A year later, November, 1936, a second Works Progress Administration grant of $143,841 was approved with Rutgers adding $107,530. In January, 1938, an additional grant of $237,000 was made by the WPA which brought the total of the three grants to $995,707 while Rutgers had appropriated $239,000, including the cost of the site.
All this played out against the background of the Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt's Second New Deal had created the Works Progress Administration, a massive relief program that derived from the administration's belief that "human dignity was diminished under direct relief programs but enriched by programs that provided work in exchange for relief."
Though controversial, the WPA program was far more comprehensive than earlier relief efforts. The program would spend more than $411 billion before it was canceled in 1943. According to historian Edward Ellis, the WPA, employing more than 8.5 million people on nearly a million and a half projects, "built 651,087 miles of highways, roads and streets; constructed, repaired or improved 124,031 bridges; erected 124,110 public buildings; created 8,192 public parks; built or improved 853 airports."
With Little monitoring the project so closely that the site virtually became his office, the stadium neared completion as the 1938 season approached. John J. Hall, for his sports column for the Elizabeth Daily Journal, had visited the construction site and wrote of the finishing stages: "Then the other day I went back to New Brunswick and met Harry Rockafeller at the Rutgers gymnasium. We crossed Landing Bridge and hurried along River Road to the project office, where Mr. Little was found still huddled over his beloved blueprints with Mr. Clifford V. Barrett, project engineer, who has played such an important part in the work since it was just a dream..."
"The men had laid aside their hand shovels and their pickets and were piling into big motor trucks...Here, sure enough was a great dream coming true and you forgot time until finally lights began to twinkle in the university buildings a mile away across the Raritan River, lending new enchantment to the scene...You could hardly hold back a cheer for a vast job that will have been completed before the next football season."
The Big Mud Hole
The "big mud hole," after three years of construction and an even longer period of research and planning, was a transformed marvel. The Class of 1939, dubbed "The Stadium Class," would honor Little by dedicating its yearbook to him. The dedication reads, in part, "We acclaim all that George Little has done - Sponsored large-scale intramurals to provide 'athletics for all' - conceived and developed a vast athletic plant...traveled, dreamed, and fought for Rutgers...thoughtful, creative, impulsive, dynamic, generous - bubbling over with ideas and enthusiasm - unflagging in labor and effort - a champion of progress." A plaque in Little's honor would later adorn the stadium entrance beneath the press box.
The 1938 season would open not only with a new stadium but also with a new coach. Upon the resignation of J. Wilder Tasker, who had been the head coach since 1931, Harvey Harman took over the reins. Arriving from the University of Pennsylvania, one of his first efforts, in concert with President Clothier and athletic director Little, was to have Princeton agree to shift the game from Palmer Stadium. The Tigers had not visited the Rutgers cam- pus since 1888 and a span of 17 games, but they agreed to make the short trip on November 5, the seventh game of the season for the Scarlet. The Rutgers-Princeton clash would come one day short of the 69 years since the historic first intercollegiate game between the teams. It would fall also on Harman's 38th birthday.
Rutgers opened the season with four games on Neilson Field defeating Marietta (20-0) and Vermont (15-14) before losing to NYU (25-6) and then edging Springfield, 6-0. The first game in the new stadium was against Hampden-Sydney before an estimated crowd of 10,000. Rutgers took an early 7-0 lead on a Burt Hasbrouck two-yard run and Len Cooke added the extra point for the first scores in the stadium. The game's most exciting play came after the Scarlet took a 26-0 halftime lead. Art Gottlieb hit Moon Mullen on a short pass at the Rutgers k3-yard line and the senior end raced 57 yards for the game's final score. A Hampden-Sydney threat was turned away on a Gottlieb interception in the Scarlet end zone at the end of the third period and the final score was Rutgers 32, Hampden-Sydney 0.
On October 29, Rutgers traveled to Bethlehem and came home with a 13-0 victory over Lehigh. Meanwhile, Princeton would enter the Dedication game coming off a loss to Harvard which put the Tiger record at 3-2 to go against the 5-1 Rutgers mark.
At halftime of the Dedication game, Judge George H. Lane, the sole Rutgers survivor of the first contest in 1869, would be honored. On a sad note, William Preston Lane, the only Princeton survivor of the first game, passed away that very morning.
"And so on behalf of the people of the state of New Jersey and trustees, alumni, and faculty of Rutgers University, I dedicate this, the Rutgers Stadium and these adjacent playing fields..." President Robert C. Clothier at dedication ceremonies on November 5, 1938
"These Fine Enthusiasms"
At halftime also, President Clothier delivered a telling address that defined what he felt to be the athletic ideal. He looked both backward and into the future as he expressed the idea of athletics-for-all.
"For today we welcome our friends from Princeton again to New Brunswick as we did in 1869, and today we dedicate these new playing fields and this stadium..."
"We are happy in the possession of this new stadium and these surrounding playing fields which will do so much to strengthen our program of 'athletics-for-all". We thank, with deep sincerity, every man who has planned and worked for it. We are proud of the simplicity and beauty of the stadium itself and its environment. As the years pass and trees and ivy grow, we trust that its present newness will yield to a mellow age which will in turn add to its charm.
"On these playing fields our students will compete in intramural sports. There is room for all...What the lecture hall and the laboratory are to the student in the academic and professional development, these playing fields will be in his development in health and physical vigor. This program of athletics for all will stress the enjoyment of the participant as well as his physical well-being; one goes with the other. Mens sana in carpe sano!
Rutgers had defeated Princeton for the first time in 69 years... Dan Parker of The New York Mirror: "The Raritan flowed upstream yesterday for the first time in 69 years."
"The importance of athletics must be apparent to everyone who has an understanding of the love of physical activity and of competition in skill which is the heritage of our young American manhood, it is our responsibility to capture these fine enthusiasms, guide them into wholesome channels, and utilize them in the student's own educational development..."
"We have said good-bye to Neilson Field with gratitude to the donor and with a touch of nostalgia, for great teams have represented the Scarlet there in years gone by and Rutgers athletic history was made there. But with a quick look back, we turn to face the future. We are happy in the possession of this new stadium...And always, we have faith, it will prove the theater of athletic competition which is amateur in spirit as well as in letter, in which emphasis will be placed on sportsmanship rather than on the statistics of victory and the welfare of the player esteemed above everything else."
Fittingly, he concluded his remarks with these words: "...Only one name will suffice to pay honor to al those whom honor is due. "And so, on behalf of the people of the state of New Jersey and the Trustees, alumni and faculty of Rutgers University, I dedicate this, the RUTGERS STADIUM and these adjacent playing fields..."
