Oriole Park now has a brother.
A very big brother.
Next Sunday's Ravens-Pittsburgh Steelers game will mark the official opening of the new football stadium at Camden Yards, completing a twin-stadium complex first envisioned in the 1980s.
Whether you hate it or love it, the new football stadium can't be avoided. It's sheer size and vibrant colors demand attention and have permanently changed the look and feel of downtown.
Some perspectives on the change, and the stadium:
Janet Marie Smith, architectural consultant
Janet Marie Smith was the Orioles' chief architectural consultant during the design and construction of Oriole Park. She is now president of Turner Sports & Entertainment Development, where she oversaw design of the Atlanta Braves' Turner Field. She declined an offer from the Ravens to participate in the design of their stadium but recommended another architect whom the team hired.
Smith said Ravens stadium is one of the best of the new breed of football parks but hopes some finishing extras are added and efforts made to more fully integrate the building with the neighborhood.
"I think it is beautiful, just great," she said. "You couldn't ask for better sightlines and views of the field. And the industrial touches are wonderful. ... I love the purple. It just exudes fun."
An early critic of the stadium's titanic size, Smith said she felt the interior effectively diminished the scale and was "very forgiving."
"Football is a bigger sport and deserves a bigger venue," she said.
As for the comparisons with Oriole Park, she said, "They are completely different sports, and the venues should be different."
As the trees recently planted around the base of the stadium grow, they will reduce its visual isolation, she said. But she hopes other steps will be taken to make the project an extension of the city rather than an extension of a sports complex.
The construction of a long-discussed park connecting Camden Yards with the middle branch of the Patapsco River to the south, a project she has long championed, would be a good start, she said.
"You would hope that instead of more surface lots there will be other uses found for land in the immediate area," she said. Restaurants and other businesses should pop up over time, extending the cityscape and softening the industrial edge to the vicinity.
She said the raven heads and other details on the outside should have been larger, to keep them in the scale of the building. She hopes the team will opt for the giant raven sculpture originally envisioned for the southwest corner, but now on indefinite hold.
And once the stadium is named, an attractive exterior sign can be erected, as was done at Oriole Park, to create a "marquee" effect.
"It does still seem to be missing some of the ornamentation that would give it a more human scale. ... It notably is still missing a nameplate," she said.
She's not ready to call it the best football stadium ever built, or to predict it will revolutionize architecture the way Oriole Park did for its sport. For one thing, Oriole Park led off a wave of stadium-building. Ravens stadium comes in the middle of a pack of such projects.
"I think Baltimore ought to be very proud," she said.
RATING -- UP
Jake Embry, community leader
Robert C. "Jake" Embry is a founder of modern sports in Baltimore. He led the effort that raised money to build Memorial Stadium in the late 1940s and was president of the fledgling Colts in the 1950s.
From his seats in the new stadium, Embry said he was struck by the growth of both football and stadium-building - and how far both have come since those early days. Memorial Stadium was built on a shoestring as voters passed, then rejected, then passed separate bonding measures.
"We struggled along on $3 million and then got $3.5million, and they came up with $220 million [for Ravens stadium]. It's really different," Embry said.
When Embry ran the Colts, the team had to beg the league and public for assistance to keep the operation alive. Now, NFL teams generate $100 million to $150 million a year in revenue. The league has displaced boxing and baseball as the nation's most popular sport.
"It is like night and day. The size and dimension of the thing, and the activity. It's just huge," he said.
The stadium, too, seemed huge, dominating Camden Yards. The site emerged as a potential stadium location 30 years ago, when it was an industrial area focused on railroading and manufacturing.
"I think it fits into that site really well," Embry said.
He said the new team fight song is "better than average" but not as good as the old Colts song, which he bought from a local composer.
His only complaint about the stadium: The music is too loud.
RATING -- UP
Crystal Moll, artist
Crystal Moll grew up in Virginia and attended college in Philadelphia. But she fell in love with Baltimore and its neighborhoods and architecture, and moved here in 1989. She now paints urban landscapes here full-time. Her favorite subject is Federal Hill.
"I really liked Memorial Stadium. It felt good in that neighborhood and I liked walking to games," she said.
Loyalty for the 33rd Street stadium made her want to hate Oriole Park when it opened. But the new place won her over, and she eventually painted it. The long, narrow painting (62 inches by 22 inches) took in bits of the neighborhood.
