University grounds
I was in New Orleans for a board meeting of the nccPA Health Foundation this past weekend and thanks to a very early flight had some time to do some exploring. For many visitors to New Orleans, that would mean a trip to the French Quarter. For others, it might mean a visit to the National World War II Museum or perhaps the aquarium or zoo. For me, it meant the chance to visit a couple of college campuses. I have had the opportunity to visit New Orleans many times. It is a frequent host to scientific conferences and places where governing boards will host meetings. I have been to the Tulane University Medical campus and the LSU Health Sciences campus in town, so on this occasion I thought I would go over to Tulane's main campus and Loyola University New Orleans which sit side by side southwest of downtown. I had never been to either university and was eager to see them. I managed to visit both, and the topic of this post is the first stop of the day, Loyola. I was staying at a downtown hotel and the St. Charles Avenue line of the New Orleans streetcar passed right in front of the building. Normally, I would either walk or catch a ride, but it was terribly cold that morning and I didn't feel like making the four-mile walk. Since the price of an all-day pass on the streetcar was only $3, I decided to try it. I will say that it was an easy and inexpensive way to travel back and forth. If you have the time, it is certainly worth the expense. But I will note two things. First, the line moves at an incredibly slow pace. In addition to having to stop for red lights like a bus, the line is extremely slow. On my return trip, joggers passed the streetcar while we were moving! I don't know how fast they actually move, but despite a scheduled time of 35 minutes, each direction took over 45 minutes (again for only about four miles of travel). That was fine in my case but be aware if you ever find yourself in need of quick transit. Second, and perhaps it was just the two drivers in my case, but the staff were extremely rude to people. I am sure that in a town with as many tourists as New Orleans people tire of having to repeatedly answer the same questions, but the guys operating each of the two trams I travelled upon were ridiculously rude to people asking directions and making sure they were going the correct direction. Mind you, I had downloaded the regional transit app on my phone and did not have to ask anything. I was simply observing. But their level of rudeness was surprising, and in one case the couple I witnessed asking a simple question sat down and talked about never returning to the city. Again, it worked out fine for me as it was a cheap form of transit. But the metro area of New Orleans has only about 1.3 million people and despite the numbers of tourists, which I am sure can be a pain for the locals, it is hardly big enough for me to expect that level of impolite behavior. But I digress. This is a blog about colleges, not transit. Loyola is one of twenty-seven Jesuit colleges and universities in the U.S. today. It was founded by priests of the Society of Jesus in 1904, but the institution had been in the works for some time. The university traces it roots back to 1847, the year when seven Jesuit priests arrived in New Orleans with the intent to build a college. Although steps were taken in that direction, the major milestone of acquiring the land for a campus did not occur until 1884. That year, the site of a former sugar plantation cane plantation about four miles from the heart of downtown New Orleans would be purchased for $75,500 (about $2.4 million in today’s value). Father Albert Biever was given a nickel to take the streetcar on the St. Charles line to create the new college in what is now the Uptown area of New Orleans. The new school would open until 1904 without the benefit of purpose-built buildings and classes began in an existing house. Biever would be the school’s first president. The first campus building, Marquette Hall, would not open for eight years (see below). The initial site was enormous compared to the size of the current campus. Loyola would sell the land off in parcels over the years to raise funds. Tulane University, which sits adjacent to Loyola, is on such land. The new institution was named Loyola College, although it also offered preparatory classes (high school/pre-college work). This was a fairly common practice in those days. A change in the organization of Jesuit schools in the area led the pre-college curriculum being dropped. In 1911, another Jesuit institution, the College of the Immaculate Conception, was chosen to be the preparatory school and was renamed Jesuit High School. It remains a high school to this day. Immaculate Conception’s college-level work went to Loyola, and in reflection of the growth the institution formally changed its name to Loyola University in 1912. A School of Dentistry was added in 1914 as was a School of Law. A College of Pharmacy was formed in 1919. Other colleges including business and music would be created