Busch Stadium, home of two NFL teams during its existence, was the primary home of the St. Louis Cardinals (MLB) throughout its existence. In the 1950s, discussions began in St. Louis about building a modern circular stadium in the downtown area. At the time, the Cardinals had played baseball for more than five decades at Sportsman’s Park. In 1960, the NFL’s Chicago Cardinals relocated to St. Louis, giving the city a professional football team. The franchise, founded in 1898 and recognized as the oldest in professional football, had previously played at Comiskey Park from 1929 to 1959, home of the Chicago White Sox (MLB).
By the late 1950s, declining performance and attendance pushed the team toward relocation. The Bidwill family moved the franchise to St. Louis, where it shared Sportsman’s Park with the baseball Cardinals. Soon after, a funding plan emerged: Anheuser-Busch pledged $5 million, while the city contributed $20 million toward a new stadium. On May 24, 1964, construction began on 30 acres in downtown St. Louis. The result was a concrete, circular, multipurpose stadium built in just under two years.
The NFL’s St. Louis Cardinals played their first game at Busch Stadium on September 11, 1966, against the Philadelphia Eagles. The stadium featured three tiers and seated approximately 50,000 fans in a continuous circular bowl surrounding the field. A key design feature allowed two movable seating sections, each holding roughly 8,000 seats, to slide parallel to each other, reconfiguring the layout from baseball to football.
In 1973, natural grass was replaced with AstroTurf to simplify conversions between configurations. By the mid-1980s, however, the NFL Cardinals were struggling both competitively and financially, and efforts to secure a new football-only stadium were unsuccessful. After the 1987 season, the franchise relocated to Arizona, where it became the Arizona Cardinals. Their final game at Busch Stadium was played on December 13, 1987 against the New York Giants.
For several years afterward, the stadium’s primary tenant remained the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team. That changed in 1995 when the Los Angeles Rams relocated to St. Louis, briefly sharing the venue before moving into the new Edward Jones Dome. The final NFL game at Busch Stadium was played on October 22, 1995, against the San Francisco 49ers.
After football departed, the stadium was converted back exclusively for baseball use, including the return of natural grass in place of AstroTurf and other renovations. The St. Louis Cardinals continued playing there until October 2005 before moving to a new downtown ballpark in April 2006. Busch Stadium was demolished in November 2005, closing the chapter on one of the most iconic multipurpose stadiums in American sports history.