- City:
- New Orleans, LA
- Site Type:
- Parks and Recreation, Stadiums
- New Deal Agencies:
- Work Relief Programs, Works Progress Administration (WPA)
- Started:
- 1935
- Completed:
- 1937
- Artist:
- Enrique Alfaréz
- Designer:
- Weiss Dreyfous and Seifert
- Quality of Information:
- Very Good
- Marked:
- No
- Site Survival:
- Extant
Description
Constructed in 1935-37 with WPA labor, the 26,500-seat stadium came as part of a massive New Deal project to expand New Orleans’s City Park.
Richard Koch, an architect on the park board and the architectural firm of Weiss, Dreyfous and Seifert, designed the stadium. The architectural firm had reached national exposure after Governor P. Huey Long selected it in 1934 to design the new Art Deco State Capitol in Baton Rouge.
Built of poured reinforced concrete, the stadium’s upper seating rests on a series of stout columns arranged in an oval, allowing for curved seating. The space between the terrace seating and the ground creates a stark arcade that encircles the structure. The stadium included entry gates with images of athletes designed by Mexican-born sculptor Enrique Alfaréz (1901-1999), who was commissioned by the WPA to design sculptures in the park.
Built as a multi-use field with football field and track, it was completed in 1937 at a cost of $560,000.
It initially hosted local high school events with a record set in 1940 by 34,345 spectators attending a football game between New Orleans’s Holy Cross and Jesuit high schools.
The stadium was renamed in 1957 in honor of Frank “Tad” Gormley, a venerated Crescent City athletic coach and superintendent of the stadium. The Beatles played their only concert in Louisiana at the stadium on September 16, 1964, where an estimated 700 frenzied fans rushed the stage. The stadium is now home to the University of New Orleans Privateers track teams.
Aside from the replacement of the original seating and the addition of a skybox, little has changed to WPA-built structure.
Source notes
Gorin, Abbye A., editor. “Conversations with Samuel Wilson, Jr.: Dean of Architectural Preservation in New Orleans.” New Orleans: Louisiana Landmarks Society; reprint edition, 2012.
New Orleans Public Library, WPA Photograph Collection.
Site originally submitted by John Murphey on January 1, 2016.
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Lord Zontar
Tad Gormley has lasted for eighty years now and aside from necessary upgrades to its electrical systems and plumbing over the years is about as new as when it first opened in 1937. The stadium would cost around $10 million in adjusted dollars today. By contrast, in Texas, a 10,000 seat high school football stadium built only a very few years ago and costing $60 million had to close for major repairs after only a year in operation when inch-wide cracks started appearing in the very overpriced concrete used for the construction.