The Massillon Museum and the Massillon Tiger Booster Club collaborate each year to highlight a specific person or event in an exhibit in our lobby that opens to the public during the Tiger Pep Rally (Wednesday, August 27, 2014), and the Tiger Stripe Ice Cream night. This is the 11^th year we have collaborated in serving ice cream. This year, we will debut an exhibit celebrating the 75^th Anniversary of the opening of Tiger Stadium in 1939. The exhibit runs through September.

Before the construction of Tiger Stadium in 1939, the Washington High School football team played at Massillon Field on Shriver Avenue, SE. The roof from that field was salvaged to cover approximately 2,500 seats at the new stadium, and the stands were moved to the east side of the new arena to accommodate 4,400 spectators. Permanent seating capacity was 12,000, but 2,000 temporary seats were erected for the first season. Many seats were added during ensuing seasons.

Although the work was not complete, PWA and WPA workers made certain the facility could accommodate a crowd of 15,000 for the first game on Friday, September 15, 1939. Officially rededicated as Paul Brown Tiger Stadium in 1976, the field was upgraded to artificial turf in 1989. The Luther Emery Press Box over the east stands was added two years later.

Tiger Stadium Facts:

• Paul Brown Tiger Stadium is the sixth field used by the Tigers.
• In the first game at the new stadium, Tommy James scored the first touchdown with a first quarter run, contributing to the Tigers’ win over Cleveland Cathedral Latin (40–13), the launch of a state championship season.
• Herman J. Albrecht, the architect, also designed Lorin Andrews School, the building that is now the Massillon Museum, and private homes on historic Fourth Street and Wellman Avenue.
• The state championship American Legion Post 221 Drum and Bugle Corps first marched down the field to raise the flag.
• The Independent, on the day of the first game in the new stadium, promised “a maximum of music, a minimum of speaking, and a fine football game.”
• Original building materials included a mile of drain tile, 25 train cars full of ashes for the track, 2,500 feet of fence, 750 cubic yards of concrete, 277 tons of structural steel, a ton of fertilizer, and 600 pounds of grass seed.
• Massillon taxpayers paid 12.5¢ per each $1,000 of property valuation to pay for 33,000 hours of labor by PWA workers and six months of work by 260 WPA employees.
• The ticket office offered 3,000 general admission seats at 50¢ each for the first game.

Aerial photo of Tiger Stadium, c. 1941
Collection of the Massillon Museum