Soldier Field

• 1. Introduction

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  Soldier Field sits on Chicago's Near South Side, and on the 23rd of August 1938, its lawn nearly disappeared under a crowd nobody had planned for. A free jitterbug dance drew so many people that estimates range from 120,000 to 215,000. When the field itself flooded with dancers, fans stuck outside couldn't get in at all. The show started two hours late. Once it did, the sheer mass of moving bodies knocked out the electrical supply for the sound system.

  That kind of surprise runs through the stadium's whole history. It was built for one purpose and has been pulled into dozens of others: professional football, world championship soccer, record-setting rock concerts, political rallies, and a demolition unlike any other in American sports. Why does a stadium built in the 1920s still shape headlines a century later? The chapters ahead follow the building through its reinventions.

• 2. A Home for the Fallen

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  On the 3rd of December 1919, the Chicago firm Holabird & Roche won the commission to design the new stadium. Construction broke ground on the 11th of August 1922. The project ultimately cost $13 million, an enormous sum for a sports venue at the time. By comparison, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum had cost less than $1 million in 1923 dollars.

  Officials dedicated the building on the 9th of October 1924, the 53rd anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire, under the name Grant Park Stadium. It had already hosted a field day for Chicago police officers. Its first football game followed on the 4th of October, a contest between Louisville Male High School and Austin Community Academy High School. On the 22nd of November, Notre Dame beat Northwestern University 13-6 in the stadium's first college football game.

  A little over a year later, on the 11th of November 1925, the stadium was renamed Soldier Field. The new name honored U.S. soldiers killed in the First World War. Its formal rededication came the following year, staged during the 29th Army-Navy Game on the 27th of November 1926. Months earlier, in June 1926, the stadium had hosted the 28th International Eucharistic Congress, the first ever held in the United States. In 1933, it served as the main stage of the Century of Progress World's Fair.

  Architecturally, Soldier Field follows the Neoclassical style, with Doric columns rising above its East and West entrances. In its original U shape, the stadium seated 74,280 people. Extra seating along the field, the upper promenades, and the open terrace beyond the north end zone could push capacity past 100,000. An estimated 123,000 fans packed into that bowl on the 16th of November 1929, watching Notre Dame edge USC 13-12. Decades would pass before Chicago's own NFL team called the stadium home.

• 3. Wrigley to the Lakefront

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  The Chicago Cardinals used Soldier Field as their home field for their final season in the city, in 1959. Years earlier, the Bears had already played occasional charity games there against those same crosstown rivals. The Bears moved in full-time in 1971, initially on a three-year commitment. League rules forced the move. After the AFL-NFL merger, stadiums had to seat at least 50,000 people and carry lighting for night games. The Bears had previously played at Wrigley Field, the home of the Chicago Cubs. They had also considered building a new stadium in Arlington Heights, but the property didn't meet league specifications.

  On the 19th of September 1971, the Bears played their first home game at Soldier Field and beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 17-15. In 1978, the team and the Chicago Park District agreed to a 20-year lease, pooling resources for a renovation. Plank seating gave way to individual seats with backs and armrests. A press box and 60 new skyboxes arrived in 1982, pushing capacity to 66,030. Another 56 skyboxes followed in 1988, raising it to 66,946. The playing surface was AstroTurf from 1971 until 1987, when natural grass replaced it. On the 27th of February 1987, Soldier Field earned status as a National Historic Landmark.

  In the 1985 NFC Divisional Playoff, the Bears beat the New York Giants 21-0, their first home playoff game since 1963, when the team still played at Wrigley Field. That season's NFC Championship Game followed, a 24-0 win over the Los Angeles Rams and the first NFC Championship ever held at the stadium. Three years later came the Fog Bowl. Dense fog reduced visibility to 15-20 yards as the Bears beat the Philadelphia Eagles 20-12 in the 1988 NFC Divisional Playoff. The 49ers beat the Bears 28-3 in that year's NFC Championship Game and went on to win Super Bowl XXIII.

  The Bears beat the New Orleans Saints 39-14 in the 2006 NFC Championship Game, sending them back to the Super Bowl after 21 years. They lost that Super Bowl 29-17 to the Colts in a rainy Miami. In the 2018 NFC Wild Card game, a missed field goal known ever after as the Double Doink sealed a 16-15 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. The Bears' most recent playoff run came in the 2025 postseason. They beat the Green Bay Packers 31-27 in the NFC Wild Card round, then lost 20-17 in overtime to the Los Angeles Rams in the Divisional round.

  By June of 2021, the Bears were already looking beyond Soldier Field. That month they submitted a bid for the old Arlington Park Racetrack property, a possible future home for the franchise even as its playoff history kept piling up at the lakefront.

• 4. Almost Somewhere Else

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  In 1989, a proposal called the McDome put Soldier Field's future in doubt: a domed stadium intended as a replacement for the Bears. The Illinois Legislature rejected the plan in 1990. Bears president Michael McCaskey began weighing relocation, and the team purchased land options in Hoffman Estates, Elk Grove Village, and Aurora.

