page_title: Wrigley Field
section_title: Rooftop seats
hierarchical_section_title: Wrigley Field / Features / Rooftop seats
caption_attribution_description: Wrigley Field and Wrigley Rooftops
context_page_description: Wrigley Field is a baseball park located on the North Side of Chicago, Illinois. It is the home of the Chicago Cubs, one of the city's two Major League Baseball franchises. It first opened in 1914 as Weeghman Park for Charles Weeghman's Chicago Whales of the Federal League, which folded after the 1915 baseball season. The Cubs played their first home game at the park on April 20, 1916, defeating the Cincinnati Reds with a score of 7–6 in 11 innings. Chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. of the Wrigley Company acquired the Cubs in 1921. It was named Cubs Park from 1920 to 1926, before being renamed Wrigley Field in 1927.
  In the North Side community area of Lakeview in the Wrigleyville neighborhood, Wrigley Field is on an irregular block bounded by Clark and Addison streets to the west and south, and Waveland and Sheffield avenues to the north and east. Wrigley Field is nicknamed "The Friendly Confines", a phrase popularized by "Mr. Cub", Hall of Fame shortstop and first baseman Ernie Banks. The oldest park in the National League, the current seating capacity is 41,649; it is the second-oldest in the majors after Fenway Park, and the only remaining Federal League park.
context_section_description: When the Wrigley Field was constructed in 1914, the buildings along Waveland and Sheffield avenues gave spectators a view of what was going on inside the ballpark, but did not become popular spectator areas until the 1929 World Series. The 1938 World Series brought paying spectators to the rooftops, however, fans typically sat in lawn chairs and brought their own food and beverages. In the mid-1980s, rooftop owners began to organize more formally as businesses, seeking to extract more revenue by updating the rooftops with bleacher-style grandstands. The Sky Box on Sheffield opened in 1993. Back then, it primarily catered to corporate groups. Today, it is complete with a two-tier roof deck, indoor clubhouse, fully staffed bars on three levels, and an elevator.
  In 1998, the city started requiring rooftop owners to have a license and began to regulate the venues. In 2003, relations between rooftop owners and the Cubs worsened when the team put up a large screen to block the view of the rooftops. The screens exemplified what is known as a spite fence. The Cubs then sued most rooftop businesses that year. The Cubs felt that the rooftops were stealing from the team's product and the rooftop owners were "unjustly enriching themselves."
  In 2004, the building owners agreed to share a portion of their proceeds with the Cubs. Rooftop owners were required to pay the Cubs 17% of their gross revenue. The agreement lasts until 2023. The Cubs obtained permission from the city to expand the ballpark's own bleachers out over the sidewalks and do some additional construction on the open area of the property to the west, bordered by Clark and Waveland, and to close the remnant of Seminary Avenue that also existed on the property. The rooftop seats are now effectively part of the ballpark's seating area, although they are not included in the seating capacity figure.
  In July 2016, R. Marc Hamid, a former rooftop owner was convicted on nine counts of mail fraud and illegal bank structuring. Hamid had been under reporting attendance at the Sky Box on Sheffield from 2008 to 2011. Over those years, Hamid covered up more than $1 million in revenue while also avoiding hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes and royalties that violated the agreement rooftop owners had with the Cubs. In January 2017, Hamid was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison.
  The owners threatened suit in 2013 when the team announced plans to renovate the ball field and potentially disrupt the sight lines. When the rooftop owners did not agree to a scaled down plan for renovations of Wrigley, the Cubs owners announced, in May 2014, their intentions to implement the original 2013 plan for renovations even if it meant battling the issue in court. Cubs owner Ricketts said Wrigley has "the worst player facilities in Major League Baseball...I am saying it is the time to invest in Wrigley Field and do the things that our competitors do." By the end of the 2016 season, the Ricketts family had acquired 10 of the rooftop locations and have a financial stake in an 11th.
  Some of the rooftops became legendary in their own right. The Lakeview Baseball Club, which sits across Sheffield Avenue (right-field) from the stadium displayed a sign that read, "Eamus Catuli!" (roughly Latin for "Let's Go Cubs!"—catuli translating to "whelps", the nearest Latin equivalent), flanked by a counter indicating the Cubs' long legacy of futility. The counter was labeled "AC", for "Anno Catulorum", or "In the Year of the Cubs". Prior to the team's 2016 championship, it read AC0871108, with the first two digits indicating the number of years since the Cubs' last division championship as of the end of the previous season (2008), the next two digits indicating the number of years since the Cubs won the National League Pennant (1945), and the last three digits indicating the number of years since their last World Series win (1908). After winning the World Series in 2016, the sign was updated to AC0000000.
caption: View of the right field bleacher seats before the 1060 Project renovations began
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