The history of Wrigley Field, the home of the Chicago Cubs of Major League Baseball's National League, begins well before the Cubs played their first game in that venue.
Before the Federal League
At the turn of the 20th century, the block bounded by Clark, Addison, Waveland, and Sheffield streets was home to the Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary, with the Hildebrandt Coal Factory across the street to the west. William Passavant, a prominent Lutheran missionary, had inherited the land decades before. Passavant began to develop the land as early as 1868, including the construction of St. Mark's Church by 1874. In 1891, Passavant helped establish the Chicago Lutheran Seminary on the site.
At the time the seminary was established, the area was located in a quiet, relatively undeveloped section of the Lake View District of Chicago's North Side. The seminary started small, holding classes in a small chapel facing Addison Street. The following year, the president's house was constructed at the corner of Sheffield and Waveland. In 1893, the seminary spent $25,000 to construct the four-story Eliza Hall housing the library, chapel, lecture and student rooms further to the west along Waveland. By 1899, four homes were built for professors from the northwest corner of the block (at Waveland and Stella) stretching south along Stella. The seminary had ambitious plans for expansion. In 1905, it announced plans to build additional buildings on the southwest corner of the block housing dining halls, a gymnasium, and more lecture and student rooms, along with additional professors' homes on either side of Eliza Hall. The buildings were to be arranged around a central quadrangle.
The seminary, however, was attempting to flourish in the context of a changing community. The extension of the elevated system into the area in 1900 led to rapid development of the surrounding neighborhood. As the area started taking on an increasingly urban character, the seminary abandoned its plans to develop the site and instead sought to sell its land and find a quieter location.
Meanwhile, other developments were coming together to chart a very different future for this plot of land. As early as 1905, rumors had been swirling that minor-league American Association was seeking to locate a franchise in Chicago as part of a strategy to achieve major league status on par with the National League and the recently established American League. The Chicago market was one of the most lucrative in the country, and was already occupied by the NL's Cubs and the AL's White Sox. Charles Havenor (owner of the AA Milwaukee Brewers), and brothers Joe Cantillon (manager of the Washington Senators) and Mike Cantillon (owner of the AA Minneapolis Millers), saw an opportunity to make profit by snapping up choice property in the event that the AA decided to move into the Chicago market. Since the White Sox played on the South Side at South Side Park, and the Cubs were firmly ensconced on the West Side at West Side Park, Havenor and the Cantillons looked to the rapidly developing North Side as the best place to situate a team. The seminary's location represented the best open land on the North Side. In 1909, the seminary, eager to move, sold the property to Havenor and the Cantillons for $175,000 and relocated to the suburb of Maywood, Illinois, where it remained until 1967. Havenor and the Cantillons brought in additional investors in 1910, including E.T. Harmon and Edmund Archambault, wealthy Milwaukee businessmen.
The new owners had intended to keep the sale out of the news, but those plans were foiled when members of the seminary board complained that the seminary could have obtained $200,000 in the sale. Havenor was forced to publicly deny any intention on invading the Chicago market. Other AA team owners got cold feet at the prospect of a war with the major leagues, and elected a president that was unwilling to countenance such a scheme. Over the next couple years, Havenor gradually gave up hope of developing the property, selling out his interest to the remaining investors shortly before his death in April 1912. The former seminary site was not developed any further, and the former seminary buildings were converted into residential units.
Weeghman Park and the Federal League (1913–1915)
The Federal League began its existence as a minor league in 1913, locating franchises in six cities, including Chicago. The Chicago franchise, known as the Chi-Feds, played its home games at the baseball grounds at DePaul University.
John T. Powers, founder and president of the new Federal League, had ambitions of building the new organization into a premier minor league, on par with the American Association. By the middle of the 1913 season, however, the owners had forced Powers out of his job, sensing that the Federal League had the potential to become a viable major league. Replacing him as president was James A. Gilmore, a wealthy Chicago businessman who had made his fortune in coal. Gilmore had the organizational and political skills necessary to mount a serious challenge to the established major leagues.
Gilmore brought on board two partners to control the key Chicago franchise. One was William Walker, a fish wholesaler. The other was the flamboyant Charles A. Weeghman, known as "Lucky Charlie", who had made a quick fortune in local lunch counters (a predecessor to fast food). Weeghman became the club president and the main force behind the team from that point onward, with Walker willing to remain in the background, and Gilmore tending to League issues. Weeghman made headlines by landing star shortstop Joe Tinker from the Cincinnati Reds in December 1913. The Tinker acquisition was the shot in the arm that gave the franchise the momentum to think big for the upcoming 1914 season.
