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| Soldier Field, today, as seen from Shedd Aquarium (JWB Photo) |
It was on this date
back in 1925 that the name of Grant Park Municipal Stadium was changed to
Soldier Field. The South Park Commission
chose Armistice Day, the day in which the Great War ended in 1918, as an
appropriate occasion for the dedication of the mammoth stadium, designed by
Holabird and Roche and opened on October 9, 1924.
At the ceremony
Frank O. Lowden, who had served as Illinois governor during World War I was the
featured speaker. Also speaking was
Commander John Rodgers, who had earlier that year made an ill-fated attempt to
fly from California to Hawaii in a flying boat.
He and his crew ran short on fuel hundreds of miles from the islands and
floated in the Pacific for nine days before a United States submarine on
routine patrol finally found them.
Army, Navy and
Marine units participated in the ceremony, along with a dozen R.O.T.C. units
from Chicago high schools as well as the bands from Senn and Bowen High
Schools. The dedication was concluded
with a contingent of Marine buglers, playing Taps.
Tribune coverage of the event makes mention of a pennant bearing the
words “Soldiers’ Field” being raised beneath the American flag as the ceremony
began. That raises an issue about which
Chicagoans have always wondered, at least those of us two or three generations
removed from the original dedication ceremony . . . Is it “Soldiers’ Field” or
“Soldier Field”?
The South Park
Commissioners very clearly sought to rename the stadium Soldier Field. The Chicago Tribune, however, strenuously
objected to the illogical grammatical choice of renaming the great field after
a single soldier and for years refused to use the correct name of the stadium.
In an editorial on
October 22, 1925 the paper proclaimed
Try to say Soldier Field. Then ask what soldier. Maybe Mike, or it might have been Jan or
possibly Sven. Maybe because Harvard has
the older Soldiers’ Field the south park commissioners thought they ought not
to be copy cats in entirety . . . Regardless of our local room, copy desk,
proof-room, and everything else that stands between us and the production of a
perfect newspaper, it is Soldiers’ Field, plural in the hope that America will
have more than one when more are needed and will regard more than one when more
have been used. It’s Soldiers’ Field,
now and forever in this space on this newspaper.
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| Grant Park Municipal Stadium under construction in 1923 (Photo courtesy of Calumet 412) |
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