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NU Home Sites: Sheppard Page
Created
10/15/21
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Northwestern On-Campus Home Game Venues #2:
This
field, located where the fraternity quads now stand, started as the
unnamed
north campus field. On November 6, 1890, NU played its last home game
on the old Campus Meadow field. Later that month, the team decided to
shift its playing field farther north, to make room for the additional
fans that Beloit (at the time, Beloit was a regional power in football)
would bring. Six hundred spectators saw the first game on the new
location on November 22, 1890.
The school decided to use the new location permanently and broke ground on a new athletic area on September 14, 1891.
NU originally planned to name the area "Muir Field," after baseball
manager George Muir, who was initially in charge of the athletic
complex's construction. For the 1891 season, the football grounds
were similar to the previous field-- no permanent grandstands or
structures.
Built just before the 1892 season, NU's first permanent stands had 750
seats. At the October 15, 1892 Beloit game the field was
dedicated as Sheppard Field (named after NU business manager Robert
Sheppard, who donated the lumber for the surrounding fence), and it
soon had 1,000 seats.
Venue Name: November 1890 - 1892: North Campus Field. 1892 - 1904: Sheppard Field.
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Dates Used: 1890 - 1904
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First Game: November 22, 1890 vs. Beloit
First Game as Sheppard Field: Oct. 15, 1892 vs. Beloit
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Last Game: Nov. 12, 1904 vs. Illinois
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NU Record at North Campus Field / Sheppard Field: 70 Wins, 17 Losses, 10 Ties
(North Campus Field Record: 4-0-1. Sheppard Record: 66-17-9)
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Largest Crowd: Unknown. Likely over 2,200.
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Highlight Game(s): 1901 win over Notre Dame
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Where was this field?
NU's
histories simply mention that the field was in the present-day
fraternity quads. Using old platte maps of Evanston, however, we can
identify the exact spot:
The
grandstands were a little over a hundred feet from the edge of where
Tech is now; they sat on the spot of present-day 2251 Sheridan Road.
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