Harvard Stadium is a horseshoe-shaped football stadium in the Allston neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. Built in 1903, the stadium seats 30,898. The stadium sat up to 57,166 in the past, as temporary steel stands (completing a straight-sided oval) stood in the north end zone until 1951. Afterwards, there were smaller temporary stands until the building of the Murr Center (which is topped by the new scoreboard) in 1998.

Completed in just four and a half months, the structure cost $310,000. It is the home of the football team of Harvard University, whose all-time record (at the end of the 2005 season) at the stadium is 399-215-34 (.642). The stadium also hosted the Crimson track and field teams until 1984 and was the home of the Boston Patriots during the 1970 season. Soccer matches also took place at the stadium during the 1984 Summer Olympics. It is also the host of music festivals like the Amandla Festival, where Jamaican reggae legend Bob Marley performed a historical concert in 1979.

Harvard Stadium was the first permanent stadium for American intercollegiate athletics. When colleges were discussing how to make the game of football less bloody Yale's Walter Camp proposed the field be widened by 40 feet so as to spead out the game and lessen the danger. Harvard Stadium's permanence however ensured that the field would not be widened. Instead, the forward pass was legalized. The stadium was also the first massive reinforced concrete structure in the world. Indeed, many were sure at the time of construction that the stadium would not survive the winter. It has survived over a hundred winters so far. The stadium is also the prototype for such other "horseshoe"-shaped stadiums as Ohio Stadium, San Diego's Balboa Stadium and Palmer Stadium, Princeton's former home.

Although the bulk of Harvard's campus is in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the stadium and some other athletic facilities, along with Harvard Business School, lie in Allston. The stadium is the cornerstone of the Soldier's Field Athletic Complex, which also includes the baseball stadium, outdoor track, an artificial turf field hockey/lacross field, soccer field, pools, tennis courts, indoor recreation center and track, Dillon Fieldhouse, Lavietes Pavilion and Bright Hockey Center. The men's crew boathouse is also across the street, on the banks of the Charles.

[Source: Wikipedia]

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