooden benches painted red. A lone fake owl, used to deter pests, still hangs from the rafters by a bolt in its neck. On a wooden sign above the grandstand’s central entrance, the faded words “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” are barely legible.

Over the years, the grandstand proved to baseball fans in the Berkshires that they could still snag a front-row seat to America’s pastime, even if Fenway Park was over 100 miles away. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005, Wahconah Park has seen everyone from high school athletes to future major league players step up to its home plate. Nostalgia for the grandstand, and the heyday of small-town baseball it represents, is prompting local residents and officials alike to reflect on the structure’s history as its end approaches.

“If we ask a hundred people, we get a hundred different answers of what Wahconah Park meant to them,” Pittsfield Mayor Peter Marchetti said. Outside of baseball, he emphasized the community events that have been hosted over the years, from drum corps shows to benefit concerts.

“As we’re saying goodbye, I think there's potential to show what the site could look like in the future,” he added. The city is inviting community members to gather at the grandstand one last time on Saturday, April 11, to share memories of the building and reflect on the role it has played in the city’s history over the years. As local residents prepare for the park’s next chapter to start, some are hopeful that a grandstand — and the sport of baseball — will remain a key part of it.

“I have fond memories of Wahconah Park in its glory days,” said Mark Martin, who co-owns Hudpucker’s Pub and Grill just on the edge of the park.

“Pittsfield really needs entertainment … As a lifelong resident, the city needs a ballpark.” It makes sense that a baseball field would find itself at the center of Pittsfield’s civic life. Local baseball aficionados are quick to highlight the city’s contribution to the game’s history: one of the earliest written references to the game is in a 1791 bylaw that prohibited the playing of “base ball” — written as two words — within 80 yards of the city’s meeting house.

Over the years, Pittsfield officials eventually looked past their fears of broken windows on municipal buildings and embraced the game’s popularity. By 1892, the first pitch had been thrown in a game at Wahconah Park, which was officially designated that year to serve as a space for community sports and events. Even before then, Pittsfield had served as the site of the very first collegiate baseball game when Amherst College and Williams College squared off in a match in July 1859, according to the Library of Congress.

While the grandstand has plenty of true history to marvel at, there’s at least one popular myth.

“The rumor that Wahconah Park is the oldest wooden grandstand [in the United States], that's wrong,” said Larry Moore, director of the historical organization Baseball in the Berkshires.

“Yes, this grandstand is now 76 years old, but it’s not completely out of wood. It’s got a metal roof, and the sides are made out of metal.” In fact, the current Wahconah Park structure owes its longevity to the variety of other materials it was constructed with.

“Unlike its predecessor, the new structure should stand up for many years to come, for this time concrete, steel and galvanized iron have been combined to make it durable,” a 1950 article in The Berkshire Eagle prophesized. The writer was on the ball. It would be over 75 years before the grandstand became, as McGrath once described it during a Parks Commission meeting, “a rusting hulk of a building that can't be used.”

In the meantime, Wahconah Park would host everything from Bob Dylan concerts to youth boxing matches over the years. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City, the park served as a gathering place for a community memorial to the victims.

“Wahconah Park really has just been an integral part of the history of this city,” McGrath said.

“It's just become a familiar gathering place for generations of Pittsfielders.” While it cost only $114,345 to put up the original grandstand in 1950, tearing it down will cost much more in modern dollars — $415,000, according to the city. But if you’re picturing a TV-style teardown complete with a wrecking ball and sledgehammers, that’s not quite what you’ll get.

“It’s not going to be like a ‘big boom’ demolition,” said Sal Canciello, the S3 Design principal assigned to the project.

“It’s going to be a very measured, slow process.” Hazardous materials like asbestos must be carefully removed, and underground drainage work must be completed, he said. At the April 11 event, representatives from S3 Design will be present to answer questions about the new design, Canciello said.

Once demolition is complete, erecting a new grandstand will take at least a year if the city greenlights the project. But Marchetti stressed that plans for a future grandstand still need to be finalized before anything definitive can happen.

“I don’t think we’re at a place fully to know, and there's some work we still need to do on our end to plan that through,” he said. Either way, big change is coming. Despite it all, Moore believes the core experience of watching baseball at Wahconah Park will still be the same.

“People are still going to put their fannies on a new board or piece of metal and cheer people on,” he said.