History
At the time it was constructed, Dyche Stadium was considered one of the finest college football stadiums in the country. The stadium originally consisted of two semi-circular grandstands on either sideline, with the west (home) sideline having a small, curved upper deck whose 2 ends abut in matching concrete towers. The purpose of the curved grandstands was to maximize the number of fans sitting close to the action. Endzone seating was later added in the south endzone, and in 1952 McGaw Memorial Hall was built beyond the north endzone.
The stadium had an artificial turf surface from 1973 to 1996. Prior to the 1997 season, natural grass was installed and the playing surface was lowered approximately five feet to improve sight lines from the lowest rows of the grandstands.
The Chicago Bears hosted their first home game of the 1970 season at Dyche Stadium as an experiment; the NFL had demanded that the Bears move out of Wrigley Field because Wrigley's seating capacity was under 50,000. After Evanston residents petitioned city officials to block the team from moving there permanently, the Bears ended up moving to Chicago's Soldier Field the following year.
Read more about this topic: Ryan Field (stadium)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)