Guaranteed Rate Field

Capacity:
40,615
Country:
United States of America
Address:
333 W 35th St, Chicago, IL 60616, United States
City:
Chicago, Illinois
Surface:
Kentucky Bluegrass
Team:
Chicago White Sox
Inauguration:
18 April 1991
Construction cost:
US$137 million
($273 million in 2021 dollars)
Architecture firm:
Populous
Parking:
8 main parking lots
Renovated:
2001–2012, 2015–2019
Architectural style:
Postmodern Architecture

Guaranteed Rate Field, formerly Comiskey Park and US Cellular Field is a baseball stadium located on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. It serves as the home stadium of the Chicago White Sox, one of the city's two Major League Baseball (MLB) teams, and is owned by the state of Illinois through the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority. Completed at a cost of US$137 million, the park opened as Comiskey Park on April 18, 1991, taking its name from the former ballpark at which the White Sox had played since 1910.


Guaranteed Rate Field is situated just to the west of the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago's Armour Square neighborhood, adjacent to the more famous neighborhood of Bridgeport. The stadium was built directly across 35th Street from the original Comiskey Park, which was demolished to make room for a parking lot for the new venue. The location of Old Comiskey's home plate is represented by a marble plaque on the sidewalk next to Guaranteed Rate Field, with the foul lines painted in the parking lot. The spectator ramp across 35th Street is designed in such a way (partly curved, partly straight but angling east-northeast) that it echoes the contour of the old first-base grandstand.


The stadium was the first new major sporting facility built in Chicago since Chicago Stadium in 1929. It was also the last one built before the wave of new "retro-classic" ballparks in the 1990s and 2000s.


A few design features from the old Comiskey Park were retained. The front facade of the park features arched windows. The "exploding scoreboard" pays homage to the original, installed by Bill Veeck at the old park in 1960. The original field dimensions and seating configuration were very similar to those of Royals Stadium (now Kauffman Stadium) in Kansas City, which had been the last baseball-only park built in the majors, in 1973.


As originally built, the park was criticized by many fans because of the height of the upper deck. The original architect, HOK Sport (now Populous), wanted to eliminate the overhang problems present in many stadiums built since the 1970s. With this in mind, the upper deck was set back over the lower deck, and the stands rose fairly gradually. While it gave nearly every seat in the upper level an unobstructed view of the field, it also created one of the highest upper decks in baseball. The first row of seats in the upper deck of the new stadium is as far from the field as the highest row of seats in the upper deck at the old stadium. Due to the field being practically at street level, the original upper deck made the park look like a cookie-cutter stadium from the outside. Fans sitting in this area did not get much chance for relief, as it was one of the few parks in Major League Baseball that did not allow fans sitting in the upper deck to venture anywhere else in the park, such as the lower deck concourse.