It is a bit of an outlier on the list of Green Bay Packers home fields, but for one mediocre season the Packers played half of their home games at Marquette Stadium at North 36th Street and Clybourn Avenue. That season, and the stadium itself, have largely been lost to the city’s collective sports memory, but—Packers aside—the simply arranged stadium overlooking the Menomonee Valley saw a lot of action, and a few legends, during its fifty-plus year lifetime.
The stadium was built in 1924. It was a basic football field-sized patch of land surrounded by a cinder track and beset on each side by grandstands. Beneath the west stands were locker rooms and storage. A pair of small practice fields was on an adjacent piece of land. The main stands held about 20,000 people, with temporary bleachers that could be stationed behind the end zones adding another 4,000 seats. The sparse design of the place left open the possibility of expanding the stands around each end of the field, potentially doubling the stadium’s capacity.
The biggest draw at the new stadium would be the Marquette Golden Avalanche football team. The squad fielded some competitive teams at the stadium and at times seemed to be emerging as an independent powerhouse. The program peaked in 1936, when the Avalanche opened the season with seven straight wins and appeared to be headed for an undefeated season before being upset by Duquesne in the season’s final game. Their 7-1 mark was good enough for a trip to the Cotton Bowl in Dallas (they lost to TCU) and a season-end 20th ranking nationally.
A number of major track and field events were also held at the stadium, including Amateur Athletic Union national championships in 1934, 1937 and 1948; the NCAA Track and Field Championships in 1944 and 1945; and the Olympic decathlon trials in 1936. Jesse Owens competed at the stadium on a number of occasions, as did Marquette’s own Ralph Metcalfe, who won a gold medal with Owens at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, and later served as a U.S. Representative from Illinois.
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It was the Korean War that would, indirectly, make Marquette Stadium a part of NFL history. For years, the Packers had played 2-3 home games per season in Milwaukee at the State Fair grounds, a spot sometimes known as the “Dairy Bowl.” But after the 1951 season, in anticipation of the Packers moving to Milwaukee County Stadium, the old wooden grandstand at the Dairy Bowl was torn down. County officials were hoping that the new stadium would be ready by the summer of 1952 and even talked of the minor league Milwaukee Brewers moving there in mid-season. But when material shortages caused by the war slowed the project, it became clear that it would not be ready by the summer or the fall.
Faced with the possibility of having their three Milwaukee games relocated and taking a box office hit (both state fair and County Stadium had much higher capacities than the Pack’s Green Bay home, City Field), the Packers scrambled to make an emergency arrangement with Marquette to use the grounds. Temporary seating expanding its capacity to around 30,000, on par with their other Milwaukee homes. It would prove for naught, however. The Packers were mired in the dull years between Lambeau and Lombardi, and would finish with a 6-6 record. In Milwaukee, they drew crowds of just 9,600, 21,600 and 10,200, losing two and winning one. Their October matchup with the L.A. Rams produced one of the ugliest losses in team history when the Pack blew a 28-6 lead with just 12 minutes to play and lost 30-28.
Marquette football also suffered into the 1950s. After their 1939 Cotton Bowl appearance, they posted just three winning seasons and put up back-to-back winless seasons in 1956-57. In 1959, they appeared primed for a major upset of soon-to-be nationally ranked Pitt in their home opener when a hardheaded defensive end named Mike Ditka blocked a punt that helped Pitt to overtake Marquette and win the game. The school dropped the football program after the 1960 season.
College football returned to the stadium in 1973, when the UW-Milwaukee Panthers moved in and played two seasons there before their football program was canceled. In 1976, with the stadium now only being used for Marquette club football and the university soccer team, the school tore down the grandstands. In 1998, the site was remade as Quad Field, a soccer and track field for nearby Marquette University High School.
Editor's Note: An earlier version of this article had incorrectly included a photo of City Stadium in Green Bay, Wis.
