Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium - Design

Design

The stadium's design was nearly circular, attempting to facilitate both American football and baseball. It was the first to use the so-called "cookie-cutter" concept, an approach also used by Philadelphia, New York, Houston, Atlanta, St. Louis, San Diego, Cincinnati, Oakland and Pittsburgh. Except for the stadiums in Houston, San Diego, and Oakland (the former is still standing but is no longer actively used, while the latter two are still active), RFK Stadium ultimately outlasted all of the aforementioned stadiums.

However, as would become the case with every other stadium where this was tried, the design was not ideal for either sport due to the different shapes and sizes of the playing fields. As the playing field dimensions for football and baseball vary greatly, seating had to accommodate the larger playing surface. In the case of RFK Stadium, this resulted in the first ten rows of the football configuration being nearly at field level, making it difficult to see over the players.

As a baseball park, RFK was a particular target of scorn from baseball purists, largely because it had no lower-deck seats in the outfield. The only outfield seats are in the upper deck, above a high wall. It was said that RFK was "the first ballpark built that had only an upper deck." According to Sporting News publications in the 1960s, over 27,000 of RFK's 45,000 baseball seats were in the upper tier or mezzanine levels. The lower-to-upper proportion improved for the Redskins, with end-zone seats filling in some of the gaps.

A complex conversion was necessary, at a cost of $40,000 per switch, to convert the stadium from an American football/association football configuration to baseball and back again; in its final form, this included rolling the 3rd-base lower-level seats into the outfield along a buried rail, dropping the hydraulic pitcher's mound 3 feet (0.91 m) into the ground, and laying sod over the infield dirt. Later facilities were designed so the seating configuration could be changed much more quickly and at a lower cost. The conversion was only required several times per year during the Senators' joint tenancy with the Redskins, but became much more frequent while the Nationals and D.C. United shared the stadium during the mostly concurrent MLB and MLS seasons; in 2005, the conversion was made more than 20 times. Originally the seats located behind the stadium's third-base dugout would be removed for baseball games and put back in place when the stadium was converted to the football (and later soccer) configuration. When these sections were in place, RFK seated approximately 56,000 fans. Following the Washington Nationals' move to RFK in 2005, this particular segment of the stands was permanently removed to facilitate the switch between the baseball and soccer configurations. These seats were not restored following the Nationals' move to Nationals Park, leaving the stadium's seating capacity at approximately 46,000. D.C. United do not normally make the tickets for the majority of the upper-level seating available for purchase, and the stadium's reduced capacity thus is not normally problematic for the club.

During the years when the stadium was used only for Redskins games, the rotating seats remained in the American football configuration. If a baseball game was scheduled, the left-field wall was only 250 feet (76 m) from home plate, and for some exhibition baseball games, a large screen was erected.

Some of RFK's quirks endear the venue to fans and players. The large rolling bleacher section is less stable than other seating, allowing fans to jump in rhythm to cause the whole area to bounce. Also, because of the stadium's design and the proximity of the fans to the field when configured for American football, the stadium was extremely loud when the usual sell-out Redskins crowds became vocal. Legend has it that former Redskins coach George Allen would order a large rolling door opened in the side of the stadium when visiting teams were attempting field goals at critical moments in games so that a swirling wind from off the Potomac and Anacostia rivers would interfere with the flight of the kicked ball.

Since the stadium is on a direct sight line with the Washington Monument and the United States Capitol, light towers were not allowed; instead, arc lights were placed on its curved, dipping roof.