later. Thanks to the creation of the medical units of Tulane University, Xavier University, and the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center New Orleans, Pharmacy would close in 1965 and Dentistry in 1971. In 1984, nearby St. Mary's Dominican College, a liberal arts college for women founded in 1910 closed. Loyola acquired the St. Mary’s campus, and it continues as part of the university to this day. I was hoping to visit that campus as well, but time did not allow it. Readers in the U.S. will likely know that there are multiple institutions with the name Loyola. In addition to the current school, colleges in Baltimore, Chicago, and Los Angeles carry the Loyola name. The oldest among them is Loyola University Maryland which opened in 1852. It would be followed by Loyola Marymount University in 1865, although it would carry two different names before acquiring the Loyola moniker in 1917, as it was founded as a Vincentian institution. The Jesuits did not arrive until 1911 and it was another six years before Loyola entered the name. Finally, Loyola University Chicago was founded in 1870. It was confusing to have these independent institutions with the same basic name, and I imagine at times it likely caused a bit of some contention. It was particularly the case for the New Orleans and Chicago schools. Loyola in Baltimore had always carried “Maryland” in its name. In Los Angeles, when the now named Loyola Marymount changed its name in 1917 it was Loyola College of Los Angeles and later Loyola University of Los Angeles. The Marymount would come later in 1973 when Loyola merged with nearby Marymount College. That left the Louisiana and Illinois universities using essentially the same name. The Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, of which all Loyola’s are members, decided that the Illinois institution could keep the simplified “Loyola University” in 1996. Since then, the New Orleans school officially became Loyola University New Orleans. Today, Loyola has an endowment of well over $235 million and enrolls more than 4,500 students in its 146 degree programs. I hopped off the streetcar at a stop directly in front of Loyola and walked the campus from St. Charles from south to north to its end at Freret Street. This post will follow that path. I took the photo below as I walked onto campus. The first building in the frame is Thomas Hall and the the chapel beyond is the McDermott Memorial Church of the Holy Name of Jesus. Both of these are also discussed below. The first two photos of the next set are of Thomas Hall. Designed by the architecture firm DeBuys, Churchill, and Labouisse, Thomas was completed in 1912. It was initially the home to the priests on campus. The colonnade you see in the second photo which connects Thomas to Marquette was added in 1913. Louise C. Thomas gave money to construct the building which she wanted to name in honor of her late husband Stanley O. Thomas. He had been a highly successful cotton broker in New Orleans and former president of the New Orleans Cotton Exchange. Born in Ohio, Thomas moved south to Mississippi to practice law prior to the onset of the Civil War. He lived in Mississippi for such a period that when the war broke out, he joined the Confederate army as a private in Company G of the 25th Louisiana Infantry. His obituary stated that during the course of the war he became an officer, although I am not sure of his final rank. After the war he settled in New Orleans. Louisa (née Carroll) was the daughter of a successful cotton merchant. Stanley passed away in 1910 aged seventy-five. Louisa would live another twenty-eight years, passing in 1938 aged 94 or 95. They had no children. The last two photos show the Communications/Music Complex. The building is home to the College of Music which dates back to 1932. That year, the previously independent New Orleans Conservatory of Music and Dramatic Arts, founded in 1919, was subsumed into the university. It has a really neat front façade but unfortunately, I had a smudge on my lens and the photos I took were unsalvageable. The 148,000-square-foot, four-story is home to a 600-seat theater complete with an orchestra pit, and a Black Box-type theater such as those found at Montana State University and the University of Evansville. It has a very interesting main façade which faces St. Charles Avenue. