49ers, Philadelphia & Olympic Stadiums
Saturday, 9th April 2005 by James Turnbull
The first stadium is the San Francisco 49er's Stadium Monster Park (formerly 3com park) (thumbnail #1 below) and it seems they were playing at the moment the photo was taken.
There's lots of stadiums in this shot of Philadelphia In the North West there's the Veterans Stadium before it was demolished on March 21, 2004, North East is Citizen's Bank Park still under construction (opened April 9, 2004) and South East is Lincoln Financial Field (opened August 8, 2003). In the South West is First Union Center & First Union Spectrum, each with large type on the roof.
Lastly we have the amazing Olympic Stadium complex in Montreal (thumbnail #2 below), which was built for the 1976 Summer Olympic Games.
Thanks: sixtoe, Dean, Allen, many others.
Awesome site
I’ve been to this place. It was very cool. The tower above the stadium is at an unnatural slant, and it has the ability to lift up the roof on the stadium. What’s best is there is an outside elevator that takes visitors to the top of the tower for a beautiful view of the surrounding areas.
Thanks for the rememories!
-blade
I don’t think the roof works anymore….
The roof never worked. It was built because the architect promised it would be able to open, but it never was, so after it was built he fled to somewhere. It’s really far away from downtown, and now it isn’t used for anything. Great site by the way.
Ah, “The Big O”! The stadium wound up costing so much — due to poor budgeting, a (allegedly-) retractable roof that didn’t get installed until years after the Olympics came and went and the occasional chunk of concrete from said roof — that people now call it “The Big Owe”.
What’s worse is the stadium now has no full-time tenants. The Montreal Expos have left town for Washington DC and the local football team (the Alouettes) have downgraded to the smaller, but more profitable stadium at McGill University.
Even decades after it was designed that stadium in Montreal is still impressive to look at. It still feels futuristic. If only it wasn’t so expensive to have more interesting stadiums like that built today.
You know, when you think about it, the odds of actually catching a game in progress are pretty slim. Teams only play 8 home games a year, plus maybe a few playoff games and the games are about 3 hours long. That’s about 24 hours of time the satellite would have caught a game out of about 4380 hours of daylight for the year (about 1/200).
The little bug-looking building at the top corner of the Olympic Stadium picture is the Montreal Biodome:
If you’re ever visiting Montreal, it’s very much worth checking out. It has monkeys and penguins!
I would love to see what day the Philadelphia Sports Complex images were taken. Obviously a while ago since neither of those stadiums look nearly done. An the Phillies are going into their second season in that ballpark (which is amazing). But with that many cars in the lots of the complex I’d like to see what events were going on that day.
Here’s Turner Field, home to the 1996 Olympics:
View Placemark
They actually want to destroy the olympic stadium but it would cost more than just leaving it there.
Actually, the Olympic Stadium is probably the most beautiful one architecturally speaking I have seen in north america. The only thing tha comes close was the funky saddle shaped Saddledome in Calgary.
The Montreal stadium dsitrict was surrounded by one boulevard below and another one which is was rerouted so it could pass on the other side of it and elevated at about half the height of the stadium so you could view it by car from ground level or from the other street whic was a good 200-3oo feet higher, At night, you felt like a spaceship had landed. . The slanted tower is absolutely stunning. The whole sector is a beautiful activities hub. where there is an olympic pool and sports center, the biodome which I didnt get a chance to visit but has 4 seasons indoors, one olympic size hockey rink and museum for a local hockey hero, a sports activites center, movie complex, 2 soccer and track fields for youth and thats right next to an insectarium and botanical garderns which are part of a huge golf course size park. actually, it was a golf course which they expropriated to built the aztec looking pyramids (I forgot what they were originally) and 3/4 of it is now used by residents to rollerblade, bike and enjoy in the summer. (Im sure this must have gone over nicely with the fatcats who used to play there). Were talking a LOT of nice tree lined green space. The 10min subway ride from our downtown hotel was the cleanest Ive ever been in and was actually surprised to find out that the it was a working class neighbourhood having seen slums surrouding yankees and tigers stadium.
For my canadian friends who I know love this kinf of taunts, the Skydome in Toronto was a perfect replica of the Air Canada hangar at Toronto’s airport that we could see from our hotel room when we were there. Rarely has a building managed to be so bland and charmless.
Wait, Im wrong….the legendary Montreal Forum and its successor, which no one knows what its called from week to week, so is often reffered to as the ‘new’ forum are absolutely horrendous building/wharehouses.
John
In Philadelphia, now it is Wachovia Center and Wachovia Spectrum.
Taking down Olympic Stadium was proposed, but indeed would be very costly, around the price of a new stadium, 400/500 million. And it would have had to be done in pieces, due to its design, and with neighbouring residential areas. So it would have taken quite a while. And not to forget it holds many events, car shows etc, and is a big tourist draw year round with the tower, Biodome, Insectarium, Botanical Gardens, etc.
Seeing the stadium from the air flying into Montreal, seeing it as a whole, it looks really nice, stands out without a doubt!