Stadium Steel Grandstands Will Be Torn Down Shortly

Heavy maintenance costs have forced the Corporation to order the removal--in the "near future"--of the steel stands at the north end of the Stadium, it was announced yesterday.

The football field will consequently be moved 10 or 20 yards to the south, bringing it closer to the closed end of the Stadium, and affording spectators the best possible view from all remaining seats.

Destruction of the steel stands will cut the Stadium's capacity from 57,000 to approximately 40,000. Because no game since the war--except for the bi-yearly Yale contest--has drawn as many as 40,000, the reduction is not expected to cause undue crowding. (But this does make the Stadium the smallest of the Big Three. Yale Bowl seats 75,000; Princeton's Palmer Stadium holds 51,000.)

Maintenance costs since the war have risen sharply, and are especially high in the steel stands. Because of the fact that the stands represent unused seating capacity, and because their continuance would require extensive--and expensive--renovations, the Corporation was forced to tear them down.

No estimates were immediately available on the amount of money which could be realized by the sale of the resultant scrap metal but it will probably not reach the $170,000 spent in 1929 for construction.

Allston Horseshoe

The Stadium, first Big Time football edifice ever built was completed in 1904, and was long known--in its original form as "The Classic Gridiron," or more familiarly, "The Allston Horseshoe."

Wooden stands served to increase the seating capacity, but these were condemned by the Building Commission in 1927. The Corporation spent several months debating whether to fill in the open end with a concrete structure, to build removable steel stands, or to put up permanent steel stands.

Concrete was rejected because it cost too much--$380,000--and because it could not be constructed to duplicate the rest of the horseshoe. Neither would concrete have had any scrap value. Bolted steel stands would have taken $40,000 annually for erection and removal.

Unwilling to spend so much for what would be at best undesirable seats, used only six to eight times during the year, the Corporation ordered the permanent steel stands to be built.