Baltimore Memorial Stadium
Baltimore Memorial Stadium was a multi-purpose stadium in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, that formerly stood on 33rd Street on an oversized block officially called Venable Park, a former city park from the 1920s. The site was bound by Ellerslie Avenue to the west, 36th Street to the north, and Ednor Road to the east.
Two stadiums were located here — a 1922 version known primarily as Baltimore Stadium or Municipal Stadium; and a rebuilt, double-deck, multi-sport stadium, completed in mid-1954, and rechristened Baltimore Memorial Stadium — Memorial Stadium for short.
History
Construction of the football stadium
Memorial Stadium was launched as Municipal Stadium, also sometimes known as Baltimore Stadium or Venable Stadium. Designed by Pleasants Pennington and Albert W. Lewis, it was built in 1922 over a six-month period at the urging of the Mayor, William F. Broening in a previously undeveloped area just north beyond the city's iconic rows of rowhouses. The stadium was constructed in what was formerly Venable Park and was operated by the city's Board of Park Commissioners.It was primarily a football stadium, a large horseshoe with an earthen-mound exterior and its open end with a large stone gateway of a Greek/Roman colonnade and porticoes on the open-faced south side facing the new 33rd Street boulevard/parkway which had just recently been cut through east to west. In this configuration, it seated anywhere from 70,000 to 80,000 people.
In its early years it hosted various public and private high school and college-level games, including the annual "City - Poly Game" on the regular Thanksgiving Day "double-header where the "Collegians" of Baltimore City College opposed its rival Baltimore Polytechnic Institute "Engineers", along with the Roman Catholic high schools' "Loyola - Calvert Hall" Game pitting the Cardinals of Calvert Hall College against Loyola High School at Blakefield's Dons.
Home games for the University of Maryland at College Park's Terrapins football and the United States Naval Academy Midshipmen were sometimes held at the stadium, attracting a national audience and media coverage.
Baseball park
In July 1944, Municipal Stadium was pressed into service as a baseball park by the Baltimore Orioles of the International League, when their previous home, "Oriole Park," located in the Abell neighborhood to the southwest, was destroyed by fire.The minor league Orioles went on to win the International League championship and the Junior World Series that year. The large post-season crowds in attendance at Municipal Stadium, which would not have been possible at Oriole Park, even surpassing the attendance of Major League Baseball's 1944 World Series, caught the attention of professional team owners, and Baltimore suddenly became regarded as a viable option for teams looking to relocate.
File:Claire Ruth.jpg|thumb|right|Babe Ruth's widow, Claire, at the unveiling of a memorial plaque to his memory in Memorial Stadium
Further momentum for sports in Baltimore was spurred when the failing Miami Seahawks franchise of the fledgling All-America Football Conference was relaunched in the fall of 1947 as the Baltimore Colts.
The presence of professional football and the prospect of professional baseball spurred the city to rebuild Municipal Stadium into a facility of "major league caliber." This reconstructed stadium was to be renamed Baltimore Memorial Stadium in honor of the thousands of the city's dead of the recently concluded World War II. Baltimore mayor Thomas D'Alesandro Jr. championed the new stadium project and overcame various legal and political hurdles which delayed progress on the project.
The initial plan called for a single, horseshoe-shaped deck to be built, with the open end facing north, and was designed to host football as well as baseball. It was engineered with enough strength to eventually support a second deck and a roof.
The lower deck reconstruction began in the spring/early summer of 1949 and was done in stages, first at the previously open south end of the stadium, and slowly obliterating the old Municipal Stadium stands, even as the International League Orioles continued playing on their makeshift diamond, along with the new Baltimore Colts of the former All-America Football Conference merged with the reorganized National Football League.
The old seating at the north end was retained for the pro and college football seasons that fall. By year's end, the horseshoe was sufficiently completed to allow the baseball infield to be relocated from the northwest corner of the field to the south end, and the Orioles opened the 1950 season at the newly oriented diamond. Construction continued on the single deck, until finally all the remnants of the old stadium were gone. The new facility could seat around 31,000.
