Chicago Park District Records: Soldier Field Digital Collection
CPL's Digital Collections document life in Chicago through archival images, documents and artifacts.
About
In 1919, Chicago architects Holabird & Roche won a design competition to build an all-purpose public arena for the south end of Grant Park. Opened in 1924, the Grant Park Municipal Stadium was soon renamed Soldier Field to honor lives lost in World War I. While best known today as home of the Chicago Bears, Soldier Field has only hosted the football team since 1971. Before that, the stadium was the venue for events as varied as college and high school football games; boxing bouts; addresses by luminaries like Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Martin Luther King, Jr.; religious gatherings; the first Special Olympics in 1968; and many others including car races, dog shows, music concerts, World Cup soccer, and ski jumping competitions. The facility had its largest attendance in 1954 when more than 250,000 people gathered to celebrate the Catholic Marian Year. Today, 100 years after it first opened, Soldier Field remains one of Chicago’s premier spaces for community gathering.
This digital collection includes drawings and photographs that document the construction of Soldier Field and a selection of events from its 100-year history. Highlights include construction photos, images from Special Olympics events, and scenes of the 1966 Chicago Freedom Movement Rally.
Questions or concerns about rights and access to this digital collection? See our Copyright and Takedown Policy.
Acknowledgment of Harmful Materials
Chicago Public Library collects images, documents and other archival materials from different communities and time periods to preserve and make available the cultural and historical record. As historical objects, some of these materials contain harmful or disturbing content. CPL presents these artifacts as an unfiltered social record and does not endorse the views expressed therein.