  In 1995, McCaskey announced a deal with Northwest Indiana developers for an entertainment complex called Planet Park, which would have included a new stadium. The Lake County Council rejected that plan. Three years later, in 1998, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley floated a different idea: the Bears sharing Comiskey Park with the White Sox. None of these plans went anywhere, and Soldier Field stayed put, though its own transformation was about to begin.

• 5. Demolition Night

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  In 2001, the Chicago Park District, which owns Soldier Field, unveiled plans for a dramatic renovation designed by Benjamin T. Wood and Carlos Zapata of the Boston firm Wood + Zapata. Chicago architect Dirk Lohan, grandson of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, led the firm Lohan Associates in reconfiguring the stadium grounds. The plan called for demolishing the interior entirely and building a new seating bowl inside the existing outer walls, a technique known as facadism. Alice Hoffman of Hoffman Management Partners, hired just after she completed Ravens Stadium at Camden Yards, coordinated the architects, demolition crews, and construction companies as the project's representative for the Bears.

  Demolition began on the night of the 19th of January 2002, the same night the Bears lost a playoff game to the Philadelphia Eagles, while tailgate fires still burned in parking-lot trash cans. Archer Seating Clearinghouse removed 24,000 stadium seats in 36 hours, a speed record that has never been broken since. Fans who remembered the team's glory seasons, especially 1985, picked up their old seats in the South parking lot alongside some retired players. Grant Wedding, who had installed the original seats himself in 1979, and Mark Wretschko, an executive at the factory that built the replacements, served as foremen on the job.

  The Bears played their entire 2002 season at Memorial Stadium on the University of Illinois campus while the work continued. They returned to a rebuilt Soldier Field on the 29th of September, losing 38-23 to the Green Bay Packers. The renovation's total cost reached $632 million. Taxpayers covered $432 million of it, while the Bears and the NFL contributed the remaining $200 million.

  Critics were not kind. Prominent Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman called the result a fiasco. Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin dubbed it the Eyesore on the Lake Shore, while others called it the Monstrosity on the Midway or the Mistake by the Lake, comparing it to a spaceship that had landed on the old structure. Lohan defended the design directly: "It's going to be an ultramodern stadium within the walls of the traditional structure. Why is that so bad? Why does that upset people? … We brainstormed this whole thing and decided to do a contemporary stadium that has all the features and qualities of a new stadium but retains the old façade and colonnades. The fact that the seating bowl is so high and reaches over the colonnades is something that is the direct result of the geometry of the sightlines that are now required for stadiums. That makes the slope of the seating shell the way it is."

  Supporters countered that the aging, cramped facility badly needed the work. The New York Times later named the renovated Soldier Field one of the five best new buildings of 2003. The American Institute of Architects gave it a design excellence award in 2004, and the project also won honors that year from Midwest Construction Magazine, the Friends of Downtown, and the Structural Engineers Association of Illinois.

  On the 23rd of September 2004, a ten-member federal advisory committee voted unanimously to recommend delisting Soldier Field as a National Historic Landmark. Architectural historian Carol Ahlgren of the National Park Service's Midwest office in Omaha, Nebraska, prepared the recommendation. She told Preservation Online, "if we had let this stand, I believe it would have lowered the standard of National Historic Landmarks throughout the country.... If we want to keep the integrity of the program, let alone the landmarks, we really had no other recourse." The stadium officially lost its landmark status on the 17th of February 2006.

  The renovation also permanently reshaped the stadium's size. Soldier Field's football capacity now sits at 62,500, the smallest of any stadium in the NFL, even though it remains the oldest venue in both the NFL and MLS. That combination of small and old was about to be tested on a much bigger stage.

• 6. A World Stage

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  Soldier Field hosted the opening match of the 1994 FIFA World Cup on the 17th of June before a crowd of 63,117, the first of five matches the stadium held that tournament. Attendance stayed above 60,000 for every match, including a Round of 16 game on the 2nd of July that drew 60,246 fans. Five years later, the stadium hosted matches in the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup as well.

  The venue has also hosted CONCACAF Gold Cup matches across seven tournaments, from 2007 through 2023, including Gold Cup finals in 2007, 2013, and 2019. The 2019 final drew 62,493 spectators as Mexico beat the United States 1-0. In 2016, the stadium staged four matches of the Copa América Centenario, including a semifinal that drew 55,423 fans.

  Rugby arrived later. On the 1st of November 2014, Soldier Field hosted its first international rugby union test, between the United States Eagles and the New Zealand All Blacks. More than half of the 61,500 tickets sold within two days, and the All Blacks won 74-6. Two years later, on the 5th of November 2016, Ireland beat New Zealand 40-29 at the stadium, the first time Ireland had beaten the All Blacks in a test match in 111 years of play.

  Long before any of that, Soldier Field hosted the first World Games of the Special Olympics, on the 20th of July 1968. More than 1,000 athletes with intellectual disabilities, representing 26 U.S. states and Canada, competed in track and field and swimming. The Special Olympics returned to the stadium for its second World Games in 1970.