Weeghman chose to relocate the franchise from DePaul to the former seminary grounds at Clark and Addison owned by Archambault and the Cantillons. Although the major leagues threw up a number of roadblocks, including an attempt to secure rights to part of the land on the block, in late December 1913 Weeghman secured a ninety-nine year lease on the property. The lease stipulated, among other things, that improvements on the property could not exceed $70,000. Within several months, however, Weeghman would spend several times that amount in erecting his new ballpark.
Weeghman hired Zachary Taylor Davis, architect of Comiskey Park (which became the home of the White Sox in June 1910), to design the new ballpark. Weeghman wanted the park to rival the Polo Grounds in New York, but in the end the single-decked grandstand as designed bore little resemblance to it.
Work on the property did not begin until February 23, 1914, exactly two months before the Chi-Feds' scheduled home opener. After the grounds had been cleared, groundbreaking ceremonies took place on March 4. Under the guidance of the Blome-Sinek company, the lead construction contractor, the park came together over the remainder of March and the first half of April. Despite a brief strike by construction workers in early April, the new park was ready for baseball by the date of the home opener on April 23, 1914.
The new ballpark, known as Weeghman Park, was a modern steel and concrete baseball plant (in the industrial lexicon of the day). It featured a single-decked grandstand sweeping from right field behind home plate to near the left field corner. Perched on top of the grandstand roof behind home plate was a small area for the press.
A modern-day visitor to the original Weeghman Park would have difficulty recognizing the outfield aside from the familiar buildings on the opposite side of Waveland and Sheffield Avenues (which have not changed much at all). The dimensions of the original playing field along the foul lines were quite short. The distance from home plate to the right field brick fence along Sheffield Avenue was around at the foul line. Left field was not much better, partly because several old seminary buildings stood between the wooden left field fence and Waveland Avenue. The left field fence also featured a large scoreboard. Like most of the parks of the day, the field was essentially angular, as it was shaped by the surrounding grid street pattern. The right and left field walls converged in a corner in deep center field, nearly from home plate. Because of the constricted size of much of the outfield near the corners, bleachers were limited to a small jury box in right-center field. All told, Weeghman Park had a seating capacity of 14,000, but this was frequently exceeded by the many standing room only crowds of the day.
After an unusual number of home runs were hit during the Chi-Feds' first home series against Kansas City in April, Weeghman decided the left field wall was too cozy a target, and had the entire fence moved back some 25 feet. To do this, the front porch had to be removed from the old seminary building beyond the wall.
Before the start of the 1915 season, Weeghman made additional changes to the outfield. Gone were the jury-box bleachers in right-center field. The old seminary buildings beyond left field were finally demolished in March. In their place, Weeghman had wooden bleachers erected from the left-field corner to center field, raising the park's capacity to roughly 18,000. The scoreboard was relocated to center field, where it has remained in one form or another since then (with the exception of the latter part of the 1937 season during construction of the current bleachers).
On the field, the Chi-Feds were renamed the Chicago Whales for their second season. Weeghman Park became a prominent venue for baseball in Chicago as the team won the Federal Legue pennant in a closely contested race. The park was also noted for its high standards of cleanliness and promotion. Weeghman introduced initiatives such as Ladies' Day (every Friday) and in 1916, became the first baseball owner to allow fans to keep foul balls. A successful reataurateur, he also contributed to the park's reputation for quality food. well before the Wrigley family's involvement, the park was already known for its hospitality.
Despite the exciting pennant race and generally high quality of baseball played in the Federal League, the League was hemorrhaging money. In December 1915, the League capitulated to the other major leagues and disbanded. But all was not lost for Weeghman, however. He was allowed to purchase the Cubs franchise for $500,000, and promptly moved his new club out of the dilapidated West Side Park and into his Weeghman Park for the 1916 season. The purchase was in reality a merger between the Whales and the Cubs, as a number of former Whales stars, such as Max Flack and Claude Hendrix, found themselves playing in the same park as Cubs the following season.
Weeghman Park to Cubs Park to Wrigley Field (1916–1932)
The Cubs played their first game at Weeghman Park on April 20, 1916, besting the Cincinnati Reds 7–6 in eleven innings. This proved to be the highlight of an otherwise unremarkable season. After another year in the bottom half of the standings, the Cubs won the National League pennant in 1918 under manager Fred Mitchell. The victory was not without a little outside help, as wartime conditions during the height of American involvement in World War I caused major league baseball to end the regular season on September 1. With the Cubs struggling for cash, Weeghman reluctantly rented the larger capacity Comiskey Park for the Cubs' home games in the World Series. For the Cubs, the experience was a bust, as the club lost the series to Babe Ruth and the Boston Red Sox in six games to relatively anemic attendance. Such losses may have provided the final push forcing Charlie Weeghman out of management following the season.