Cramton Bowl, Football stadium in Montgomery, United States
Cramton Bowl is a 21,000-seat stadium in Montgomery, Alabama, built for American football and baseball. A green field with white yard lines and numbers sits inside a low hedge and metal railing. Concrete grandstands rise on the right, topped by a flat-roofed press box with rows of glass windows, with four light poles above; a low gray building with arched windows and a circular window stands on the left.
The stadium opened in 1922 as a baseball venue and quickly became a center for sports events in the region. It later transformed into a major football venue and remains a landmark in Montgomery's sports heritage.
The stadium's name honours Fred J. Cramton, the businessman who donated the landfill site and, with the Junior Chamber of Commerce, raised $33,000 to build it. Each December from 1938 to 2001 it hosted the Blue–Gray Football Classic, a college all-star game usually played on Christmas Day. Today the Salute to Veterans Bowl, renamed from the Camellia Bowl in 2024, is its annual bowl game.
The stadium occupies the block bounded by Madison Avenue to the north, Hall Street to the east and Pelham Street to the south, with buildings and Hilliard Street to the west. A 2011 renovation, funded by a $10 million city budget, reduced seating to 21,000 and replaced the dilapidated stands. The field sits below the concrete grandstands and the press box, with a low hedge and metal railing along the sideline.
The eighth and deciding game of the 1943 Negro World Series was played here, with the Homestead Grays beating the Birmingham Black Barons 8–4. In 1927 the stadium hosted the first football game played under lights in the South; dishpans served as reflectors and lamps were shipped in from California, drawing 7,200 spectators.
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