 hanksgiving
Day, 1929 marked the realization of a decade-long dream for James
Sullivan, business manager for Texas A&M's athletic
department, as a new $365,000 concrete stadium welcomed a Who's
Who of state dignitaries and thousands of football fans. The
traditional clash between the University of Texas and the
agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas provided a backdrop
for proud Aggies to show off their new stadium. Even the President
of the University of Texas, H. Y. Benedict, congratulated A&M
on the occasion. Kyle Field, with 32,890 permanent seats and 5,000
temporary seats at the South end, prompted A&M's student
newspaper, The Battalion, to report that "voice amplifiers
will be used so that the words of the speakers will carry clearly
to the fans seated throughout the huge structure...the completed
stadium gives A. and M. College one of the finest athletic plants
in the South." To round out the day, A&M beat Texas 13-0.
Here, at last, was the base of Kyle Field as
we know it today. Five sections (West stands) of the stadium were
begun in 1927 at a cost of $100,000 and put into service the
following year. The remaining sixteen sections, including the
"U-shaped section" or "Horseshoe," were begun
on July 8, 1929 and completed on October 18th at a cost of
$265,000.
Longtime Architecture Professor and A&M
Archivist Ernest Langford '13 and Professor Carl E. Sandstedt '28
prepared the structural design of the sixteen sections and were
appointed by the college as "supervisors of
construction." |
Langford later wrote: In making our drawings we had
shown that the units which form the U-section of the plan were to
have their lengths and positions established by a system of
coordinates rather than angles. That was something
new to the contractor's superintendent so much so infact that he
declared the 'whole mess' to be impractical and challenged us to
lay out the units ourselves! That was a challenge which we simply
had to accept. So we countered by saying that we would first set a
point on the opposite side of the field and then work around the
"U to it. Whereupon a preliminary point was established, and
a 2"x 2" stake driven into the ground, and then the
exact point fixed by driving an eight-penny common nail into the
stake. We then declared that when we came back to that point after
working our way around the "U" we would arrive within
the circle described by the head of the nail. Well,
some four hours later we were ready to check the accuracy of our
'impractical" method of coordinates. A pencil line had been
drawn as a diameter on the head of the nail when it was driven in
the stake. All that remained to be done was to describe an arc of
a circle from the last point established and hope that the arc
would cut the diameter within the circle.
The honor of swinging the arc was accorded the
superintendent. With that he stretched the tape taut, set a pencil
at the proper figure on the tape, described his arc--and crossed
the diameter one-sixteenth of an inch within the circle!
From this moment until the last load test of
the stadium, the two "impractical professors" had the
last word when it came to "questions of doubt." |
