Busch Stadium III — Construction Documentation

About This Project

Three years. Hundreds of visits. Thousands of photographs. Beginning on Day 1 of demolition, Gregory Woodruff documented every phase of Busch Stadium III's construction — from the moment the final light poles of the old park came down to the ribbon-cutting on Opening Day 2006. Standing at the south end of the old stadium, at the exact spot where home plate would sit in the new park, Woodruff photographed something no construction photographer had ever captured at any other Major League Baseball facility: a direct, unobstructed view of the Gateway Arch — the 630-foot stainless-steel Jefferson National Expansion Memorial — framed perfectly by the rising steel skeleton of the new stadium. No building in St. Louis is permitted to stand taller than the Arch. Busch Stadium III honors that. The view remains today. This is the only Major League Baseball park in America with a direct sightline to a National Monument. The full gallery — organized by construction phase and season — documents the human story behind the steel: union electricians from Worn Signs running cable in subzero January mornings, ironworkers completing the upper deck before the last home game of the 2005 season, and the quiet, magnificent morning when the last piece of the facade was set into place.

Construction Photos (28)

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