The Oldest Stadiums Still in Use in American Sports

Franklin Field at the University of Pennsylvania, which opened in 1895, is the oldest venue in America still hosting top-level sports. Among the professional leagues, Fenway Park (1912) and Wrigley Field (1914) are the oldest, followed by Lambeau Field (1957) in the NFL and Madison Square Garden (1968) in both the NBA and NHL.

College football owns the top of this list, and it isn't close: four college stadiums were open for business before the first pitch at Fenway. The complication is that almost none of these buildings are the building they were, which is why the ranking needs a stated rule before the table makes sense.

The Short Answer

The Oldest Venues Still in Regular Top-Level Use

How This List Counts

Two rules, stated plainly.

First, the venue has to be the current primary home of a team in MLB, the NFL, the NBA, the NHL, or a Division I college football program. That keeps out museum pieces and minor-league parks, and it is why the Rose Bowl, the Cotton Bowl and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum sit in a gray zone — all three are 1920s buildings, and the Coliseum and Rose Bowl remain the homes of USC and UCLA respectively, but they fall outside the ten oldest college venues that anchor the top of this table.

Second, the date is the year football or baseball was first played at that site under that name — not the year of the most recent rebuild. That is the honest choice for a list like this, but it needs an asterisk, because for several venues the original date is close to a technicality:

• Soldier Field opened in 1924, but in 2003 the entire interior was demolished and a new seating bowl was dropped inside the surviving 1920s limestone colonnades. The National Park Service subsequently stripped its National Historic Landmark status. Functionally, the Bears play in a 2003 stadium wearing a 1924 facade.
• Kyle Field traces to 1904, when a professor fenced off part of campus and built 500 seats of wooden bleachers. The concrete stadium came in 1927, and the 2013–15 redevelopment removed the last piece of that 1927 structure.
• Franklin Field has hosted Penn football continuously since 1895, but the double-deck concrete stadium standing there today dates to 1922. Harvard Stadium, 1903, is the oldest venue where the original structure itself is still in use.
• Fenway Park is genuinely 1912, but it was substantially rebuilt in 1934 — that is when the Green Monster appeared — and then reworked again over a decade of renovations starting in 2002.
• Stanford Stadium opened in 1921 and is often listed among the oldest. It shouldn't be. The 1921 horseshoe was demolished after the 2005 season and a completely different double-deck bowl opened in 2006 on a lowered field. (Its name causes a separate problem, covered in Sanford vs Stanford Stadium - Why Everyone Confuses These Two.)

The cleanest way to think about it: Harvard Stadium and Wrigley Field are old buildings. Franklin Field, Kyle Field and Soldier Field are old addresses.

Why Baseball Keeps Its Old Parks and Football Doesn't

Two of the three oldest venues in professional American sports are baseball parks, and that is not a coincidence.

A baseball team plays 81 home dates a year. Spread across a season, that volume means a park earns back its cost through sheer repetition, and it also means the building becomes part of the city's daily life rather than a place you visit nine times. Fenway and Wrigley both sit in dense neighborhoods where the surrounding blocks became an economic argument for keeping the park exactly where it is. Both franchises figured out how to add premium inventory — rooftop decks, right-field boxes, club areas — without moving, and both discovered the age itself was a marketable asset.

Football works in the opposite direction. Nine home dates a year is not enough repetition to build a neighborhood economy around, so the pressure is to maximize revenue per date instead: suites, clubs, wider concourses, better sightlines, all of which demand square footage that a 1920s footprint simply does not have. Retrofitting an old football stadium usually costs close to what a new one costs, and delivers less. That is why the NFL's oldest continuously used venue only dates to 1957, and why the average NFL stadium is far newer than the average MLB park — and increasingly comes with a roof, as Every NFL Stadium With a Dome or Retractable Roof shows. The current wave is documented in 8 New NFL Stadiums Opening This Decade (and What They Cost), and the resulting capacity picture in The 20 Largest NFL Stadiums by Capacity.

