Three Rivers Stadium — City of Champions

The North Shore riverfront where you are standing was once home to Three Rivers Stadium, the concrete circle that gave Pittsburgh its City of Champions identity. It opened on July sixteenth, nineteen seventy, sitting where the Allegheny and Monongahela join the Ohio.

In its thirty years, the stadium witnessed an improbable run of glory. The Pirates won two World Series titles in these years, and played home games of both here. The Steelers won four Super Bowl championships in six seasons while calling this stadium home, a dynasty known as the Steel Curtain. And it was the stage for two moments that live in sports mythology: on September thirtieth, nineteen seventy-two, Roberto Clemente collected the three thousandth and final hit of his career here, just months before his death in a plane crash. And on December twenty-third of that same year, Franco Harris caught a deflected pass off the turf and ran it in for a touchdown, an impossible play the world has called the Immaculate Reception ever since. The stadium came down on February eleventh, two thousand one.