Second deck
The first Baltimore Colts franchise terminated operations for financial reasons at the end of the 1950 season. Community support for a second NFL franchise remained strong, however, and late in 1952 a group of Baltimore businessmen pooled their resources in a bid to win a new league franchise. A "Bring Back the Colts" drive launched in December 1952 generated the presale of 15,000 season tickets in just six weeks. The campaign made an impression and Baltimore, then the sixth largest city in the United States, was awarded an expansion team for the 1953 NFL season.With the NFL back and realistic rumors simultaneously circulating of the arrival of major league baseball, the second deck construction was begun during the summer of 1953. First, two groups of sections were built facing the 50 yard line. Then they were extended toward the south end, completing the upper deck horseshoe. Additional plans to fully enclose the stadium and add a roof to the upper tier were never implemented, although an extra upper deck section would be added on each side in 1964.
Work accelerated in November 1953 when the St. Louis Browns of the American League were announced to be moving to Baltimore to become the new major league version of the Baltimore Orioles, to begin play in April 1954, the city's first major league franchise in over 50 years. The total cost of the multi-phase project was $6.5 million.
The expanded stadium was still under construction as of baseball's opening day in 1954, with the new entrance plaza and the new outfield lighting not yet finished. Work was finally completed at the start of the summer.
On April 15, 1954, thousands of Baltimoreans jammed city streets as the new Orioles paraded from downtown at the Baltimore City Hall to Memorial Stadium for their first home game. During the 90-minute parade, the new "Birds" signed autographs, handed out pictures and threw styrofoam balls to the crowd as the throngs marched down several major city streets ending on East 33rd Street. Inside, more than 46,000 watched the Orioles beat the Chicago White Sox, 3–1, to win their home opener and move into first place in the American League.
Both the new Orioles and the Colts had some great successes over coming years, with both teams becoming among the winningest and competitive franchises in their respective leagues during the late 1950s and throughout the decade of the 1960s.
Abandonment
The dual-use stadium was not without its critics, however. Traffic and a parking shortage made accessing the stadium difficult. Concrete poles blocked views, and unsheltered areas grew hot in the summer. Most of the seats were bench-style, with few having chair backs — let alone more modern amenities.The NFL's Baltimore Colts were the first to express deep dissatisfaction and to seek a new venue. In addition to sub-optimal conditions at Memorial Stadium, capacity was a concern, with the Colts selling out every home game from the start of the 1964 season to the end of 1970 and unable to meet demand for season tickets.
In 1970, Colts owner Carroll Rosenbloom announced that he was seeking a 500 acre parcel in one of three suburban Baltimore counties for construction of a new stadium. A new $20 million football-only facility was planned, with Rosenbloom adamant that the team would be leaving Memorial Stadium expeditiously due to unhappiness with stadium conditions and ongoing irritation over a September legal dispute with the city over whether a Monday Night Football game could be hosted at the site — a dispute which Rosenbloom characterized as "the end of the road."
No stadium deal was ever completed by Rosenbloom.
On July 13, 1972, businessman Robert Irsay made a last-minute bid of $19 million to purchase the Los Angeles Rams from the estate of Dan Reeves. He immediately swapped franchises with Colts owner Rosenbloom, becoming the controlling partner of the Baltimore franchise that same day. Rosenbloom's stadium problem became Irsay's stadium problem, with the former becoming the new tenant of the capacious Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
Memorial Stadium's limitations remained and its amenities continued to deteriorate over time. A decade passed and still neither Irsay nor the city could agree to desperately-needed improvements to the aging and tattered stadium. Irsay began to visit other cities, moving various civic leaders to put together stadium packages that would provide a better financial and physical situation for the Colts. Indianapolis was chosen.
In the middle of a snowy night on March 29, 1984, under threat of a measure introduced into the state legislature to initiate condemnation proceedings for the city and state assert eminent domain and take ownership of the Colts franchise, moving vans rolled in and the Colts rolled out for their new Indiana home.
Loss of the Colts left the Orioles as Memorial Stadium's sole major league tenant and dramatically increased the level of urgency of the political establishment regarding necessary stadium upgrades.