Memorial Stadium (Seattle)

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Memorial Stadium, officially Seattle High School Memorial Stadium, was an outdoor sports venue at Seattle Center in Seattle, Washington. Opened in 1947 and closed in 2025, it seated about 12,000 people (temporary bleachers once increased capacity to around 17,900). The stadium was owned by the Seattle School District and used mainly for high school football, but it also hosted soccer, ultimate frisbee, concerts, and other events.

Built after World War II as a memorial to Seattle Public Schools students who died in the war, a memorial wall with the names of more than 700 fallen students was dedicated in 1951. The stadium hosted significant local events, including parts of the Century 21 Exposition in 1962, and it was the site of the first widespread local television broadcast of a high school football game in 1951. In 1967 it became the first high school stadium in the country to install artificial turf.

Memorial Stadium was also home to several teams. The Seattle Sounders played there in 1974–75, with temporary bleachers boosting capacity during their stay before moving to the Kingdome. A later Sounders iteration played at Memorial Stadium in the 1990s and early 2000s. The venue also hosted Seattle Reign FC of the NWSL from 2014 to 2018 and the Seattle Cascades of the Ultimate Frisbee Association from 2015 onward. Other tenants included the Seattle Majestics (women’s football) from 2007 to 2009 and Ballard FC (USL League Two) in 2024. The football field was renamed Leon H. Brigham Field in 1992 in honor of a longtime coach.

The stadium underwent renovations in 1999 and had its scoreboard updated in 2018. In the 2010s and 2020s, plans were created to replace Memorial Stadium with a new facility at Seattle Center to serve both schools and the community. A preferred plan was chosen in 2023, and in June 2025 a public farewell was held before the site was demolished to make way for a new stadium and related spaces. The new design proposed about 6,500 seats with room for up to 8,000 spectators.