By John Killen

When news broke that the Portland Timbers were making plans to expand Providence Park to 25,000 seats, most fans of the city's Major League Soccer team were probably thrilled.

The proposal, which goes before the City Council and city design commission this week, would raise the stadium's capacity by 4,000. If the plan makes it over various regulatory hurdles, the addition is sure to help raise the roar of the team's enthusiastic fans when the Timbers and the Portland Thorns play their home games.

But it might surprise many to learn that the stadium still would seat 10,000 fewer than it once did. As far back as the 1930s, the venue held up to 35,000.

The stadium evolved much like the city around it – in fits and starts, adjusting for dog racing, baseball and now soccer as interests changed over the years.

The genesis of what is now Providence Park goes back to the 1890s, when the site was an athletic field for the fledgling Multnomah Amateur Athletic Club, today known as the Multnomah Athletic Club.

The club was looking for a place to hold athletic events, and it leased a sunken field just south of the Portland Exposition Center, a massive brick-facade building near what is now the corner of West Burnside and 19th Avenue.

The area had once been home to vegetable gardens cultivated by Chinese immigrants who lived in the Goose Hollow area, along Tanner Creek. In those days, the creek wound its way down from Portland's West Hills to Goose Hollow, through the area where the stadium now sits, and proceeded to the Willamette River.

As the city grew, the creek was routed through brick-lined pipes, which were covered over. That created a space for the field, which squatted below street level in the former creek bed.

The club built the first "grandstand" along the west side of the field in 1893 and added a clubhouse along the east side in 1900, according to The Oregon Encyclopedia. Old photographs show the field being used for everything from school events to athletics.

Then, on July 14, 1910, a fire broke out in the Exposition Center. According to The Oregonian, it killed at least two men and several horses. The fire destroyed seven buildings including the center, the MAC's clubhouse and the grandstand.

A year later, the MAC broke ground on a new clubhouse with adjacent grandstands.

Before long, the organization began leasing the field for various events and its popularity grew. By 1923, interest in the field had grown to the point where the club decided to build a bigger structure: A two-tiered "horseshoe" stadium that would seat 100,000.

Eventually, that idea was scaled back to one tier and three-quarters of a horseshoe, but the new stadium, finished in 1926, still had a capacity of 35,000. For its coming-out party on Oct. 9, 1926, it played host to the Washington-Oregon football game, which the Huskies won 23-9.

Then, four years later, the stadium claimed what was then the record for the largest crowd to ever see a football game in the Pacific Northwest. On Oct. 18, 1930, the Ducks beat the Huskies 7-0 in front of a crowd of 35,266, according to The Oregonian.

Over the next 80-plus years, the stadium was home to the Multnomah Kennel Club (1933 to 1956), the Portland Beavers and Portland Mavericks baseball franchises (off and on from 1956 to 2010), college football, high school football, baseball and soccer. Rose Festival events were regularly held there as were ski-jumping exhibitions and the stadium also played host to Elvis (1957). Then, starting 1975, came the first incarnation of the Timbers.

Along the way, the name, ownership and look of the facility also evolved. Originally called Multnomah Field, it later became Multnomah Stadium, Civic Stadium and then, in 2001, PGE Park. That was followed by Jeld-Wen Field and finally Providence Park.

Ownership transferred from the private Multnomah Athletic Club to the city of Portland in 1966 for $2.1 million and the city has since OK'd several updates of the stadium. "Tartan Turf" took the place of grass in the late 1960s, and the roof over the grandstands was replaced in the early 1980s. Further updates and improvements were done in 2001 and 2009.

It was during one of those updates — 2001 — that the capacity of the stadium was greatly reduced to about 19,000 when baseball outfield seats were taken out while other amenities were upgraded.

Since then, changes have brought capacity back up to 21,000 but the need for more seating has become obvious as the Timbers and Thorns have grown in popularity.

But will the stadium ever break its own crowd record? That seems unlikely.

The mark was set on Aug. 28, 1977, when then-Civic Stadium played host to Soccer Bowl '77, the championship game of the old North American Soccer League.

That day, 35,548 fans showed up to watch soccer legend Pele lead the New York Cosmos to a 2-1 win over the Seattle Sounders for the league championship.

-- John Killen

Sources: Oregon Encyclopedia, The Oregonian, Oregon History Project, Oregon Historical Society, Portland Archives and Records Center.

Correction: The Beatles did not play in the stadium in 1965. They played in Memorial Coliseum.