Fenway Park

Work began in late September 1911, and by the next April the park was ready, if not quite finished. The first game on the new field was an exhibition against Harvard on April 9, 1912, a 2–0 Red Sox win played in snow flurries. Rain pushed back Opening Day, so the first official game came on April 20, when some 27,000 fans watched the Red Sox beat the New York Highlanders, soon renamed the Yankees, 7–6 in 11 innings. That October the club won the World Series, clinching it at home in the park’s first season.

The name was simple marketing. Owner John I. Taylor reasoned that the park sat in the Fenway, the district named for Frederick Law Olmsted’s Back Bay Fens, and the family’s Fenway Realty Company welcomed the free publicity. Tom Yawkey’s 1934 rebuild enlarged the grandstand and swapped wooden bleachers for concrete and steel. By the 1990s demolition looked possible, but a campaign called Save Fenway Park! pushed for preservation, and the group that bought the team in 2002 kept the old park and spent a decade upgrading it. In March 2012, its centennial year, Fenway Park was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

For two decades, left field ended at a 25-foot fence atop a 10-foot embankment, a slope called Duffy’s Cliff after left fielder Duffy Lewis, who learned to play it. The 1934 rebuild leveled the slope and raised a 37-foot wall. It was plastered with ads until 1947, when it was painted green to match the rest of the park, and the Monster nickname followed. In 2003 the club put 269 barstool seats on top, and they became some of the most coveted tickets in baseball. The hand-run scoreboard set into the wall is one of the last hand-operated scoreboards in the majors, along with Wrigley Field’s.

Right field has its own oddities. The foul pole there stands just 302 feet from home plate, and it has been Pesky’s Pole for decades, after the shortstop Johnny Pesky; the club made the name official on his 87th birthday in 2006. Deep in the right-field bleachers, one seat among the green ones is red: Section 42, Row 37, Seat 21. It marks where a Ted Williams home run landed on June 9, 1946, a shot the club put at 502 feet. The ball came down on a spectator’s straw hat. The seat was painted red in 1984.

Jersey Street is the front door. It was renamed Yawkey Way in 1977 to honor the late owner, then restored to its original name in 2018 at the team’s request; under Yawkey, the Red Sox were the last major-league team to integrate, in 1959. On game days the street closes to traffic hours before first pitch, and once the gates open it becomes part of the ballpark, open only to ticket holders, with live music, food stands and the team store. Gates open 90 minutes before first pitch, and there is no re-entry, so arrive with time to wander.

Seats here are a lesson in history. Some grandstand seats have been in use since 1934, rows are tight, and certain views are cut by the posts that hold up the roof, so read the listing before you buy. The bleachers are cheaper and louder, while the Monster seats and the right-field roof deck, added in 2004, are the prized perches. In the middle of the eighth inning the whole park sings Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline, a ritual at every home game since 2002, whatever the score. When the last out is made, Kenmore station floods. Locals linger on Lansdowne Street, walk over to Fenway station on the D branch, or simply walk home.

The ballpark does not hibernate. Guided tours of about an hour run daily, year-round, in rain, snow and sun, and they may be the best way to see the place without a crowd: the empty grandstand, the view from atop the wall, a century of stories in between. Buy tickets ahead on the Red Sox website. On game days the last tour leaves 3 hours before first pitch, and concert setup can close off parts of the park, so check before you plan a day around one.

Fenway has never been only a ballpark. A national high school football championship was played there in November 1912, and college and pro football teams used it for long stretches of the 20th century. Bruce Springsteen’s two sold-out shows in September 2003 were the first big concerts at the park in three decades, and summer concerts have been a fixture ever since. The NHL’s Winter Classic was played on a rink built over the field in 2010 and again in 2023, college hockey has returned for Frozen Fenway, and a college football bowl game first kicked off there in December 2022.

Walk around to Lansdowne Street and you are behind the Green Monster; the wall rising over the sidewalk is the back of the famous one. For decades a tall net above it caught home runs that would otherwise have rained onto this street, until the Monster seats replaced it. The block is lined with music venues and bars, and one of them, Bleacher Bar, is built into the ballpark itself, tucked under the center-field bleachers since 2008, with a window that looks straight out onto the outfield.

Cross the Brookline Avenue bridge over the Turnpike, named for David Ortiz in 2016, and you reach Kenmore Square. A sign has stood atop 660 Beacon Street since 1940; the Citgo design arrived in 1965 and switched to LEDs in 2005. In 2026 it went dark for a move about 30 feet higher and 120 feet east on the same building. If the sign over the Monster looks different from older photos, or is still dark when you visit, that is why.