Last time I did one of these, I was promising a Providence ballpark would be next. Many suns later, here we go:

Below, you will see, roughly, maybe, essentially, where the "Messer Street Grounds" was located, from 1878 to 1887. It was home to the NL's Providence Grays, two-time league champions before they disbanded in 1885.


View Messer Street Grounds in a larger map

There are two detailed sites about the park, here (ProvidenceGrays.Org) and here (Project Ballpark), plus the Wiki page. You can learn more about the park and the team there, but my little project is all about pinpointing the park's footprint. Those sites helped me a lot. This was a tough one, though, as there was some conflicting info.

The first site said the land owned by Josiah Chapman, whose farm the park was built on, was bordered by Messer Street on the east, Willow on the north, and unknown on the west and south. I went to 1875 maps of Providence Ward 8 and 9 on this awesome site and actually saw Chapin's land notated. It even showed the location of Stephen Tourtellot's house (the yellow house on my map above), one of the only houses built on the land (which is why they were able to put a baseball field on it). That house still stands--check out the street view of it. The house shown at the Project Ballpark site above is right below the corner of Messer and Willow, and also shows a plaque which says the park in "near" there. So even though the 1875 map showed me that Chapin's land extended many more blocks south, I guess we have to assume that the northeast corner of it (by Messer and Willow) is where the ballyard sat.

As for how it was situated: I read where there was an east and west bleachers, which would imply the park faced north or south. But I also read that the area beyond center and right field was used for circuses, and that implies the park would face southeast, leaving the area to the south of the field as circusville. (Because Chapin's land ran from Willow down several blocks south.) I liked that idea, but I went with south-facing for my map. Either way you can match it to another fact, which is that the Tourtellot house was just beyond the left field fence, and would have people sitting on its roof watching games.

The Project Ballpark site also gave dimensions--I don't know how they could have known this--and I made my footprint accordingly to fit in onto the land, leaving room for the grandstand just below Willow. It's almost as if they had right field go all the way out to a far away point, and had the fence cut straight across until it got to left, where it had to go around that one house. Which would make sense if they were respecting the boundary of houseless Wood Street. (See the pink section of this old map to see the Chapin land--Messer Street runs along the bottom; north is to the right. That shows the top border--the bottom border extends way down past where this map ends, as you can see if you search the other ward 8/9 maps. I also read that his land was renamed the "West Training Ground Plat"--on some old maps you see the area to the east of Chapin's land referred to as "Training Ground Plat.")

I'm also wondering what the building is in the background of the shot on the Project Ballpark page of the team on the field is. I don't think it's around anymore, but it does prove there were buildings just behind the grandstand, which fits my theory--that would be the north side of Messer Street.

Hope you got all that. One more thing--Babe Ruth played for the Providence Grays, but that was obviously much later, and it was a different Grays, playing in a different park. The minor league Grays lasted a good long time, yet I can't figure out where Ruth played ball when he was here. Can't find the location or the name. That's for you to research, I guess.

Labels: old ballpark locations