USC and Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum:
A Storied Partnership
USC’s ties to Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum date back to the late 1890s. That was when William M. Bowen, an attorney and adjunct professor of law at USC who later became known as the “Father of Exposition Park,” enlisted the support of George F. Bovard, then president of the USC Board of Trustees, in a crusade to clean up a seedy area of town known at the time as Agricultural Park.
The park originally opened in the 1870s as a showground for agricultural and horticultural fairs, but it soon fell into disrepair. The property was foreclosed in 1879. Although California’s newly formed Sixth District Agricultural Association redeemed the mortgage in 1880 — the year of USC’s founding — it was not long before political maneuvering put the parcel in the hands of private concessionaires, who turned it into an amusement center patronized by the city’s more unsavory characters.
Then one day in 1898 or 1899, Bowen decided to check up on truants from his Sunday school class. Much to his alarm, he discovered his students loitering around the saloons, gambling houses and other seamy establishments that prospered behind Agricultural Park’s high board fences. Outraged, he complained to Bovard that this “plague spot” was undoing the work they were trying to achieve in their classes, and he made up his mind to do something about it.
Joining together with Bovard and other civic leaders, Bowen garnered commitments from city, state and county officials to develop the land as a public educational, cultural and recreational center. Christened with water from the Owens River, Agricultural Park became Exposition Park in 1910. The State Exposition Building and the L.A. County Museum of History, Science and Art were dedicated on the site in 1913.
Bowen next resolved to erect a regional athletic stadium in the park. Once again Bovard, now USC president, extended his support. Even though the university had been making plans to construct its own facility, Bovard promised that the Trojan football team would play its home games in Exposition Park, thus guaranteeing income for the enterprise.
Architect John Parkinson, who created USC’s first campus master plan and designed Bovard Administration Building as well as most of the structures erected on the University Park campus during the 1920s, was selected to build the stadium. Construction began on December 21, 1921, and Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum — named in honor of those who died in World War I — was completed on May 1, 1923.
Next: The Early Years, 1923–32
|
