Ohio Stadium

Ohio Stadium (also known simply as The ’Shoe and The House Harley Built), is the home of the Buckeyes football team at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, United States. The stadium was added to the National Register of Historic Places by the National Park Service on March 22, 1974.

Ohio Stadium also provided a home to the Columbus Crew of MLS from the league’s inception in 1996 until soccer-specific Columbus Crew Stadium opened in 1999. With a capacity of 102,329, it is the third largest stadium in the NCAA and the sixth largest non-racing stadium in the world. Ohio Stadium is also a concert venue; U2, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and Metallica are among the many acts who have played in Ohio Stadium over the years.

The stadium does not have field lights; when night events do occur special lighting must be temporarily installed, usually by Musco Lighting (as in the 2005 game against Texas and the 2006 nationally televised game with Michigan).

As early as 1913, Ohio Field at High Street and Woodruff Avenue was unable to contain the crowds attracted to many Buckeye home football games, leading to faculty discussion of moving the site elsewhere and building a new facility. The growing popularity of football in Ohio led to the design of a horseshoe-shaped stadium, conceptualized and designed by architect Howard Dwight Smith in 1918. A public-subscription Stadium Campaign to fund the project was begun in October 1920 and raised over $1 million in pledges by January 1921, of which $975,000 was actually honored. The stadium was completed in 1922 by E. H. Latham Company of Columbus with materials and labor from the Marble Cliff Quarry Co. at a construction cost of $1.34 million and a total cost of $1.49 million. The stadium’s original capacity was 66,210, astronomical in size at the time. Many university officials feared that the stadium would never be filled to capacity. Smith employed numerous revolutionary architectural techniques during the building of the stadium. At the base is a slurry wall, to keep out the waters from the Olentangy River. The stadium sits on the flood plain, giving it a precarious, but beautiful setting. Instead of building a large bowl, like the previously constructed Yale Bowl or later at Michigan Stadium, Ohio Stadium was designed to have an upper deck that would hang over part of the lower deck, giving Ohio Stadium its “A”, “B”, and “C” decks. Instead of employing numerous columns like those at Harvard Stadium, Smith designed double columns that allow for more space between columns. The rotunda at the north end of the stadium, which is now adorned with stained glass murals of the offensive and defensive squads that comprise the Buckeye football team, was designed to look like the dome at the Pantheon in Rome. The rotunda also features yellow flowers on a blue background which according to legend is due to the outcome of the dedication game against the University of Michigan in 1922 .