  More recently, the stadium reclaimed a soccer tenant of its own. On the 9th of July 2019, the Chicago Fire struck a deal with the Village of Bridgeview to exit their lease at SeatGeek Stadium, where they had played since 2006, and the club returned to Soldier Field for the 2020 MLS season. During the 2025 MLS season, a crowd of 62,358 set the record for the highest attendance ever at a soccer match at the stadium, watching the Fire draw 0-0 with an Inter Miami side that started Lionel Messi alongside Sergio Busquets, Jordi Alba, and Luis Suárez.

  Soccer, rugby, and the Special Olympics all found space on the same turf that has also hosted crowds gathered for reasons that had nothing to do with sport at all.

• 7. Beyond the Gridiron

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  On the 22nd of September 1927, Soldier Field hosted the Long Count Fight, the second heavyweight championship bout between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney. Amelia Earhart appeared at the stadium on the 24th of June 1932, during a war show marking the bicentennial of George Washington's birth. Postmaster General and Democratic National Committee chairman James Farley opened the 1933 Century of Progress World's Fair ceremonies there on the 27th of May.

  On the 28th of October 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made his only Midwestern speaking appearance of his final re-election campaign at Soldier Field, drawing more than 150,000 people, with at least as many turned away for lack of room. General Douglas MacArthur addressed a crowd of 50,000 there on the 25th of April 1951, in his first visit to the United States in 14 years.

  The Chicago Freedom Movement, led by Martin Luther King Jr., held two rallies at the stadium. On the 21st of June 1964, as many as 75,000 people came to hear King alongside Reverend Theodore Hesburgh, president of Notre Dame, Archbishop Arthur M. Brazier, and Minister Edgar Chandler. On the 10th of July 1966, roughly 60,000 people returned to hear King again, this time joined by Mahalia Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and Peter, Paul and Mary.

  Motorsport had its own run at Soldier Field. From the 1940s through the late 1960s, with a pause during World War II, races were held on a short track built inside the stadium, including NASCAR Cup races in 1956 and 1957. In the early-to-mid 1980s, the US Hot Rod Association staged truck and tractor sled pulls and monster truck exhibitions there. The engines echoed through downtown Chicago's skyscrapers, and damage to the turf eventually pushed the events to the Rosemont Horizon instead.

  Ice hockey made a late arrival. On the 1st of March 2014, the Chicago Blackhawks beat the Pittsburgh Penguins 5-1 in the NHL Stadium Series before a sold-out crowd of 62,921. The Blackhawks later celebrated their 2015 Stanley Cup championship at the stadium rather than at Grant Park, because of rain.

  On the 13th of October 1983, David D. Meilahn placed the first-ever commercial cell phone call from a Motorola DynaTAC inside his Mercedes-Benz 380SL in the Soldier Field parking lot, a moment now remembered as a turning point in communications. His call reached Bob Barnett, then president of Ameritech Mobile Communications, who placed a call of his own from a Chrysler convertible to the grandson of Alexander Graham Bell, in Germany.

  In the summer of 2006, Soldier Field hosted the opening ceremony of the Gay Games. In 2012, President Barack Obama held events of the NATO summit partly at the stadium and partly at McCormick Place. When the COVID-19 pandemic closed the nearby Shedd Aquarium to visitors, Soldier Field itself became the exercise grounds for the aquarium's penguins.

  Rock and roll would claim the loudest, longest-running slice of that same open-air stage.

• 8. Concerts, Records, and Legends

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  Barbra Streisand became the stadium's first solo headliner on the 9th of August 1966. Over the following decades, the Rolling Stones returned again and again, drawing 70,725 fans and grossing $919,425 for a sold-out show in July 1978 alone, and pulling in $6,260,000 across two nights during their Bridges to Babylon Tour in September 1997.

  The Grateful Dead made Soldier Field a fixture of their touring calendar through the 1990s, including a two-night run in July 1994 that drew 111,002 fans and grossed $3,546,758. Their July 1995 shows, which grossed $3,694,431, turned out to be the band's final concerts before it disbanded. Two decades later, on the 3rd of July 2015, a reunion billed as Fare Thee Well marked the Grateful Dead's 50th anniversary with a four-night run that drew 210,283 fans and grossed $30,683,274.

  U2's 360° Tour packed 135,872 people into two September 2009 shows for a gross of $13,860,480. In June 2023, Taylor Swift's Eras Tour made her the first female act in history to sell out three shows at the stadium on a single tour. Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter Tour set the all-time record for the highest gross at the venue in May 2025, taking in $42,523,825 across three sold-out nights that drew 143,256 fans. Blackpink played the stadium on the 18th of July 2025, the first K-pop girl group ever to headline a concert there.

  Not every plan for Soldier Field has involved a stage or a scoreboard. In April 2024, Dirk Lohan, the same architect who led the 2002-03 renovation, released a new proposal: a roof structure that would cover the stadium he had once rebuilt without one.