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to me I had something on the lens of my camera phone and the photos I took were unusable. But, trust me, it is an interesting design on the front. What you see here is fairly nondescript, but it was all I had of the building that was worth posting. The building was designed by the Mathes Group who also designed the J. Edgar and Louise S. Monroe library (see below). Mathes Group has designed buildings on the campuses of Arizona State University, Baylor University, Goshen College, and Grambling University. The third photo is the side of the building which faces Thomas Hall. The last photo has the building in the center of the frame flanked by Thomas Hall on the right and Monroe Hall (see below) on the left. Below we have three views of Marquette Hall, the first permanent building on campus. It was designed by the architecture firm DeBuys, Churchill, and Labouisse. Construction on Marquette began in 1907, but the work was slow to completion. Indeed, it was not completed until 1911. The first classes were held in the building on September 11, 1911. Its name, of course, is honor of the notable Jesuit priest and explorer Jacques Marquette. It was the catch all building when it opened, having classrooms, offices, a library, theater, and soon after it was completed a morgue and dissection suite on the top floor. The area was really the attic, and it was not accessible by stairs. For many years, cadavers had to be lifted to the morgue via a hand cranked crane on the roof. As a result, it is one of the buildings considered haunted, as several people have seen ghosts and encountered unexplainable phenomena. It had to a be sight and I imagine curious onlookers would stand and watch workers slowly turn the crank to get the bodies up to the top of the building. The building reminds me of Converse Hall at Westminster College (now Westminster University) and the James D. Westcott Building at Florida State. The building had a fire in 1965, but it was doused in time to save the structure. You can see some photos of the aftermath of the fire inside the building here, here, here, here, and here. I love that last historic photo with the old radio on the left and the TV on the right. The first photo captures most of the front of the building. Unfortunately, the close up in the second photo is marred by the sun creeping in behind the building. I was there at the wrong time of day to take this without the sun in the background. The entryway to the first floor is offset under those above it, which allows for the colonnade you see in the third photo. The set below has two views of the magnificent McDermott Memorial Church of the Holy Name of Jesus. Kate McDermott donated $150,000 (about $4.7 million in today's money) to aid in the construction of the church in honor of her late brother Thomas. She would also leave substantial funds to the university in her estate. I am not sure when the groundbreaking actually occurred, but pile driving began on July 30, 1913. It was officially dedicated on December 9, 1918 by Archbishop John Bonzano. It was designed by the architecture firm DeBuys, Churchill, and Labouisse. As you can see in the second photo, a fence was surrounding the church, and some work was going on in the interior. It is a truly remarkable building. I would have loved to have gone inside, but with the work going on I was unable to do so. I have seen photos of the sanctuary online and it is just as beautiful as the outside. There is a video of the interior on YouTube that you can watch here. Inside, a marble altar which is made with Carrara stone from Italy, cost $12,000! That is nearly $300,000 in 2024 value. If you watch the video, you will see why. It is massive and the carving is intricate. I only wish I was able to see it myself. You can see two of the original architectural renderings here and here. The first two photos of the next set are of Stallings Hall. A groundbreaking for Stallings was held on March 313, 1947 and it opened to students on September 15, 1947. You read that quickly, it was completed in less than a year. That is a remarkably fast build for an academic building of this size. It cost only $165,000 to build. It did not receive its current name until 1955. It is named in honor of Olive A. Stallings who had donated better than half a million dollars in 1939. It was the largest donation to the university until the Danna donation in the 1960’s. When I said that Loyola and Tulane are next to each other, I really meant that they are next to each other. It’s not that they are close, the campuses abut one another. In the first photo you can see the peaks of two buildings behind Stallings. On the left is Dinwiddie Hall and on the right is Richardson Memorial Hall on the Tulane campus. They are only separated from Stallings by West Road, which is more of small street than an actual road per se. The two universities also share a boarder on Freret Street. I have always liked the idea of two universities sharing a common boarder. It would seem to lend itself well to shared research, scholarship, and social life. When the state of California was considering a new UC campus, I was of the opinion that they should locate it in Fresno, taking the farmland of the California State University Fresno north of Barstow Avenue to create their campus. It would have given more life to the city of Fresno, allowed students and faculty of both institutions to intermingle, and simplified the process as the University of California campus could use Fresno State classrooms and other supports as it began to get off the ground. The state chose a different route, and now they have the University of California Merced. I am sure they had their reasons, but