Coordinates: 37°47′38.79″N 122°15′47.05″W / 37.7941083°N 122.2630694°W / 37.7941083; -122.2630694 Frank Youell Field was a football stadium that stood in Oakland, California. It was the home of the Oakland Raiders from 1962 to 1965.
The stadium, which was essentially a temporary home while Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum was being built, sat 22,000 and cost $400,000 to build. The facility was named for Francis J. Youell (1883-1967), an Oakland undertaker owner of the Chapel of the Oaks, Oakland City Councilman, and sports booster. It was located on the grounds of what is now part of Laney College next to the channel which connects Lake Merritt to the Oakland Estuary. The site was formerly part of the "Auditorium Village Housing Project", one of several temporary housing tracts built by the federal government in the San Francisco Bay Area for the thousands of workers who poured into the region during World War II to work in war industries, especially, in shipyards such as the Kaiser Shipyards.
The Raiders (then a member of the American Football League) had played their home games in San Francisco (Kezar Stadium and Candlestick Park, respectively) during their first two seasons. They played their first regular-season game at Frank Youell Field on September 9, 1962, against the New York Titans. The Raiders lost 28-17.
Frank Youell Field remained in operation and hosted some high school football games after the Raiders moved into the Coliseum. Frank Youell Field was demolished in 1969 to make way for extra parking for Laney College.
Famous quotes containing the words frank and/or field:
“And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if ... there werent any other people living in the world.”
—Anne Frank (19291945)
“We need a type of theatre which not only releases the feelings, insights and impulses possible within the particular historical field of human relations in which the action takes place, but employs and encourages those thoughts and feelings which help transform the field itself.”
—Bertolt Brecht (18981956)