December 20, 2002

Photo by Daniel J. Quinajon Front entrance to the Rose Bowl.

By Mary Schubert, Staff Writer

What do Caltech, Huntington Hospital, Occidental College and the Huntington Library have in common? All were designed by the same man who created the Rose Bowl.

The 80-year-old football stadium and those local landmarks bear the imprint of the late architect Myron Hunt, a Pasadenan and member of the Tournament of Roses.

Parade organizers commissioned Hunt to design a football stadium in 1919 because the annual New Year's Day football game was outgrowing its original venue. The East vs. West game, as it was then called, was played at Tournament Park, now the home of Caltech's athletic facilities.

"When they first built (the stadium), it was open at the south end. That's why it only had 57,000 seats," Charles Thompson, a Rose Bowl spokesman, explained during an autumn tour of the stadium.

"It was horseshoe shaped. They started adding pieces as the demand increased for seats," Thompson said. "Right now, it's at 92,542."

For big events, the stadium can fit 100,000 spectators, Thompson said. The Rose Bowl has been host to five Super Bowls, the soccer competition in the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics, the 1994 men's World Cup Soccer championship and the Women's World Cup Soccer championships in 1999.

Recently, the city of Pasadena retained a consultant to study the feasibility of bringing a National Football League team to the venerable stadium. In recent years, Rose Bowl tenants have included UCLA football, Los Angeles Galaxy soccer and occasional concerts.

"The Rose Bowl has undergone continual modifications in order to compete for world-class events," said General Manager Darryl Dunn. "It has reinvented itself to stay competitive."

Since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a 30-foot-by-50-foot American flag has hung from the front entrance, where "Rose Bowl" flows in green neon cursive, interrupted by the namesake flower in red neon.

Stadium decor honors the rich history of the Rose Bowl, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. "Buckhorn Bronze," a 1992 sculpture by Tom Knapp, depicts a player from the leather-helmet era of the early 1900s.

Below the "Rose Bowl" marquee is the Court of Champions -- six tall rows of plaques denoting the teams, final scores, winning coach and most valuable player of every Rose Bowl Game since 1902 -- with enough unmarked plaques to last until 2016.

Construction began in 1922 on the stadium, built at a total cost of $272,198, according to city historical records. The Tournament of Roses purchased the land and, once construction was finished, deeded the stadium to the city of Pasadena.

Originally called Tournament of Roses Stadium, the venue was dubbed the "Rose Bowl" in 1922 by a Tournament publicist -- and the name stuck.

In creating the Rose Bowl, Hunt studied the designs of stadiums all over the world, but was most inspired by the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Conn.

Hunt decided the Arroyo Seco was an ideal spot for a sporting arena, but others weren't so sure. "In the early 1920s, the arroyo was quite literally a dump, full of squatters, snakes, gophers, trash and boulders," according to "Myron Hunt, 1868-1952: The Search for a Regional Architecture."

Before Devil's Gate Dam was built farther upstream, "the winter rains would wash everything out of the arroyo, leaving only sand and boulders behind. Hunt had some difficulty convincing his friends of the suitability of the smoldering town dump ... for their dream stadium," according to the Hunt profile, published in 1984.

He devised a way to make people look up, to appreciate the beauty of the location. He built a "large plywood collar to fit over the head and extend away from the shoulders," according to the book.

Taking Tournament of Roses President William Leishman to the site in 1920, "Hunt placed the collar over his friend's head to visually blot out the trash and dramatize the vista of mountains and tree-covered bluffs," the book said.