I can’t help but think it was a lost opportunity. But just imagine, Fresno State has better than 23,000 students and UC Merced has just over 9,000 at the time of this post. What an economic impact that would have had for the city, and what an intellectual collective could have been formed. Even though UCM is a much smaller institution, it has the larger budget (around $400 million compared to Fresno State’s budget of around $360 million). Think of what the economic impact would have been for the city. But I digress. The artwork you see here is a piece called Lily by Lin Emery. Made of aluminum, Lily was completed in 1998. Ms. Emery was based in New Orleans for many years. Sitting beside Stallings and directly behind Marquette is Bobet Hall, seen in the last three photos of this set. Edward J. Bobet and his wife Virginia (née Alker) Bobet gave the initial funds in the amount of $12,000 to create a library in Marquette Hall when it was under construction. Bobet Hall (pronounced bo-Bay) was constructed in the 1920’s and named in their honor thanks to this donation. I believe it was completed in 1924. The Louisiana Digital Library has a great photo of Bobet on its website. Its undated, but someone with better knowledge of the university’s history might be able to ballpark the time. As you can see here, there is merely a path in the grass to the front of the building. I have no idea what the white structure is in front of it in that photo, nor what is on the brick pedestal in front of the building. If you have any idea, please leave a comment as I would love to know more about it. As you can see in the fourth photo, Bobet was the home to the College of Pharmacy and I believe the School of Dentistry prior to their closings. The set below is of Monroe Hall and the Chapel of St. Ignatius. Monroe Hall is one of two buildings on campus to carry the Monroe name, with the other being the J. Edgar and Louise S. Monroe Library (see below). The building originally opened in 1969 at a cost of $6.7 million, which is about $60.4 million in 2024 dollars. You can see photos of it in various phases of construction here and here. If you take the time to look at those two photos and mine, you might come to the conclusion that they are not of the same building. It certainly does not look like it. That is because it is one of those campus structures which has been completely transformed via a renovation and addition. The building as it appears in those two older photos would have five floors and come in at about 170,000 square feet. It was, and is, the largest single building in terms of classroom space at the university. But as enrollment grew, it was evident that more space was needed. The building was also showing its age. In addition to the damage it and the rest of campus suffered during Hurricane Katrina, the building had some significant maintenance issues that needed to be addressed. The university decided to renovate and expand the building. Loyola is landlocked by residential housing, Tulane University next door, and some commercial areas. Since space was limited, the addition had the building grow vertically, with two additional floors and a rooftop greenhouse added to the existing structure. In all, some 100,000 square feet of space were added. Holly and Smith Architects and Holabird & Root did the design work which basically saw the building gutted and rebuilt. Since the university needed the classroom and office space and had no overflow or transitory space, the building continued to be in-use during the work. After five years of work, the building was finally completed in 2015. One of the former lecture halls was transformed into a music performance hall with seating for 300 people. The look was totally changed, with a new brick façade replacing a concrete surface. It is named for J. Edgar Monroe, a native of New Orleans. He was a veteran of World War I who later went into the ship building business. He and his wife Louise (née Stringer) Monroe gave generously to the university. They gave better than $30 million by the time of his passing in 1992. The university honored him with an honorary doctorate of humane letters in 1991. In each of the photos of this set, the circular building is the Chapel of St. Ignatius, a new structure on campus. Designed by Trahan Architects, which has offices in New Orleans and New York, the chapel has 4,620 square feet of space. Included in the building is a sanctuary with seating for up to 120 congregants and a 50-seat multipurpose room. All of the interior rooms are themselves circular. The former library once stood in this general area. Construction on that building began in 1947 and it was dedicated in 1950. It was known as the Memorial Library, named in honor of the fifty-two Loyola students and alumni who died in World War II. When the J. Edgar and Louise S. Monroe Library opened in 1999, the collection moved out, but the building remained. It was ultimately demolished to make way for the chapel. The last photo was taken across the university's Sculpture Garden, which