DESIGNING VICTORY: THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE HISTORIC AMERICAN FOOTBALL STADIUM (1900-1945)
Journey back to the 19th- and early 20th-centuries as I uncover a captivating chapter of our nation’s recreational history – the birth of the American football stadium. Uniquely American, these architectural marvels emerged on college campuses at a time when sports and leisure began to carve out their place in our collective consciousness. These historic stadiums rose from the shared vision of architects, engineers, and college athletic departments whose innovative ideas created today’s architectural treasures. This multipart series identifies, documents, and recognizes America’s most historically and architecturally significant vintage football stadiums. Together, let’s ignite a renewed passion for vintage football stadium architecture, with a special focus on those structures that stood proudly before 1945.
In the first decades of the 20th-century, America ushered in a new era where sports took center stage in the nation’s recreational and cultural narrative. This shift was not just a mere pastime; it became an integral part of the American identity. To meet this shift, architects created buildings and structures for sport, including the monumental American Football Stadium.
Lewinsohn Stadium, northeast pavillion (razed). American Architect. Volume 108, August 4, 1915, p. 71.
Sports stadium planning and design developed into a specialized architectural practice. The stadium developed as new type of American recreational structure, with unique characteristics that demanded visionary designers. Architects and engineers strived to meet the needs of colleges and municipalities looking to build structures for hosting outdoor sporting events and recreational activities. Specialists in stadium design provided a structure with lofty goals. Stadiums would meet their client’s needs, stay within a budget, be aesthetically appropriate and beautiful, have structural permanence, durable materials, and fit into its selected setting.
Some well-known architecture and engineering firms created plans for these new types of recreational structures in the early 20th-century, including McKim, Mead and White of New York, Gavin Hadden also of New York, Holabird & Roche of Chicago, and Osborn Engineering Company of Cleveland. Additionally, the University’s own architects and athletic leaders often collaborated with specialized firms whose expertise and focus was in football stadium designs.
ARCHITECTURAL AND ENGINEERING PERIODICALS BEGAN COVERAGE OF STADIUM DESIGN
In the early years of the sport, engineers and architects created the American football stadium with simple wood grandstands or rudimentary forms based on limited budgets. In search of new ideas for stadium design, architects and engineers toured other stadiums for inspiration. Additionally, designers looked to early 20th-century professional publications to enhance their knowledge about this new type of American recreational structure. One of the first publications to cover football stadium design was the American Architect and Building News, who published a piece in August 1904 on “The Steel-Concrete work of the Harvard Stadium.”[i]
Soon other magazines followed, including Architectural Record, Engineering Record, Engineering News, Western Society of Engineering Journal, Engineer and Contractor, Electric World, Popular Mechanics, Concrete, and Scientific American. All published articles on new American football stadiums, particularly in the period between 1914 and 1929. This era of growth in the sport became known as the “Golden Age of American Football.”
A Crescent Plan for a Football Stadium. University of Denver Football Stadium (demolished). Photo by Louis H. Dreyer. From Architectural Forum, July 1928, p. 125.
VINTAGE FOOTBALL STADIUM DESIGN
Regardless when constructed, all stadiums are dictated by trends in design, available materials, setting, sports and economics. Stadiums, whether municipal, on a college campus, or privately operated, are permanent structures characterized by a centralized field or open space to host the outdoor sporting or other event. Public spectator seating rises above the playing field, either built on one side, both sides, in a U-shape, or completely surrounded by a seating structure. Stadiums also feature one deck or multi-decks.
Materials, site and sightlines
With the arrival of reinforced concrete construction, architects and engineers could create permanent stadium designs after 1900. Modern materials solved fan safety issues, too, due to their strength and fireproof qualities. Since reinforced concrete insulated its embedded steel from the outdoor elements, its qualities made it an ideal choice for stadium construction. Often architects combined reinforced concrete structures with structural steel and exterior wall materials such as brick or masonry.
Designers, too, considered the site when selecting a stadium plan. Some designers built stadiums into the ground, hillsides, or other challenging landscapes. Other stadiums were freestanding, permanent structures built above the surface of the ground.
Architects also considered numbers, views and comfort of seated spectators, their movement in and out of the stadium, their circulation within the structure via ramps and portals, sight lines, closeness to the playing field, and crowd control. A stadium is always set near transportation for fan accessibility, whether close to railroads or other public transportation, or parking lots and auto infrastructure.
Other stadium elements
No matter its setting, whether on campus or in a municipality, all football stadiums share common elements. Today’s stadium elements include scoreboards, signage, press boxes, luxury boxes and levels, team quarters, offices, concessions, storage, lighting, first aid, flagpoles, restrooms, gates, concourses, walkways, portals, ramps, escalators, elevators, and walkways. However, central to stadium design are two most important elements: spectator seating and the playing field.
