Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium
Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, commonly known as RFK Stadium and originally known as District of Columbia Stadium, was a multi-purpose stadium in Washington, D.C. It was located along the Anacostia River on East Capitol Street in the city's Hill East neighborhood. The stadium was in operation from 1961 to 2019, with deconstruction commencing in 2025 ahead of a $3.7 billion stadium to replace it at the site. RFK Stadium was one of the first large stadiums designed to host both baseball and football, and was among the first to use what became known as the cookie-cutter design.
RFK Stadium was home to a National Football League team, two Major League Baseball teams, five professional soccer teams, two college football teams, and a USFL team. It hosted college football, college soccer, baseball exhibitions, boxing matches, a cycling race, an American Le Mans Series auto race, marathons, and dozens of concerts. Significant events hosted include five NFC Championship Games, two MLB All-Star Games, several FIFA World Cup matches, nine 1996 Olympic soccer matches, three MLS Cups, and two MLS All-Star Games.
History
The idea of a stadium at this location originated in 1930 when plans were developed by the "Allied Architects of Washington, in cooperation with the Fine Arts and National Capital Park and Planning Commissions and the Board of Trade." Plans were further developed in 1932 when the Theodore Roosevelt Association proposed a national stadium for the site and Allied Architects, a group of local architects organized in 1925 to secure large-scale projects from the government, made designs for it. A "National Stadium" in Washington was an idea that had been pursued since 1916, when Congressman George Hulbert proposed the construction of a 50,000-seat stadium at East Potomac Park for the purpose of attracting the 1920 Summer Olympics. It was thought that such a stadium could attract Davis Cup tennis matches, polo tournaments and the annual Army-Navy football game. A later effort by DC Director of Public Buildings and Parks Ulysses S. Grant III and Congressman Hamilton Fish sought to turn the National Stadium into a 100,000-seat memorial to Theodore Roosevelt, suitable for hosting inaugurations, possibly on the National Mall or Theodore Roosevelt Island. This attracted the attention of the RMA, which suggested the East Capital location. This would allow the Lincoln Memorial, then under construction west of the Capitol, and the Roosevelt memorial to become bookend monuments. The effort lost steam when Congress chose not to fund the stadium in time to move the 1932 Summer Olympics from Los Angeles.The idea of a stadium gained support in 1938, when North Carolina Senator Robert Reynolds pushed for the creation of a municipal outdoor stadium within the District, citing the "fact that America is the only major country not possessing a stadium with facilities to accommodate the Olympic Games". The following year a model of the proposed stadium, to be located near the site of the future \ RFK Stadium, was presented to the public. By 1941, the National Capital Planning Commission had begun buying property for a stadium, purchasing the land between East Capitol, C, 19th and 21st NE. A few years later, on December 20, 1944, Congress created a nine-man National Memorial Stadium Commission to study the idea. They intended the stadium to be a memorial to the veterans of the World Wars. The commission wrote a report recommending that a 100,000-seat stadium be built near the site of RFK in time for the 1948 Olympics, but it failed to get funding.
Ignored in the early 1950s, a new stadium again drew interest in 1954. Congressman Charles R. Howell proposed legislation to build a stadium, again with hopes of attracting the Olympics. He pushed for a report, completed in 1956 by the National Capital Planning Commission entitled "Preliminary Report on Sites for National Memorial Stadium", which identified the "East Capitol Site" to be used for the stadium. In September 1957, "The District of Columbia Stadium Act" was introduced and authorized a 50,000-seat stadium to be used by the Senators and Redskins at the Armory site. It was signed into law by U.S. president Eisenhower on July 29, 1958, with an estimated cost of $7.5 to $8.6 million. The lease for the stadium was signed by the D.C. Armory Board and the Department of the Interior on December 12, 1958. The stadium, the first major multisport facility built for both football and baseball, was designed by George Dahl, Ewin Engineering Associates and Osborn Engineering. Groundbreaking for the venue occurred on July 8, 1960, and construction proceeded over the following 14 months. The existing venue for baseball in Washington was Griffith Stadium, about northwest.