is behind Marquette Hall. The first two photos of the next set are of Miller Hall with the J. Edgar and Louise S. Monroe Library in the background. Miller was purpose-built for the university’s College of Law. In addition to classrooms and offices, it had a moot court facility. It received its name courtesy of a donation from the estate of Branch Miller’s daughter Alice. She left money in her estate with the intention of funding a building named in his honor. He was an attorney in New Orleans in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. It was completed in 1973 and opened to students that fall. It cost $2.5 million to construct, which is about $18.8 million in 2024 value. The building was dedicated on April 27, 1974, some sixty years after the law school’s creation. At that ceremony, former Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Earl Warren received an honorary doctorate. The College of Law was not in the building for very long as it moved out in 1985 at which time the university’s business programs moved in. I believe the architectural elements seen in the roundabout in the second photo are from the now razed Memorial Library, but I cannot say for sure. If happen to know, please leave a comment. The last six photos are of the front and inside of the Monroe Library. It is a nice space. You can see two dedicatory plaques which hang just inside the main entrance in the fourth and fifth photos. I walked around inside the building for a while, both to explore the space and to warm up a bit. It has a good amount of natural light entering the space and some nice common areas. The last two photos are just inside the building near the circulation desk. Edgar and Louise Monroe gave $7.5 million to aid in the construction of the library in 1991. Groundbreaking for the building did not occur until November 1996. It was completed in October 1998, and the library collection was relocated there. It opened for use on January 11, 1999. Like the Communications/Music Complex, it was designed by the Mathes Group. It has 148,480 square feet of space and can hold 500,000 volumes. In total, it cost $20,000,000 to build and outfit, which is roughly $40 million in 2024 dollars. Below is the Danna Student Center, Tulane's student union. The name is in honor of Joseph A. Danna. Danna was a physician and headed Loyola’s former School of Medicine. When the U.S. entered World War I, Danna and many other Loyola physicians and dentists joined the effort by forming what they called the Loyola Unit, a medical outfit that would become part of U.S. Base Hospital Unit 102. Italy was on the ally side in that war, the 102 operated in service of both American and Italian personnel. He returned to Loyola after the war and brought with him the American and Italian flags that flew over the hospital during the war. For a number of years, they hung in Marquette Hall. Loyola closed its medical school in 1922, and Danna moved over to Tulane’s medical school, where he worked from 1926 until 1931. He passed away in 1955 and his will left $1 million (about $11.7 million in today’s value) to Loyola. The building was designed by architect Jules K. de la Vergne. It opened in 1963 and was formally dedicated in March 1964. It cost $1,475,000 to construct, which is about $15.3 million in 2024 value. You can see a great photo of both Danna and Biever Hall under construction here and here. The first photo of this set shows the Danna Center as you approach it from what is called the Peace Quad, or the Plaza De Los Martires De La Paz. It honors six Jesuit priests, their cook and her daughter murdered on the campus of Central American University in El Salvador in 1989 during the country’s civil war. The area where the Peace Quad and the Danna Student Center now stand was once the location of the university’s football stadium. This aerial photo taken on campus sometime between 1926 and 1928 gives a great view of what it looked like before. The football program was a large expense for what was a very small institution. After a number of years of losing money, the university decided to close the football program 1939. The second and third photos show the front of the building. As you can see, there is a statue of St. Ignatius Loyola in front of the center. The building's dedicatory cornerstone, seen in the fourth photo, was almost hidden by a pair of recycling bins. The fifth photo is the building's sign which is located just above the cornerstone in the last photo. I don't know if the sign in this photo is original or not, but I love the tile work! The last photo was taken just inside the front doors. Danna has all of the usual accoutrements of student unions including various food services, a small convenience store, study areas, and student activities offices. The area just behind the Danna Center contains a collection of residence halls. In the first photo below, you can see Biever Hall from across a green behind Danna. Biever and the Danna Center were under construction at the same time. It was completed in 1963 and