Ballplayers House



The Ballplayers House or Ballfields Café is a 450 ft2 building in Central Park in Manhattan, New York City, designed by the architecture firm Buttrick White & Burtis. Completed in 1990, it replaced an older building, architect Calvert Vaux's Boys Play House of 1868, which stood on the northern edge of the Heckscher Ballfields until it was demolished in 1969. Vaux's building was a 1-1/2 story (plus basement), 52 ft long clubhouse and dispensary for bats and balls, whereas Buttrick White & Burtis' building is a 1-story food concession half the length of the original.

Design
The Ballplayers House recalls Vaux's design, albeit much altered in form and detail. In contrast to the brick and bluestone facade of Vaux's building, with its pointed arches and polychrome voussoirs, the facade of Ballplayers House is composed with graphic stripes of highly contrasting brick. An encaustic tile frieze with a simple flower motif and a zig-zag pattern, symbolizes a ball bouncing across a baseball field. In lieu of Vaux's bracketed eaves, pointed pinnacles and chamfered chimney, the new building boasts a simple roofline, topped with a sleek, factory-made, metal cresting.



Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, president of the Central Park Conservancy when the Ballplayers House was built, described its design as "a contemporary interpretation of Vaux's style."