SPECTATOR SEATING
Seating arrangements dictate the prevailing stadium type or composition. Designers placed seating entirely around the field (closed) or along one or both sides of the field (open). The goal is to place as many seats as possible around the playing field while also providing the best views of the event.
Seating capacity and stand construction
Seating capacity typically ranges from smaller 5,000 to 10,000 seat stadiums, to large stadiums accommodating 50,000 to over 100,000 fans. In every stadium’s seating area, seating tiers rise upward from the playing field with a continuously increasing slope. Designers worked to deliver convenient and comfortable seats, with good views in close proximity to the field that are free from any obstructions.
Stand construction, mainly of reinforced concrete and structural steel, generally are one- or two-decked depending on anticipated crowds. Certainly a second deck increases seating capacity near the playing field. Yet, the upper deck also presented a new problem for architects and engineers. The second deck needed to be supported, while interfering minimally with sight lines. Cost and aesthetics became factors when introducing the second deck to stadium design in the 1920s. However, designers discovered an important benefit of overlapping the lower section. The second deck provided some roof protection to the seats below. Fans enjoy protection from inclement weather and the sun’s hot rays on warmer game days. Outdoor temperature fluctuations also concerned architects and engineers who introduced multiple expansion joints to counter freeze and thaw movement. Also considered are live crowd loads, as cheering, swaying, and jumping cause stress on the stand structure.
A Stadium’s Exterior Aesthetics
To support the outer perimeter of the seating deck or decks, designers added an exterior façade of varying masonry materials. These facades made reinforced concrete structures less severe. Depending on construction budget, the stadium’s exterior facades are with or without architectural treatment or applied ornament. Many architects treated stadium exteriors with elements from ancient Greek and Roman models, most commonly with arcades and classical elements. Others chose architectural styles that captured period trends or architectural styles to complement other campus buildings. Even still, some stadiums appeared utilitarian, lacking any architectural style mostly due to budget considerations.
Architects creating the American football stadium in the early 20th-century progressed from strictly utilitarian structures to those with architectural appeal. Many architecturally significant football stadiums of the early 20th-century are quite elaborate, introducing grand gate entrances, towers to house circulation ramps, treated portal openings, classical colonnades, entry level or wall piercing arcades, or a covered promenade to finish off the top of the seating tiers.
PLAYING FIELD
By the same token, the play area or playing field used for the athletic contest is also crucial to stadium design and typologies. Rules of the game dictate the playing field’s specifications, and in this case, football is played on a rectangular football playing field or grid iron. Site selection and local conditions typically determine the orientation of the playing field, yet, across the country most football fields are oriented north and south. Field surfaces can be natural or artificial, with considerable attention paid to drainage.
In the 1880s, the football field measured 330 feet by 160 feet with ten foot and six inch goal posts and a crossbar ten feet in height. By 1912, officials shortened the field to 300 feet in length, with new 30 foot end zones behind the goal lines.[iv] Within the end zones, field’s goal posts are placed 18’6” apart in the middle of each end line, reaching over 20 feet in height and characterized by a horizontal cross bar placed 10 feet from the ground. The 360 feet by 160 feet rectangular football field dimensions still hold in modern game rules.
VINTAGE FOOTBALL STADIUM TYPES OR LAYOUTS
A pivotal 1930 study by Cornell University engineer Myron W. Serby, suitably called The Stadium, examined newly constructed football stadium layouts.[v] He illustrated eight different layout typologies ranging from straight simple structures for smaller stadiums, to open and closed end designs for large, modern stadiums. The most notable early 20th-century stadium layouts include the bowl, the U-shape (including the horseshoe and the muleshoe), the crescent, and the rectangular plan. Seating arrangements dictated stadium composition or types.
Many universities looked to the ancient world for lofty design inspiration, choosing a bowl or U-shaped layout for their new campus stadiums. These plans were not only modeled after the ancient amphitheaters of Greece and Rome, but functional in allowing for multi-sport usage for campus activities. Later, revenue generation factors pushed universities toward rectangular and crescent designs. Both plans considered the economic and experience advantages of fan seating placement, so that fans would have the best seats as possible for viewing games. In turn, better seats equated to higher ticket revenues.
THE BOWL STADIUM
The earliest football stadiums in the U.S. are bowl stadiums. The “bowl” stadium exhibits a signature closed oval or elliptical form with rising concentric seating tiers around the football field below. For sites that offered hillsides, depressed topography, ravines, or other suitable natural grounds, engineers often selected bowl stadium types. These sites could support a stadium, both practically and economically, with some excavation, embankment, or grading.
Generally, the earliest stadium designers preferred bowl types for their aesthetics and visual continuity. Bowl type stadiums proved, however, less comfortable for air circulation within the stands. Nevertheless, the bowl plan allowed for an exceptional crowd experience, whose fan enthusiasm and cheers penetrated throughout the stadium.
