The 100-year-old edifice has found a purpose less grandiose than its original objective — giving Georgia Tech football fans a place to watch one of the greatest teams in the South.
Even still, the sense of history is almost tangible. The original west stands of Grant Field, which first gathered fans almost 100 years to the day, remain under the new structure that has become Bobby Dodd Stadium.
“It pretty much crosses my mind every time I go in there,” Tech groundskeeper Jon DeWitt said, “the history and how it’s kind of neat.”
At Thursday’s game between Tech and Virginia Tech, the school will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the oldest on-campus stadium in FBS. Virtually everything about the venue has changed except for the location. Aside from the school and the football team that represents it, the original bleachers may be the lone exception.
In an enclosed space underneath the stands maybe the size of a gymnasium, they rise 18 rows and perhaps 90 yards long. The painted seat numbers are still legible. The red-brick facade — which the new structure repeats — is in mostly good shape. The stands have not seen the sun since the new stands covered them in 1947 and are illuminated by 1,000-watt metal halide lights. Builders punched holes in the stands to erect reinforced concrete footings that hold up the existing stands.
The space is used for storage by the athletic department’s facilities staff. Where fans once cheered the Yellow Jackets’ 222-0 rout of Cumberland and marveled at the playmaking flair of Clint Castleberry and the coaching acumen of John Heisman, there are flag poles, chair-back seat cushions, bar stools and other items.
“It looks like my grandmother’s basement, actually,” DeWitt said recently as he guided visitors around the stands.
On ground level, office desks, televisions, treadmills, couches, mini-refrigerators, a foosball table and many, many other things are stored behind fencing, roughly where Bobby Dodd and William Alexander once plotted from the sidelines. Along the facade, perhaps where players greeted family or girlfriends, there’s a poster-size photo of an old Tech men’s tennis team and a large whiteboard with a sticky note that says “Save.”
The facilities staff cleans it out periodically as it fills up. DeWitt recently unloaded a bunch of old TV sets. Its purpose may be utilitarian, but the history is undeniable.
“The other thing, too, every time I take someone there that’s never been under there, seeing the look of surprise or, ‘Hey, that’s cool,’ is neat, too,” DeWitt said.
The stands were first put to use Sept. 27, 1913. Since 1905, Heisman’s second season at Tech, the team had played at the same field, known as the Flats, an area cleared by convict labor lent by Fulton County. John W. Grant, who was a Georgia graduate but who made a number of gifts to Tech and was on Tech’s board of trustrees, gave the school $15,000 in April 1913 for the construction of a stadium. It was named the Hugh Inman Grant Field in honor of Grant’s deceased son.
Beneath the article in The Atlanta Journal about Grant’s gift was another with the headline “Atlantians are asked to aid fight against tuberculosis.” A classified ad in The Atlanta Constitution the week of Grant Field’s first game offered “100 sandwiches delivered anywhere in United States for $1.25, by parcel post, guaranteed fresh and crisp on delivery.”
In other ways, the times weren’t so different. Both papers reported on the impeachment of a New York governor accused of misuse of campaign funds. In the week leading to the game, both papers kept readers updated on the injury status of a highly recruited back from Chattanooga, Tenn.
On the day of the game, the executive committee of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association — a precursor of the SEC — met at Piedmont Hotel to discuss other rumors of the ineligibility of players from Tech and Georgia.
Tech played soldiers from Fort MacPherson, a game with a 3:30 p.m. kickoff in weather better suited for baseball. Heisman’s Jackets won 19-0. The Journal reported a crowd of 2,500.
Following the game, the Constitution wrote that when the field and concrete stands were completed, “Tech will have a stadium that will rival any in this country” and with seating that could reach 25,000 to 30,000.
Some 50,000 fans will gather Thursday night, the vision for the Flats long since exceeded. Century-old stands that once echoed roars, but are hidden from sight are testament to that.
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