"It just seemed to fit in the neighborhood so well," she said. She's not sure Ravens stadium will attract the same artistic attention its northern cousin has.
"Oriole Park was so nice I had to paint it. I don't feel the same way about Ravens stadium. It's so massive. I think it is impressive, but it is so big - it's going to take some getting used to," she said.
"I really like having the bricks in there. The glass looks like it's the next dimension. I like that. I probably would have preferred more brick," she said.
"It's amazing how you can see it from anywhere, especially driving into town. It really does block some views that felt pretty comfortable," she said.
"I would probably go back and paint Oriole Park again before I'd paint the Ravens' stadium."
RATING -- DOWN
'Big Wheel' Burrier, car wholesaler
Leonard Burrier was a mild-mannered tire salesman who, in a fit of beer-induced celebration, jumped up at a 1975 Colts game and spelled out the team name with his substantial body. "Big Wheel" was born, and he soon was a symbol of the city's infatuation with its team. He's now a Baltimore car wholesaler.
"It looks good and it's new and it looks user-friendly. It's a first-class stadium. It's got to be better than Memorial Stadium with all the modern conveniences. We needed a new stadium," Burrier said.
He likes the brick exterior and doesn't mind the stadium's immensity or that it blocks the view of the baseball stadium for motorists entering the city from the south. "I'm a football fan. I'd rather see it than a baseball stadium," he said.
He hasn't been inside yet - "because preseason games don't do anything for me" - but plans to buy tickets to as many games as he can. But don't expect him to carry the weight of getting the crowd up the way he once did.
"I'm 53 years old and I can't be running around anymore," Burrier said. "I probably have one of the best seats in town: my recliner in front of the TV. No lines to get in the bathroom."
But he advises the new generation of fans to embrace the club and have fun.
"This is a new team and a new crowd is making its life around the Ravens. I think it's time for a new 'wheel.' "
RATING -- UP
Patrick Sutton, architect
Patrick Sutton is president of Patrick Sutton & Associates, a Baltimore architectural firm whose projects include the retail component of Port Discovery children's museum, Donna's coffee bars and many high-end residential buildings. He is past chairman of the Baltimore chapter of the urban design committee of the American Institute of Architects.
"I think the building being there is great. I think the planning process that went into it is great. But I think there could have been more done with it," Sutton said.
A city-dweller, he is happy to see sports brought back downtown and Baltimore at the cutting edge of that movement. But he said the football stadium doesn't live up to the standard set by the baseball park.
"It's too close to being similar to Camden Yards and not far enough away to be different," he said.
"I think the proportions of the steel members are really clunky HTC and the ersatz high-tech connections are not strong enough. It's passable; it's a competent design that seems to function very well. I think it could be better. It could have been such an amazing thing."
RATING -- DOWN
Art Donovan, Hall of Famer
Art Donovan was a 6-foot-3, 265-pound defensive tackle for the Baltimore Colts from 1953 to 1961 and became the first Colt inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1968. He now owns and operates the Valley Country Club near Towson.
"From the outside, it's a beautiful stadium. I haven't been inside, but the pictures I've seen look pretty good," Donovan said.
"I hear those upper decks are pretty high. When you go up there, you get a nosebleed. I don't think I could see that far because of my eyesight."
A veteran of the All-America Football Conference in the 1940s, Donovan began his career in rickety stadiums that bear no resemblance to modern ones.
In those stadiums, he said, "You had to take turns dressing."
"It's changed completely. What do I know? They have cooks now, and trainers, and they play in air-conditioned domes," he said.
He played his greatest years at Memorial Stadium, as part of teams that won championships in 1958 and 1959 and helped establish football as the nation's most popular spectator sport.
"I don't think any stadium will ever replace Memorial Stadium. That was dedicated to the guys from Maryland who died during the war," he said.
"But let the Ravens have their own legacy. Everybody's got to cut the umbilical cord."
RATING -- UP
Stadium review
The Ravens have played two preseason games at home, letting fans get an early look at what the new stadium is all about. Now, with the regular-season opener against the Pittsburgh Steelers a week away, this section critiques various aspects -- from getting there, to tailgating, to watching the game. Ratings used are thumbs up, thumbs down and a combination of up and down.
Pub Date: 8/30/98