[1] The facility had an official capacity of 24,540, making it the largest football stadium in the state of Virginia at the time of its opening.

[2][3] The stadium featured two identical concrete and steel grandstands with wooden bleachers, built parallel to the east and west sidelines of the field.

The inaugural event, a War Bond rally featuring actress Greer Garson, drew a crowd of "over 6,000," less than one-quarter capacity.

William Fleming and Patrick Henry were the stadium's only regular tenants from the early 1970s onward, after Jefferson closed and Lucy Addison became a middle school.

The game was called "The Military Classic of the South" because Virginia Tech had mandatory ROTC for its male student body until 1964.

(Today, Virginia Tech and Texas A&M are the only major public universities still designated as senior military colleges, because of their corps of cadets and large ROTC programs).

From 1953 to 1970, Victory Stadium hosted an annual game sponsored by the local Kazim Temple for the benefit of Shriners' hospitals.

The 1958 Harvest Bowl, matching Tech against William & Mary, drew 24,836 fans, the stadium's largest recorded football crowd.

In sharp contrast to the Hollywood version of the game (contested at night in "Roanoke Stadium," with an underdog T. C. Williams coming from behind to win on the last play), the actual game at Victory Stadium took place on a sunny afternoon and T. C. Williams was the heavy favorite, beating Andrew Lewis in a rout, 27-0.

The last serious flood occurred in the fall of 2004 and forced many high school football games that season to be moved to other locations.

In response to the city digging in its heels and insisting the segregation laws be followed, the NAACP asked the black players to boycott the game, and team members said they would not cross the picket line.

Civil Rights activists bought tickets in the white section, and simply showed up and claimed their seats.

They argued it was far too large for high school football games (which rarely drew more than a few thousand spectators after the early 1970s) and ill-suited for concerts.

They also argued that a venue of Victory Stadium's capacity was a relatively rare asset for a city the size of Roanoke, which does not have a major university, and could regularly have drawn large events, such as the Dave Matthews Band, with aggressive and creative marketing.

Other alternative events suggested were hosting a biannual football game between VMI and The Citadel and hosting gravity games Some also alleged that the city wanted to transfer the property to Carilion, a Roanoke-based company which operates nearby Roanoke Memorial Hospital and is also establishing a biomedical institute and small medical school in the area.

[citation needed] The matter was controversial in part because debate about the stadium often widened in broader disagreement about economic growth or the lack thereof, the preservation of historic structures, and the resistance to or acceptance of change in general.

A generational divide between older Roanokers who remembered when the stadium was filled on a regular basis and younger ones whose experience was only with occasional large crowds for special events and small crowds for high school football games provided another dimension to the disagreement.

Ground was broken before supporters of Victory Stadium's renovation persuaded Roanoke's city council to halt the project.

This proposal met generally positive receptions, although some residents who lived near Patrick Henry High School opposed the construction of a stadium there because of concerns about traffic and other disruptions.

The election rapidly set in motion the process of demolishing the stadium even before the "For the City" slate, which included two non-incumbents, was sworn in on July 1.

The basis for the suit had been that the Norfolk and Western Railroad stipulated in its deed transferring the land to the city that a stadium be built and maintained on the site.