dedicated in 1964. The building cost about $1,527,000, or $15.9 million in 2024 value to build. It can accommodate up to 404 residents. It was named for the university’s first president Father Albert Biever. You can see the building under construction here. The second photo shows two dorms; Budding Hall and the Blanche and Norman C. Francis Family Hall. The Francis Family Hall is the smaller building on the right in the photo. Norman was the first African American to graduate from Loyola. He received his law degree in 1955. He became the first African American to serve as president of nearby Xavier University of Louisiana from 1968 to 2015. He was also the first non-clergy president of Xavier. He was the second African American president of any Catholic college or university in the U.S. The building was previously called Carrollton Hall, a name derived from a neighborhood close to the university. The building was completed in 1999 and can accommodate 330 residents. It was renamed in 2022. The tall building facing the camera in the second photo is Buddig Hall. Construction on Buddig began in 1964 and it opened as a dorm for women 1966. It cost $2.5 million, or some $25.3 million today, to construct. It is twelve stories tall and can accommodate 429 residents. It takes its name in honor of Henrietta Buddig Legier, the late wife of long-serving Loyola Board of Regents member and alumnus John Legier. He was a banker who was the Chairman of the Board of the New Orleans’ based National American Bank. She passed away in 1961 at age eighty-one. There is a cool photo of two people standing in front of the architectural rendering of Buddig (which was at that point still the working name of "Women's Dormitory" here. I could not find out who those two people are nor when the photo was taken. If you happen to know, please leave a comment. Buddig is the other building on campus that has reportedly been the home to a ghost and possibly a demon. There are stories online about a group of students using a Ouija board to contact a lost soul. You can read stories about it online, but they seem much more hype than reality. The story is similar to the one at Western Kentucky University where students in Potter Hall supposedly used a Ouija board to contact the ghost of a former resident. There is a new residence hall going up just behind this collection of dorms and adjacent to the Recreational Sports Complex (see below). It will be an apartment-style dorm which can accommodate 600 residents. It was designed by EskewDumezRipple of New Orleans. It is scheduled for completion some time next year and the university hopes to have students living in the building for the Fall 2025 semester. The set below begins with one photo of the Recreational Sports Complex. The building was completed in late 1987 and was formally dedicated in February 1988. It's a combination structure. In addition to housing the student recreation center, the building has double duty as a parking garage. It is built on the former site of the Loyola Fieldhouse. The Fieldhouse was home to the university’s Wolfpack basketball team until the decision was made to drop intercollegiate sports at the end of the 1971-1972 academic year. It was home to two professional basketball teams as well. The New Orleans Buccaneers of the failed American Basketball Association (ABA) played there for two seasons from 1967 to 1969. The NBA’s New Orleans Jazz (now the Utah Jazz) played some of their first season games in the arena in 1974-1975. The building sits at the end of the campus in terms of my walk across it and after taking this photo I crossed the street and on to the Tulane University campus.
The last two images in this set are examples of Loyola's versions of the ever present campus lamppost sign. These were taken in Palm Court in front of Monroe Hall and just behind the Communications/Music Complex. A recent article in the online journal InsideHIgherEd noted that a number of Catholic institutions have seen a notable uptick in their enrollment in recent years (see the article written by Sara Weissman here). This is notable given that overall college attendance is down thanks to both a lower number of traditional-aged college students and to less interest in and value of college education in recent years. Owing to their higher tuition rates, private institutions have been hit hard by these changes. The article noted that the institutions which have seen their enrollment increase have something in common: they have doubled down on religious aspects of being Catholic schools. Indeed, some other Christian colleges and universities were also mentioned as having enrollment increases thanks to their focus on religion as well. I don’t know if Loyola has taken this route or not, but it has had good enrollment in recent years. Regardless, it is a nice campus with some very beautiful buildings and nice open spaces as well. If you are ever in New Orleans and need a break from the frivolity of the French Quarter or a respite from your convention, I would recommend a visit.
