Rate Field: The Ballpark and 35th Street Around It

Two rail stations serve the ballpark, on two different systems.

Sox-35th station, at 142 West 35th Street, is on the CTA Red Line, situated in the median of the Dan Ryan Expressway in the Armour Square neighborhood. Its own article states that it serves Rate Field, the stadium of the Chicago White Sox, and that it originally served the now-demolished Comiskey Park. It opened on September 28, 1969 along with the other eight stations on the Dan Ryan branch, and its station sign formerly read "35-Sox Park". The station has one island platform and two tracks, with dual entrances via the 35th Street and 33rd Street overpasses, and elevators and escalators to platform level. The CTA bus routes connecting there are 24 Wentworth and 31 31st, both weekdays only, 35 31st/35th, and 39 Pershing.

The Metra Rock Island Line's 35th Street station, at 106 West 35th Street in Bronzeville, is described by its own article as located east of Rate Field.

On parking, what the record holds is a licence register rather than a rate. CHISOX CORPORATION holds current City of Chicago Commercial Garage licences, all in AAI status and expiring May 15, 2028, at at least seven addresses: 333 West 35th Street, 355 West 35th Street, 355 West 37th Street, 3440 South Wentworth Avenue, 3415 South Shields Avenue, 3411 South Normal Avenue and 360-380 West Pershing Road. Two further commercial garages are licensed on the same block of West 35th Street — DIAMOND GROUP 35, LLC at 510-518 West 35th Street and TRIPLE CROWN ENTERTAINMENT, LLC at 500 West 35th Street — both in AAI status and current through at least 2028.

Two things that register does not carry. It states no price for any of those garages, and no source fetched for this guide states one, so none is published. And a licence in AAI status persists until expiry whether or not a garage is operating, so this guide records who is licensed where, and does not say that any of them is open on a given day.

West 35th Street is the spine, and the addresses run along it: the ballpark at 333, ChiSox Bar & Grill at 320, 35th Street Red Hots at 500, Bridgeport Art Center at 1200, and the old ballpark's marker at

324. Cork and Kerry on 33rd is at 3258 South Princeton Avenue. Each of these sits in the Armour Square community area or in Bridgeport, the neighborhood the ballpark's own article names next to it.

ChiSox Bar & Grill, at 320 West 35th Street, appears in the City of Chicago's licence register under ILLINOIS SPORTSERVICE, INC., with Retail Food Establishment, Outdoor Patio and Consumption on Premises - Incidental Activity licences. Whether the White Sox organization itself operates it or Illinois Sportservice does so as a contracted concessionaire is not stated by any source fetched, and no history, opening date or menu exists beyond the licence record.

Cork and Kerry on 33rd, at 3258 South Princeton Avenue, is carried under the legal name Chicago Pizza Department Corp., licensed for food and for on-premises liquor consumption, with a fee paid on May 2, 2026 and licensure continuing through June 15, 2028. Its own domain does not resolve, so nothing about its founding or history could be established.

35th Street Red Hots, at 500 West 35th Street in Bridgeport, is carried under 35TH STREET REDHOTS LLC with a Retail Food Establishment licence and nothing else; no liquor licence was found under that name at that address, so whether it serves alcohol is not established here.

Bridgeport Art Center, at 1200 West 35th Street, describes itself on its own site as a multi-disciplinary creative home with three galleries, studios, a Fashion Design Center, the Chicago Ceramic Center and two event venues. The licence register carries EAST BANK STORAGE ON 35TH STREET, INC., doing business as Bridgeport Art Center, with Outdoor Patio, Consumption on Premises and Public Place of Amusement licences, a fee paid on September 15, 2025 and licensure through January 15, 2028. The building's construction date and its former use could not be established: the operator's own site describes timber construction, exposed brick and hardwood floors but gives no build year and names no former tenant, and no independent source for the building's history was reachable.

The marker for the old ballpark is at 324 West 35th Street. Original Comiskey Park stood there, designed by Zachary Taylor Davis with Osborn Engineering, opened on July 1, 1910, closed on September 30, 1990 and demolished in 1991; the site became a parking lot. A marble plaque marks the old home plate, across from Rate Field, with the foul lines painted on the asphalt, and the marked plate is 503 feet due north of the current home plate. No historic-landmark designation for the site or the plaque was found, and no source dated to 2026 confirms that the plaque and painted lines are still physically present.

