Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum

Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. . , A Coliseum For All Seasons And Sports , It wasn't the first public building designed to enhance Los Angeles' image, but like its namesake in Rome, it is one of the most enduring. , The huge concrete and steel oval Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is an immense jewel-box of civic memories: college and pro-team touchdowns, professional baseball home runs, rock concerts, presidential speeches, and the flame-bright triumphs of two Olympic games. , Here is where Jesse Owens ran, where Jack Dempsey fought and Sonja Henie skated. Nelson Mandela and John F. Kennedy spoke here to tens of thousands. Sandy Koufax struck out 18 batters. The Rolling Stones rocked its seats, and here, Billy Graham and Pope John Paul II preached. , All that history came about because a group of civic-minded Angelenos transformed some barren acreage into a memorial to war veterans and a landmark that has withstood both time and Angelenos' fondness for demolishing their past. , As the 20th century dawned, the site known as Agricultural Park had deteriorated into a Sodom of saloons and brothels around an auto race track. , A Sunday school teacher named William M. Bowen cleaned up the park and, with University of Southern California President George Bovard, proposed a stadium for sports and civic events. The new Coliseum became the property of the city, county and state, each represented equally on the commission that still runs the Coliseum. , Olympic Dreams And College Teams , It opened in 1923, and was named the Olympic Stadium in hopes of attracting the Olympic Games. The peristyle design evoked ancient Greek and Roman arenas. For the 1984 Olympic Games, the entrance was ornamented with "Olympic Gateway," heroic male and female nude torsos by artist Robert Graham. , In 1923, the football game between USC and Pomona College dug the first divots. A year later, the civic booster William May Garland landed the 1932 Olympic summer games. , A fellow Inter-national Olympic Committee mem-ber praised Garland's sales-manship when he said, "Billy, I voted for Los Angeles because I like you personally. But where is Los Angeles? Is it anywhere near Hollywood?" The 1932 Olympics put Los Angeles , not just Hollywood , on the map. , Even without the Olympics, the Coliseum cre-ated excitement. Post-World War I Los Angeles did not have a major league sport team, so the city's undivided attention turned to what it did have: USC football. , During the 1920s and '30s, the USC Trojans won five Rose Bowls and two national championships, founding one of the richest traditions in college athletics. , Football soon became the Coliseum's main-stay. The UCLA Bruins arrived in 1929 and stayed for 52 years. The Rams came from Cleveland in 1946, winning the pro champi-onship five years later. , On June 1945, after the Allied victory in Europe, 105,000 people welcomed Gen. George S. Patton Jr. and Lt. Gen. James H. Doolittle. In a mock battle in the Coliseum, searchlights sent pillars of light into the sky, illuminating warplanes flying in formation. On the ground, land mines were detonated and tanks rolled through the darkness to simulate Patton's 3rd Army's thrust toward Berlin. , Then Came The Dodgers , In 1959, more than 92,000 spectators witnessed Los Angeles' first World Series. Fans made such a din that players had to communicate with hand signals. , The Dodgers called the Coliseum home from 1958 until they moved to their own stadium in Chavez Ravine in 1961. , In 1980 and 1981, though, the stadium lost both the Rams and the Bruins. The Raiders arrived in 1982 and stayed for 13 years before going back to Oakland, and the Olympics returned to Los Angeles in 1984. , The Coliseum is the only stadium in the world to host two Olympiads, two Super Bowls (I and VII), and a World Series. Today, the Coliseum is both a national and state historic landmark, almost as much a part of Los Angeles' civic identity as the Hollywood sign.