Wikimapia is a multilingual open-content collaborative map, where anyone can create place tags and share their knowledge.

Rice Stadium

USA / Texas / West University Place / University Boulevard, 2176
 american football stadium  Add category
Rice Stadium is a football stadium located on the campus of Rice University in Houston, Texas. Opened in 1950 as Houston Stadium, it the home field of the Rice Owls football team.

The stadium was designed by Lloyd and Morgan and built between February and September of 1950 by Brown and Root Constructors. Originally designed to accomodate 71,000 fans, the end zone seats were covered with tarps in 2006, reducing its capacity to 47,000 (in part because the stadium had not sold out for a college football game since the early 1960s). It can, however, easily be reconfigured to its original capacity, which even today is larger than the total number of Rice's living and deceased alumni.

Rice Stadium served as the home field of the University of Houston's football team from 1951 to 1964, and the American Football League's Houston Oilers from 1966 to 1967. It was also the site of the Bluebonnet Bowl college football game from 1959-1967 and 1985-1986, and hosted the NFL's Super Bowl VIII in 1974.

On September 12, 1962, Rice Stadium was the site of President John F. Kennedy's speech that challenged Americans to send a man to the moon by the end of the decade.

In January 2015 the Rice athletic department announced the proposed construction of a new student-athlete development building, the Brian Patterson Sports Performance Center. Located at the north end of the stadium, the $31.5 million, 60,000 square-foot building will house a weight room, a home team locker room, staff offices, an auditorium, a football team lounge and areas dedicated to training and sports medicine; construction on the facility is expected to be completed by the fall of 2016.
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_Stadium
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   29°42'57"N   95°24'33"W

Comments

  • Bevo (guest)
    This is where the Rice hooters pretend to play football.
  • htowninsomniac
    This is also where President Kennedy gave his famous "We choose to go to the moon" speech in 1962 ( http://www1.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/ricetalk.htm ), where the Houston Oilers, Houston's first pro football team, played for a while, and where Super Bowl VIII was held in 1974. Just for the sake of completeness.
  • RC3NTEXAS (guest)
    This also where Pink F;oyd played on April 5,th 1994 as part of their Division Bell Tour.
This article was last modified 9 years ago