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I was walking across campus this morning and ran into a friend of mine here at the University of Memphis. He's a big college football fan and our conversation quickly turned to the results of this past weekend and the upcoming playoffs and bowl games. As we chatted the topic of stadiums came up. He had been to watch a game at a university whose name I will not mention and was not at all impressed by the stadium. I have heard others remark that it is lacking in many ways, but I haven't been there to have an opinion on it, so I will not mention the name. He reads this blog and has remarked more than once that I should place more attention on stadiums and arenas. He and I are about the same age, and we talked a bit about how much stadiums have improved over the last thirty years. In my retrospective piece on Texas Tech's Jones AT&T Stadium, I mentioned how much that venue has improved in the last two and half decades. Its development has been a remarkable. Although you still must contend with the West Texas heat if you go to a game early in the season, it is a terrific example of a modern, big-time college football stadium. I have mentioned that Neyland Stadium at the University of Tennessee is my favorite. Like Jones Stadium, it has been modernized in many ways. Oddly enough, the number of seats in the place increased and then decreased a bit after I completed my undergraduate studies there. When I was an undergrad, the stadium was not completely enclosed on the upper deck. That changed in 1996, when the north upper deck was completed. Additional facilities were incorporated into that expansion, and although the then-available amenities were nothing like those available today, they too saw some upgrades. A new press box, suites, amenities, and a new brick façade followed. The addition of the luxury boxes actually caused a slight reduction in overall seating capacity. Anyway, I thought I would do a retrospective on Neyland Stadium tonight and have an additional post in the future with a current take on it. The stadium can bee seen on the right in the first photo, taken from the roof top deck of Carrick Hall in February 1990. It is the only photo I have that shows the bulk of the stadium prior to installation of north endzone upper deck in 1996 and the brick façade in the early 2000's. The second photo below is a view that no longer exists. This is a view looking south across the stadium in the summer of 1993. That portion of the stadium was enclosed by a new upper deck section three years later. Note that there is no press box on the east side of the stadium. The third photo is the start of the game against LSU on September 25, 1993. UT's Pride of the Southland Marching Band forms a "T" and the team and spirit squads run onto the field. You can clearly see the open upper deck on the north side. You can see some better photos of that area of Neyland in my post from last year on bowl games here. The last photo of the set is not of the stadium, per se, but rather of my brother and I at a game on September 2, 1995 in which we beat East Carolina 27 to 7. I am the one on the right. Just like Neyland, I have expanded a good bit over the years! By July 1996, the upper deck addition on the north endzone side of the stadium was well underway. You can see the work progressing nice in the first two photos of this set. The addition was complete by the time of the third photo, taken in December 1996. Finally, you have a good look at the stadium with the end zone complete taken on May 11, 1997. As is the case with Jones Stadium, photos from today would show a stadium very different than the one you see in these photos. Tennessee has added loads of new amenities and Neyland is very much a modern and quite luxurious college football stadium.
I can't help but wonder what the future of collegiate stadiums will be. The trend where colleges battle to “stay competitive” by building more support facilities and increasing the extravagance of stadiums and arenas is not slowing down. How far could it go? You can look to professional stadiums for a clue. It's not comparing apples to apples, but what those stadiums have is a precursor to what big time college teams will likely have in the future. Sure, Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, CA, and AT&T Stadium in Dallas benefit from community investment which is typically not the case in collegiate athletics, but at least some of their top tier amenities could be within reach of programs like those at Michigan, Texas, Tennessee, and Alabama. The University of Memphis does not have its own on-campus stadium or basketball arena. The men's basketball team plays in the FedEx Forum, the home to the NBA Memphis Grizzlies. It's a great facility and despite being miles from campus is in many respects worth the trade off of not having an arena on the university's grounds (although I have known loads of students who hate the fact that they simply can't walk to a basketball game). The football team plays at the Liberty Bowl which is also a couple of miles from campus. But it is not in the same league as the FedEx Forum. It is lacking in many ways. It has extremely limited food options, limited to no loge or suite seating, and has a beat up and run-down appearance and condition. The Liberty Bowl is undergoing updates as I write this. Millions of dollars are being spent to try to modernize and improve it. The plan calls for some significant and decades overdue renovations. Yet, even when it is done, it will pale in comparison to Neyland Stadium, Jones Stadium, and most Power Four conference venues. Indeed, I would go far as to say that Neyland Stadium was far nicer and had as good or better amenities when I started college in 1988 as the Liberty Bowl has now in 2024 (before the completion of the renovations which are in-progress as I write this). The differences between the haves and the have nots is notable. The divide could get larger if the river of money flowing through the big time programs continues or gets bigger. To quote Joe Pesci’s character in Casino it's "always the dollars”. Having more money to spend on your stadium can bring in more dollars in the long run. And that may be what college athletics is all about these days. |
AboutUniversity Grounds is a blog about college and university campuses, their buildings and grounds, and the people who live and work on them. Australia
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January 2025
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