Historic Crew Stadium

Columbus built this ground for one reason: to prove a football-only stadium could work in a country where every other tenant shared a gridiron field. It opened on 15 May 1999 with Columbus Crew hosting New England Revolution, and the distinction stuck — the first stadium in MLS designed and built purely for football, with nothing else in mind.

The name has moved twice without the building changing. It was Columbus Crew Stadium for its first sixteen years, then took on a sponsor's name, Mapfre Stadium, from 2015. When that deal lapsed in December 2020, the club dropped sponsorship altogether and settled on Historic Crew Stadium — an odd choice in one sense, since by then it was no longer even the club's main ground, but a fitting one for a site the franchise wanted remembered as where it started rather than sold.

Capacity has shrunk twice, both times for the same reason: what the club added at the north end. It opened at 22,555, dropped to 20,145 in 2008 once a permanent stage went in behind one goal, and settled at its current 19,968 in 2015. Columbus Crew played on here until 2021, when they moved to Lower.com Field a short distance away, leaving this ground standing as the older, smaller sibling rather than being replaced outright.