THE U-SHAPED STADIUM – HORSESHOE AND MULESHOE
Some of America’s most recognized football stadiums are U-shaped. U-shaped structures include the horseshoe stadium, with bowed or slightly bowed sides and one open, semicircular end. Another U-Shaped structure is the muleshoe stadium, modeled after the stadium at Olympia, Greece, with two straight sides and one semicircular end. Some designers preferred a horseshoe over a muleshoe because of visibility from the stands, particularly when viewing opposite end zones. Muleshoes are more budget conscious, as straight sides are cheaper to construct than bowed sides. While most designers created U-shaped stadiums with single decks, although they also constructed a small number of U-shaped double decked stadiums.
U-Shaped stadiums, as an open-end type of structure, allowed for better ventilation than closed, bowl stadiums. Open ended horseshoe and muleshoe stadiums added comfort to both the spectator in the stands and players on the field.
Some colleges selected bowl and U-shape plan stadiums for multi-purpose sports since they both accommodated running tracks around the football gridiron. Open ended plans were especially ideal for running tracks, since the open end allowed for straightaways. While multi-sport facilities appealed to university budgeters, multi-sport facilities sacrificed spectator views. To house multiple sports, designers placed seating farther away from the sidelines of the football gridiron.
EVOLVING MODERN SOLUTIONS FOR STADIUM DESIGN
Following World War I, in the “Golden Age of American Football,” two stadium types emerged: the Crescent and the Rectangular stadium. Both the Crescent type and Rectangular type broke from widely accepted Greek and Roman models. Initially, stadium designers preferred ancient models for their aesthetics and visual unity. Yet, by the 1920s, designers accepted stadiums with seating structures located on one side or on opposite sides of a playing field. Advances in concrete construction allowed for innovations in seating structures, and more flexibility and creativity in stadium design. During the “Golden Age,” architects and engineers realized that the playing field was most central to stadium design, and the field itself visually linked all parts of the stadium together.
THE CRESCENT STADIUM
The Crescent football stadium is a distinctly unique American invention, promoted by New York civil engineer Gavin Hadden (1888-1956). Hadden, who was trained at both Harvard University and Columbia University, opened his own civil engineering office in New York City following World War I. His firm at this time specialized in stadium design, with projects at Cornell (Schoellkopf Field in 1924), Brown (Brown University Stadium in 1925), Denver (University of Denver Stadium in 1925-26) and Northwestern (Dyche Stadium, now Ryan Field, in 1926-27). Gavin Hadden touted the Crescent design for its multipurpose functionality. To accommodate other types of outdoor events, Hadden promoted small stage assembly in front of the crescent seating stand.
The Crescent stadium, utilizing advances in reinforced concrete construction, met the needs of most football fans who want to sit near as possible to the center of the field. Hadden’s crescent type solution created more desirable, and higher priced, spectator seats at the center of the football playing field, or 50-yard line. By creating more seats with the best views of the field, the crescent stadium met the university’s desire to fetch higher ticket prices and generate more revenue.
Dyche Stadium, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. From The American Architect, January 5, 1928, p. 65. For research purposes only.
With more seats rising upward at the 50-yard line and less seating at the ends of the seating deck, crescent football stadiums are characterized by an unusual “skyline curve.” This circular curve, with its center point at the highest point of the deck, gave the seating deck a crescent appearance.
The crescent stadium is typically a one tiered, single seating deck on one side of the football field. Yet, a few colleges and municipalities did build crescent stadiums in two parts, with seating structures facing each other on opposite sides of the football gridiron. Northwestern University’s Dyche Stadium was the first double decked crescent stadium in the United States.
THE RECTANGULAR STADIUM
When universities constructed stadiums specifically for football use the often chose rectangular plans to specifically accommodate the shape of the football gridiron. Rectangular plans allowed for either one-decked or multi-decked spectator grandstands rising up from one or both sides of the playing field. Additional stands, whether temporary or permanent, could be placed on one or both ends. All stands rise from the straight sidelines or straight lines of the end zones from the field below.
For many schools, football was the premier, revenue generating sport. The largest number of fans, who drove revenues, received the best views and sightlines straight onto the field with a rectangular plan. Bowl and U-shaped stadiums pushed seats further away from the center of the football gridiron due to multipurpose uses. For all stadiums, architects and engineers carefully calculated sight lines and seating spaces to enhance the fan experience on game day.
[i][i] “The Steel-Concrete Work of the Harvard Stadium.” American Architect and Building News, vol. 85. August 13, 1904, p. 51-53.
[ii] Smith, Howard Dwight. “The Ohio Stadium at Ohio State University.” The Architectural Record, vol. 48, no. 5, November 1920, p. 385.
[iii] Tamte, Walter. Walter Camp and the Creation of American Football. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2018, p. 299.
[iv] Danzig, Allison. The History of American Football: Its Great Teams, Players, and Coaches. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1956, p. 19.
[v] Serby, Myron W. The Stadium: A Treatise on the Design of Stadiums and their Equipment. New York: American Institute of Steel Construction, 1930, pp. 14-15.
