Veterans Stadium bit the dust on this week in Philly history

In about a minute, Veterans Stadium was outta here.

“The Vet,” then a gutted bowl of concrete, crumbled inward and became a pile of shattered cement and mangled steel at 7 a.m. on March 21, 2004.

The wind carried a cloud of thick, brown dust east toward Citizens Bank Park, which the Phillies opened fewer than two weeks later, and officially christened as their ballpark of the future.

“It was as if the gods were spreading the ashes of the old park on the new one,” a teary Bill Giles, then-Phillies chairman, told The Inquirer.

The scheduled implosion of the former 62,000 seat sports venue, at Broad Street and Pattison Avenue in South Philadelphia, was designed to last 62 seconds. The time frame, which was unusually long by destruction standards, was intended to help cut down on potentially window-and-foundation-cracking vibrations rippling through the nearby neighborhoods.

And residents from those neighborhoods, and from others across the city numbering in the thousands, turned out to say goodbye.

The ceremony was hosted by the Phillies — the Eagles brass weren’t all that attached to the shared bowl, and didn’t participate in the send-off. The Birds opened Lincoln Financial Field in 2003 and never looked back. Which was a shame, considering the teams shared the ovalish outdoor stadium for 33 years. The Vet, which opened in 1971, was part of a trend of multipurpose, municipally owned sports venues.

When it opened, talking heads around the country celebrated the resource-saving approach and seemingly simple, brutalist design.

It was the setting for the Phillies’ first World Series win, and the Eagles’ first NFC championship win — which as a bonus also came at the Dallas Cowboys’ expense.

“It was the crown jewel of Philadelphia,” Pradeep Patel, a structural engineer who helped build the stadium, told The Inquirer.

But, by the turn of the century, the jewel had lost its value.

It became widely panned as an artificial turf-lined eyesore that lacked character and sport-specific sight lines, leading to separate, sport-specific venues for football and baseball. This pendulum-swinging trend led to dozens of new, sport-specific parks and stadiums across the country, and many replaced the dying preference of generic, dual-purpose arenas.

The spot where the stadium stood is now a more-than-5,000-spot parking lot for Citizens Bank Park. Although a collection of flagstaffs and plaques mark where the 60,000-seat concrete bowl stood, the lot carries on the 700 level’s in-your-face attitude with plenty of vigorous tailgating.