Arenas turn over faster still. Madison Square Garden survives at 58 because it sits on top of Penn Station in the most valuable arena market in the world and its owners chose to spend a billion dollars gutting it rather than leave. Almost every other NBA and NHL building from that era is gone — see Every NBA Arena Ranked From Oldest to Newest and Every NHL Arena Ranked From Oldest to Newest. The WNBA, whose teams share most of those buildings, inherits the same stock; capacities are listed in Every WNBA Arena and Its Capacity, Ranked.

College football is the exception that proves the rule. Schools own their land, have no relocation option, and can expand outward almost indefinitely — which is how a 1904 site ends up seating 102,733 people. Several of the venues in the table above are also among The 15 Biggest College Football Stadiums in America.

The Demolished Classics

The list above is short partly because so much of it got knocked down.

Tiger Stadium, Detroit (1912–1999). Opened as Navin Field on April 20, 1912 — the same day as Fenway Park. When it closed, the two were tied as the oldest parks in baseball. Demolition ran from 2008 to 2009.

Comiskey Park, Chicago (1910–1990). The oldest park in the majors when it closed, replaced by a new stadium across the street and demolished in 1991.

Yankee Stadium (1923–2008). "The House That Ruth Built," demolished in 2010 after the Yankees moved next door.

Boston Garden (1928–1995). Home to the Bruins and Celtics, with 14,890 basketball seats and no air conditioning. Demolished in 1998.

Chicago Stadium (1929–1994). The Bulls' and Blackhawks' home, replaced by the United Center.

RFK Stadium, Washington (1961–2017). Sat empty for years, then was demolished across 2025 and into 2026 to clear the site for the Commanders' new stadium.

The Astrodome (1965). Not demolished — just empty. The original "Eighth Wonder of the World" still stands beside NRG Stadium with no tenant.

Which Old Venues Get Replaced Next

Four of the twenty on this list have an expiration date in sight.

• Scotiabank Saddledome is the nearest. Scotia Place, an $800-million-plus arena with roughly 18,400 hockey seats, is scheduled to open for the Flames before the 2027–28 season.
• Kauffman Stadium loses the Royals to a new $1.9 billion ballpark at Crown Center in downtown Kansas City, announced in April 2026. Kauffman's lease runs through 2030.
• Angel Stadium is on borrowed time by lease rather than wrecking ball; the Angels extended through 2032 after an earlier sale of the site collapsed.
• Soldier Field has been the subject of Bears relocation and roof proposals for years without resolution, which is its own kind of answer.

Elsewhere, Tropicana Field — the Rays' home since 1998 and no relation to this list's antiques — is due to be replaced by a $2.3 billion Tampa ballpark targeted for 2029. Fenway Park and Wrigley Field, meanwhile, are the two venues here with essentially no replacement conversation at all. Both have been renovated into buildings their owners intend to keep indefinitely.

FAQ

What is the oldest stadium in America still in use? Franklin Field in Philadelphia, where Penn has played football since 1895. The oldest venue whose original structure is still standing and in use is Harvard Stadium, from 1903.

What is the oldest professional sports venue in America? Fenway Park, which opened April 20, 1912 and remains the home of the Boston Red Sox.

What is the oldest NFL stadium? It depends on how you count. Soldier Field opened in 1924, but the Bears did not move in until 1971 and the interior was completely rebuilt in 2003. Lambeau Field, opened in 1957, is the oldest stadium in continuous NFL use.

What is the oldest NBA or NHL arena? Madison Square Garden, opened in 1968, is the oldest in both leagues. It houses the Knicks and Rangers and was renovated for about $1 billion between 2011 and 2013.

Is Wrigley Field older than Fenway Park? No. Fenway opened in 1912, Wrigley in 1914. Wrigley was also built for a Federal League team and was called Weeghman Park before the Cubs arrived.

Do heavy renovations reset a stadium's age? There is no official rule, which is why lists disagree. This page dates venues from the first year of play on the site and flags every case where the current structure is substantially newer than that date.

Why are so many old college football stadiums still standing? Universities own their land, cannot relocate, and can expand a stadium outward in stages instead of replacing it. Several venues on this list have been enlarged four or five times without ever being abandoned.

When is this page updated? Whenever a listed venue closes, is replaced, or has its capacity revised. The next scheduled change is Calgary's move to Scotia Place before the 2027–28 NHL season.