As Northwestern prepares this week for the "soft launch" of the New Ryan Field, let's take a look at where the 50-yard-line seats almost ended up:


Wait: what?! How did this block end up as the iconic Buffalo Joe's in Evanston and not the sidelines for Wildcat football?

It goes back to a fateful decision over a hundred years ago, when Northwestern was looking to expand its athletic facilities beyond its main campus.

Since 1874, Northwestern's athletic grounds had been situated on its main campus east of Sheridan Road. But it wasn't always so: in its infancy, Northwestern used a field near Davis Street in Evanston for its games, primarily early baseball. By the fall of 1902, it was becoming clear that the school's on-campus football stadium, Sheppard Field, was insufficient. Even though its grandstands were only ten years old, the stadium could no longer accommodate the football team's biggest games, and students angrily protested against hosting games off campus in Chicago when the Purple faced its most popular opponents.

So, in 1902 NU's business manager, Robert Sheppard (the namesake of the on-campus stadium) began looking for a new site for an athletic field, and his first idea was to move the grounds back south, near Davis Street again.

Sheppard's suggestion was to locate a new stadium in the heart of Evanston, just a block north of Sherman Avenue and Davis:


The area, shown on a contemporary map, above, would have likely wiped out part of Benson Avenue and Clark Street, closing both to through traffic. The campus would have extended from Church Street north to where University Place is now.

Sheppard saw two major advantages to this location. First, it was closer to the main campus than other possible options (including spots farther north on Central Street). Second, it was less than a block from the Northwestern Train Depot (now the Davis Street Metra Station).

From our twenty-first century perspective, this location seems impractical, if not impossible. However, we need to remember several things that would prevent such a move now that were not problems in 1902. Currently, there is a second train line running next to Benson Avenue (and leading to the Davis El Station), but that train line wasn't yet built. Also, Elgin Road would be affected now, but that street also wasn't yet constructed in 1902.

As for the land, Northwestern owned or controlled all of the property in question in 1902. In the late nineteenth century, NU owned roughly a third of downtown Evanston. By 1902, that amount had been slashed to five percent, but that five percent still included several important lots.


This modern map shows the proposed site for NU's football stadium. Note the train tracks running down Benson Avenue; they did not exist in 1902.

While the idea of a Big Ten stadium in the middle of the Evanston business district seems crazy now, it needs to be noted that if NU had proceeded with this project, the Evanston downtown would have evolved very differently from how it ended up. It's possible that the blocks just west of Maple would have eventually been incorporated into this campus as well.

The idea caught on with the school's administration, and in December 1902 NU announced that it planned to proceed with Sheppard's plans for a Sherman Avenue stadium. However, the plans ended up delayed during the holidays, and at some point in early 1903 an alternate site, championed by William Dyche, replaced Sheppard's plan.

Dyche's idea, of course, was to take advantage of another train stop on Central as the main conduit for game traffic and build an entire athletic complex on NU-controlled land-- including a football stadium and a baseball diamond, something Sheppard's location could not provide. The Central Street facility was supposed to break ground in the fall of 1903 and open in '04, but was pushed back a year. And the property at Sherman and Clark slipped out of Northwestern's hands and (eventually) into the spicy, spicy, wings of Buffalo Joe's.