Ohio Stadium (also known as The Horseshoe, or simply The 'Shoe) is the home of the Ohio State Buckeyes football team at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. During the 1910s, old Ohio Field was unable to contain the crowds attracted to many Buckeye home football games. 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. The stadium was completed in 1922 with materials and labor from the Marble Cliff Quarry Co. at a cost of $1.34 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; however, that fear was put to rest at the first game ever played in Ohio Stadium, as an overflow crowd of 71,138 piled into the Horseshoe to watch OSU battle Ohio Wesleyan on October 7, 1922. A cinder track was built around the football field in 1923. The stadium became home to the track and field team for OSU for many years. On March 22, 1974, the stadium was added to the National Register of Historic Places by the National Park Service. It was home to Major League Soccer's Columbus Crew from the league's inception in 1996 until soccer-specific Columbus Crew Stadium opened in 1999. In addition, Ohio Stadium is also Columbus' largest concert venue, with seating for up to 110,000; the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd are among the many acts who have played in Ohio Stadium over the years.

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 plane, 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 Soldiers Field at Harvard, 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 murals of Archie Griffin and Eddie George, was designed to look like the dome at the Pantheon in Rome.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Send by: Gh0st