Busch Memorial Stadium

A circular multipurpose stadium of reinforced concrete, its grandstand wrapped in a continuous bowl around a playing field set below street level. The defining feature was the roofline — a ring of 96 identical arches, the "Crown of Arches," that rimmed the upper deck and echoed the curve of the Gateway Arch to the east. Ramped concrete facades and open arched bays faced the surrounding streets, and the symmetrical tiers seated roughly fifty thousand for baseball.

Busch Memorial Stadium was the centerpiece of a downtown civic-center redevelopment proposed in 1958, which cleared a 31-block district — the same clearance that took the Grand Opera House and the York Hotel a few blocks north. The engineering firm Sverdrup & Parcel designed the stadium, and Edward Durell Stone designed its arched roof; the firm Grün & Bilfinger built it. It opened on May 12, 1966, replacing Sportsman's Park, and became home to baseball's St. Louis Cardinals from 1966 to 2005 and the football Cardinals from 1966 to 1987; the Rams played briefly there in 1995, and the St. Louis Stars soccer club through the mid-1970s. Seating grew from about 49,000 at opening to more than 57,000 before a 1990s conversion returned it to baseball-only use. After the Cardinals' 2005 season the stadium was taken down by wrecking ball between November 7 and December 8, 2005 — implosion was avoided to protect the adjacent MetroLink station — and a new Busch Stadium opened immediately to the south the following spring.