When baseball fans talk about historic ballparks, the conversation almost always begins in Boston or Chicago.
Fenway Park opened in 1912. Wrigley Field followed in 1914. Together, they have become baseball’s twin monuments to nostalgia - cathedrals of creaking steel, ivy-covered brick, and century-old mythology. Rarely does anyone mention San Diego. But hidden in plain sight inside Petco Park sits a building older than both of them.
Long before Fernando Tatis Jr. electrified downtown with towering home runs. Long before Trevor Hoffman’s bells echoed through the Gaslamp. Long before Petco Park existed at all, the massive brick warehouse now defining the stadium’s left field corner was already standing over San Diego’s industrial waterfront.
The Western Metal Supply Co. Building was constructed in 1909 - three years before Fenway Park and five years before Wrigley Field. Which means that while Petco Park officially opened in 2004, part of the Padres’ stadium is physically older than the two most iconic ballparks in Major League Baseball.
Most Padres fans recognize the Western Metal building instantly. Its giant white “W” sign and exposed brick façade have become one of the defining visual signatures of modern baseball. The building forms the entire left field corner of Petco Park, housing suites, viewing decks, concourses, and event space overlooking the field.
What many fans may not realize is that the stadium itself was deliberately designed around preserving it. And for a time, that nearly did not happen.
Originally constructed for the Western Metal Supply Company during San Diego’s early industrial expansion, the five-story warehouse stood near the city’s working waterfront at a time when East Village and the Gaslamp Quarter looked nothing like they do today. The surrounding area was dominated by warehouses, shipping operations, rail infrastructure, and industrial commerce rather than luxury hotels, rooftop bars, and luxury condos.
By the 1990s, when plans for a new downtown Padres stadium began taking shape, demolition of the building was considered a likely outcome. Much of San Diego’s historic industrial architecture had already disappeared during prior decades of redevelopment. The easiest path forward would have been leveling the warehouse entirely.
Instead, architects and preservation advocates pushed to incorporate the building directly into the stadium’s design, transforming it from an aging warehouse into the architectural centerpiece of the Padres’ future home.
The decision fundamentally shaped what Petco Park ultimately became. At the time Petco opened in 2004, many newer baseball stadiums around America were embracing “retro” design, attempting to imitate the feel of early 20th century parks through manufactured brick facades, asymmetrical outfields, and nostalgic detailing.
Petco did something far more authentic. Rather than imitating industrial history, San Diego preserved an actual piece of it.
The Western Metal building gives Petco Park something modern stadiums almost never achieve naturally: genuine historical texture. The weathered brick, industrial windows, and early 20th century proportions are not decorative set pieces. They are original elements from a structure that predates both World Wars, the Great Depression, and the existence of the Padres franchise itself.
Today, the building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and remains one of the oldest surviving physical structures actively incorporated into any Major League Baseball venue.
The contrast between old and new is part of what makes Petco Park feel distinct even two decades after opening. From certain seats along the third base line, the juxtaposition is striking. Sleek HD video boards, luxury towers, and modern stadium lighting rise around a brick warehouse built when William Howard Taft was president. Inside the ballpark, fans drink craft cocktails and watch one of baseball’s most modern franchises compete beneath century-old masonry originally designed for industrial supply storage.
That tension between preservation and reinvention mirrors the evolution of downtown San Diego itself. For decades, the East Village surrounding Petco Park was viewed largely as neglected warehouse district land waiting for redevelopment. The ballpark changed that permanently. Entire residential towers, hotels, restaurants, and entertainment corridors followed in its wake, transforming the area into one of the most economically valuable parts of the city.
Yet amid all that redevelopment, the Western Metal building survived not as a relic frozen in time, but as a functioning part of San Diego’s modern civic identity. And in many ways, it has become the soul of the ballpark.
There are newer stadiums with larger scoreboards, more luxury amenities, or higher capacities. But very few modern ballparks possess an architectural feature as organically tied to both local history and the stadium experience itself. Remove the Western Metal building, and Petco Park instantly becomes less recognizable, less layered, less distinctly San Diego.
It is difficult now to imagine the stadium without it.
That reality also quietly challenges how baseball history is usually discussed. Fenway Park and Wrigley Field are celebrated because the stadiums themselves survived. In San Diego, the historic element survived even as the stadium around it became entirely modern. Petco Park may not technically be one of Major League Baseball’s oldest ballparks, but embedded inside it is one of the oldest surviving structures anywhere in the sport.
More than a century after its construction, the old Western Metal warehouse still looms above left field exactly where it stood in 1909, only now, instead of industrial workers and shipping inventory below its windows, it watches over sellout crowds, playoff baseball, and a Padres franchise that has finally become one of the defining institutions of modern San Diego.
Originally published on May 16, 2026.