While Redskins' owner George Preston Marshall was pleased with the stadium, Senators' owner Calvin Griffith was not. It wasn't where he wanted it to be and he'd have to pay rent and let others run the parking and concessions. The Senators' attendance figures had suffered after the arrival of the Baltimore Orioles in 1954 and Griffith then grew to prefer the less racially defined demographics and profit potential of the Minnesota market. In 1960, when the American League granted the city of Minneapolis an expansion team, Griffith proposed that he be allowed to move his team to Minneapolis-Saint Paul and give the expansion team to Washington. Upon league approval, the team moved to Minnesota after the 1960 season and Washington fielded a "new Senators" team, entering the junior circuit in with the Los Angeles Angels.
Opening
The stadium opened in late 1961 as District of Columbia Stadium, often shortened to D.C. Stadium. The new venue opened for football even though construction was not completed until the following spring.Its first official event was an NFL regular season game on October 1, ten days after the final MLB baseball game at Griffith Stadium. The Redskins lost that game to the New York Giants 24–21 before 36,767 fans. This was slightly more than the attendance record at Griffith Stadium of 36,591 on October 26, 1947.
The first game at RFK stadium also drew over 100 civil rights picketers from the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality protesting the Redskins' segregationist owner, George Preston Marshall, who maintained the NFL's last all-white roster. One picket sign read, "We carry the rifle. Why can't we carry the ball?" A small group of American Nazi counter protesters, wearing tan shirts and swastika armbands, were also present and separated by police.
At a college football game labeled the "Dedication Game," the stadium was dedicated on October 7. George Washington University became the first home team to win at the stadium with a 30–6 defeat of VMI.
Its first sell-out came on November 23, 1961, for the first of what were to be annual Thanksgiving Day high-school football games between the D.C. public school champion and the D.C. Catholic school champion: Eastern defeated St. John's 34–14.
The first Major League Baseball game was played on April 9, 1962, after two exhibition games against the Pirates had been cancelled. President John F. Kennedy threw out the ceremonial first pitch in front of 44,383 fans, who watched the Senators defeat the Detroit Tigers 4–1 and Senators shortstop Bob Johnson hit the first home run. The previous Washington baseball attendance record was 38,701 at Griffith Stadium on October 11, 1925, at the fourth game of the World Series, and was the largest ever for a professional sports event in Washington. The previous largest baseball opening day figure had been 31,728.
When it opened, D.C. Stadium hosted the Redskins, the Senators, and the GWU Colonials football team, all of whom had previously used Griffith Stadium: the GWU Colonials shut down their football team at the end of the 1966 season, while the Senators moved to Dallas-Fort Worth at the end of the 1971 season, and became the Texas Rangers, playing in Arlington Stadium.
Early years
In 1961, Washington Redskins owner George Preston Marshall refused to integrate his team with black players, but President Kennedy forced his hand by refusing to allow the team to play in the stadium, which was on Federal land, unless he desegregated the organization. In 1962, Marshall relented and selected Ernie Davis first overall in the 1962 draft. However, Davis refused to play for the team and was traded for Bobby Mitchell, with Marshall later signing four other black players for the season as the last NFL owner to integrate.In 1961 and 1962, D.C. Stadium hosted the annual city title game, matching the D.C. Public Schools champion and the titleholder for the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference, played before capacity crowds on Thanksgiving Day. The November 22, 1962, game between St. John's, a predominantly white school in Northwest D.C., and Eastern, a majority-black school just blocks from the stadium, ended in a racially motivated riot.
In 1964, the stadium emerged as an element in the Bobby Baker bribery scandal. Don B. Reynolds, a Maryland insurance businessman, made a statement in August 1964 which he claimed that Matthew McCloskey, a former Democratic National Committee chairman and Kennedy's ambassador to Ireland, paid a $25,000 kickback through Reynolds and at the instruction of Baker to the Kennedy-Johnson campaign as payback for the stadium construction contract. Baker later went to jail for tax fraud, and the FBI investigated the awarding of the stadium contract, although McCloskey was never charged.