Gies Memorial Stadium

Gies Memorial Stadium sits in Champaign, Illinois, but it is not a building that looks like the city around it. The old aerial photographs show it rising out of open fields, a deep excavation surrounded by farmland, before the town expanded to meet it. Today, the landscape has filled in, but the ground still feels set apart, separated from the rest of the university by the scale of the concrete and brick. The building itself was originally a gift from the students and alumni, and that origin is not lost in the renovations. A bronze plaque on the brick wall lists the members of the Stadium Executive Committee and the Guarantors who put up the money, alongside the names of Holabird & Roche, the architects, and the English Brothers, who did the work. The committee knew the ground would be different from the start.

The view from above shows the distinctive shape of the stands, with the long ends cut off by the river and the campus. The playing field is covered in artificial turf, a modern surface for an old ground. The stadium used to have a bubble, a large airtight dome that sat over the practice field for a season, but that is gone now. What remains are the details that make the place recognisable. The brickwork is heavy and solid, and the seating rises steeply. The air goes straight through the open ends, and the wind is always there. The stadium does not hide its history. The original columns are no longer there, but the intention remains: it was built for the students who did not come back. The place holds every card it was given. It is not just a football ground, but a monument that has outlived the war it was built for and the bubble that tried to protect the players from the weather.