Atwood Stadium: Flint's 1920s arena, saved by an engineering school

Franklin Roosevelt gave a speech from the field at Atwood Stadium in 1936. The 11,000-seat bowl had opened on June 8, 1929, in Carriage Town. That is the old Flint neighborhood where the city’s wagon makers gave way to its first automakers. The stadium carries the name of Edwin W. Atwood. He was the Flint mayor who donated part of the ground it stands on. For most of a century the place has soaked up everything a working town throws at a stadium: high school football under Friday lights, prizefights, semipro baseball, drum corps, and stump speeches.

Then Flint’s money ran out, and the stadium nearly went with it. Sitting half-empty and aging, it could easily have followed the city’s many demolished landmarks into a parking lot. Instead, in 2013, Kettering University took the deed. Kettering is the co-op engineering school a few blocks away that started life as the General Motors Institute. It poured roughly $2 million into the turf, press box, restrooms, and concourse.

The repair worked. On a summer night now the field belongs to the Flint City Bucks, a USL League Two soccer club. Across the calendar it carries Powers Catholic athletics and the Vehicle City Gridiron Classic high school football tournament. It also hosts the Flint Institute of Music’s Independence Day concert. The fireworks go up over the same stands Roosevelt once addressed. For a place that came within an inch of the wrecking ball, it keeps remarkably busy company: a Depression-era bowl that an engineering school decided was worth keeping.