150 PARKS 



MISCELLANEOUS ACTIVE RECREATION AREAS 



1. Athletic Fields. 1 



As here considered an athletic field is an area separate and apart from 

 all other areas in a park and recreation system and devoted exclusively to 

 the major and minor organized games and to track and field sports. It has 

 already been noted that athletic fields appear as parts of the design of 

 neighborhood playfield-parks. They may also be found as parts of the 

 design of large parks. Frequently they are provided on high school and 

 junior high school sites. Wherever found, however, their general design, if 

 fully developed, will include the following features: 



(a) Large open space for running track and ball games requiring com- 

 paratively large areas such as baseball, football and soccer. 



(b) Smaller space or spaces for games requiring limited area such as 

 tennis, basket ball, volley ball, quoits and horseshoes. 



(c) Area for seating accommodations grand stand, bleachers. 



(d) Site for field house and surrounding grounds. The facilities that 

 a field house is designed to provide are sometimes made a part of the design 

 of the grand stand. 



(e) Area for parking passenger vehicles. 



(/) High fence entirely around the area or at least that part of the 

 area designed for competitive contests to which an admission fee is charged. 

 This fence may be of wood, concrete, brick or stone. Occasionally a fence 

 of heavy woven wire or iron pickets may be used. 



To these features might be added another part of the design, a space 

 or spaces given over to landscape treatment. It may be asserted that 

 there is no athletic field, even of a minimum area, that does not present 

 some possibilities of landscape treatment although it may be nothing more 

 than the planting of a row of trees around the area. 



For details as to design and construction of athletic fields of various 

 sizes see Chapter V on "Construction Notes," pages 316-341. 



2. Stadiums. 



The stadium is a highly specialized type of athletic field chiefly dis- 

 tinguished from ordinary formal athletic fields by unusual provisions for 

 seating accommodations. While the stadium may be and is used in the 

 United States for various community gatherings involving a variety of 

 activities, its general design is determined more by the requirements of 

 certain types of games and sports than by any other uses. By far the 

 majority of the stadiums are general purpose stadiums, that is, they are 



1 The term "athletic field" is generally used in a very loose sense throughout the country. It is often used 

 to refer merely to an open space where ball games such as baseball, football and soccer are played, with no running 

 track or provisions for minor games. 



