WHITE STADIUM (4)

By: Lawry Hutcheson
March 1, 2026

This series of WHITE STADIUM linocut prints, created during 2025 by HILOBROW friend and brother-in-law Lawry Hutcheson, are a subset of his LINOCUT 2025 series.

© Lawrence Hutcheson. Click for closer view.

22 April 2025

This is a view from one of the puddingstone ledges along Playstead Rd looking down to where the East Grandstand used to be and across to where the West Grandstand is being gutted. I did the sketch back in early April.

The dirt piles in the foreground are the strip of parkland behind where the East Grandstand used to be. My siblings and I ran cross country races along here in high school, as the course made its first loop around the stadium and Laurie remembers measuring the big oak trees in elementary school, when they would come up from the Hernandez. I think the cedar tree by the old ticket booth would have been at the bottom right of this image. It’s a strip of land we would often walk with our kids to get from our house to the zoo or back from playing frisbee on the Playstead; more enjoyable than the paved road.

The city and the soccer partners went ahead and cut down the trees and ripped up this area before the court case to protect it had begun (keeping on schedule I guess). And the judge has now upheld that this area of land is not legally part of Franklin Park (some interesting history there). But it’s been part of the park in our experience of it and I’m sad to see it cleared for construction and profit. I understand that profit is not the only motive behind this project. I know that the space under the new grandstand on this side will be for BPS (while Pro Soccer occupies the West side). And I see that some of the trees and puddingstone at the edge of this strip will be preserved against the wall of the new East Grandstand. But I still don’t agree that this is how the land ought to be used.

WHITE STADIUM (4)

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