One thing to know about the record behind all of this. The City of Chicago's licence register is real, queryable and reproducible — two independent re-queries during verification matched the research's figures exactly, down to dates and dollar amounts. What it cannot do is say that a business is trading today, because an AAI licence stands until it expires whether the doors are open or not. So this guide publishes who is licensed at which address, with the dates, and stops there. It does not say those five places are open, and it does not say they have closed: there is no evidence of that, and none should be inferred.

Rate Field opened on April 18, 1991 as Comiskey Park II. The original building cost US$137 million, approximately $324 million in 2025 dollars, and HOK Sport — now Populous — designed it. The Illinois Sports Facilities Authority owns and operates it, and the playing surface is Kentucky Bluegrass.

The upper deck is the design decision the ballpark is known for. HOK Sport set it back over the lower deck so that the stands rose fairly gradually, which gave nearly every upper-level seat an unobstructed view but produced one of the highest upper decks in baseball, and the upper deck did not connect to the lower-deck concourse. A renovation program from 2001 to 2007 addressed it at a combined cost of $118 million: Phase III in 2003 cost approximately $20 million, and Phase IV in 2004 cost approximately $28 million and removed eight rows and 6,600 seats from the top of the upper deck, cutting capacity from 47,098 to 40,615. A flat roof, elevated 20 feet above the seating area, replaced the old sloped canopy-style roof and covers 13 of the 21 rows of seating. In 2016 three new HD video boards went in at a cost of $7.3 million, the center-field board measuring 60 feet by 134 feet, or 8,000 square feet.

The name has changed four times. It opened as Comiskey Park II. U.S. Cellular purchased the naming rights in 2003 for US$68 million over 20 years and then paid $13 million to end the agreement seven years early. Guaranteed Rate purchased them in a 13-year deal announced on October 31, 2016, paying $20.4 million over the first ten years, and the ballpark was Guaranteed Rate Field from 2017 to 2024. In December 2024 the name was shortened to Rate Field after Guaranteed Rate's corporate rebrand.

The old ballpark is 503 feet away and still marked. The stadium was built across 35th Street from the original Comiskey Park, which was demolished to make room for a parking lot; a marble plaque on the sidewalk indicates where Old Comiskey's home plate stood, with the foul lines painted in the lot. Bill Veeck's exploding scoreboard, whose pinwheels he installed during his ownership periods of 1959 to 1961 and 1976 to 1981, was among the last structures demolished, along with the center field bleachers. It was in that park, on July 12, 1979, that Disco Demolition Night ended with fans storming the field after a crate of disco records was detonated between games of a doubleheader; attendance was officially reported at 47,795, though Veeck estimated 50,000 to 55,000 in the park, and the American League president Lee MacPhail ordered the second game forfeited to the Detroit Tigers 9-0. That unplayed game remains the last American League game to be forfeited.

The club itself was established in 1894 as the Sioux City Cornhuskers, moved to Chicago in 1900 as the Chicago White Stockings, and was renamed the White Sox in 1904. It has played in the American League Central Division since 1994 and has won three World Series titles, in 1906, 1917 and 2005; the 2005 title ended an 88-year drought described at the time as the longest MLB championship drought in the American League.

Between the first two titles came the scandal that defines the franchise's early history. In the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds, eight White Sox players — Arnold "Chick" Gandil, Eddie Cicotte, Oscar "Happy" Felsch, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, Fred McMullin, Charles "Swede" Risberg, George "Buck" Weaver and Claude "Lefty" Williams — conspired with gamblers to fix the series, which Cincinnati won; the White Sox lost Game Eight, and the series, on October 9, 1919. The newly appointed commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned all eight for life on August 3, 1921, writing that regardless of the verdict of juries, no player who throws a ball game will ever play professional baseball.

Two more recent entries in the record. The team recorded its 20th no-hitter on April 14, 2021, when Carlos Rodon pitched against Cleveland. And in 2024 it lost 21 consecutive games, from July 10 to August 5, becoming the first team since the 1988 Baltimore Orioles to lose 20 consecutive games.