Lair of the Lion

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Old Beaver Field

2 “Wish-Wack, Pink and Black, Go State Go”

3 New Beaver Field: The Wooden Era

4 New Beaver Field: The Steel Era

5 Football Games at New Beaver Field

6 Beaver Field Becomes Beaver Stadium

7 “The Big Lift”

8 The North-End Upper Deck

9 Beaver Stadium Becomes a Building

10 A New Era: Heritage Recognized

11 Continuity and Change on Game Day

12 Beaver Stadium’s Importance and Future

Afterword: The Power of Place

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Credits

“Sport teams often inspire a kind of devotion in their fans and their communities that, to the disinterested, can be difficult to comprehend. The fervor can approach the religious, and if the team itself represents the religion (or the god, if you prefer), then the stadium they play in is the church. In Lair of the Lion, authors Lee Stout and Harry H. West throw open wide the doors of one such church to look at its history, its engineering, and its construction: Beaver Stadium, home of the Penn State Nittany Lions, for decades one of the marquee teams in college football.”

—Ray Bert, Civil Engineering