Fairfield Stadium
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Fairfield Stadium was a stadium in Huntington, West Virginia. It was primarily used for football, and was the home field of the Marshall University football team between 1927 and 1990, prior to the opening of Joan C. Edwards Stadium.
[edit] History
The original stadium was a red brick structure that featured a grass field circled by a cinder track and was owned by the city and mostly maintained by community volunteers.
In 1970, a major renovation project was completed that expanded the seating capacity by 5,000 seats [1]. An artificial grass playing surface was installed, and the playing surface was lowered. Along with that, a new press box and locker room for the home team was constructed.
The stadium fell into disrepair in the 1970s and 80s. In 1984 the original 1927 west side was torn down, after being found unsafe, and was replaced by temporary aluminum bleachers.
For the 1991 season, because Edwards Stadium's locker rooms were not completed, visiting teams were forced to dress at Fairfield and then ride the team bus more than a mile to and from the game (Marshall used facilities in the Cam Henderson Center near the new stadium). MU soccer, which had played there from the program's founding continued to use the field until 1993 when it too moved to Edwards Stadium. Today that program has its own soccer specific stadium, Sam Hood Field.
The stadium was also used by the former Huntington High School and Huntington East High School (the merger of those schools, which is the current Huntington High, has its own on-campus stadium).
The stadium, which held 18,000, was built in 1927, and demolished in early 2004. For the movie We Are Marshall, Herndon Stadium in Atlanta was used as the stand-in for Fairfield Stadium.
The last scoreboard from Fairfield Stadium was salvaged and put in the parking lot of Gino's Pub and Pizzeria on Fifth Avenue a few blocks from the new stadium, on gamedays it is lit up and will show the current, and after the game final, score and other information from the game.
