Capacity: 67,332
First Game: Nov. 22, 1924. Stadium was dedicated in a game with Indiana. Purdue defeated the Hoosiers 26-7.
Construction: Steel and concrete
Number of Rows: There are 73 rows of permanent seats on the east, west, and north banks.
Color Scheme: A fiberglass type of seat covering was added to all permanent seats in 1964 to give the stadium an alternating color scheme of gold and black, with the word PURDUE appearing on the north end zone seats.
Press Box: Constructed in 1955 and became a four-story facility in 1969 with the addition of decks three and four. Radio stations occupy the booths on the second deck. All print media and statistical crews are located in the 136-seat third deck.
Record: The Boilermakers have played 359 games in Ross-Ade Stadium, posting a 215-131-13 record.
The stadium is named for its two principal benefactors, David E. Ross, late president of the Board of Trustees, and the late George Ade, writer, humorist and Purdue alumnus. It was Ross who conceived the idea for the stadium and selected the present site. He and Ade purchased and presented to the University the 65-acre tract on which the stadium is built.
The stadium's original 1924 seating capacity was 13,500. Six expansions plus end zone bleacher seating eventually raised it to 69,200. Without the temporary seats, capacity is 67,332.
Renovations
In 1949 Purdue expanded the stadium to over 51,000 by soliciting $300-memberships in the Ross-Ade Foundation in return for lifetime season tickets. Several hundred bleacher seats were removed or revamped in both the 1955 and 1964 construction phases.
Improvement of Ross-Ade's press facility occurred in 1969 and again in 1989. In 1984 an elevator was added to the south end of the press box.
In addition to the improvements in the stands and press box, nearly $500,000 worth of improvements were added in 1985 with the construction of a new visiting locker room facility and vast renovations to the home team locker room.
In 1990 a $1 million electronic scoreboard and message center on the south end and an auxiliary board on the north end were added.
In the summer of 1994 field-level changes were made that included the removal of the fence around the playing field, removal of the paved walkways around the outer edges of the field and installation of new sod to replace the walk ways.
A Sony JumboTron was retrofitted into the main scoreboard in 1997, replacing the message center. The $3 million facility improvement provides live television shots and replays in the stadium from at least four cameras.
The Turf and the PAT System
Ross-Ade Stadium carries the distinction of being the only stadium in the Big Ten Conference always to have featured "real grass." Prescription Athletic Turf (P.A.T.) was developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s by two Purdue staffers, Dr. W.H. Daniel and Melvin Robey, installing it in the stadium in the spring of 1975 at a cost of approximately $125,000. It since has been resodded five times, most recently in 2005 with a cold-tolerant strain of Bermudagrass.
A network of pipes connected to pumps capable of sucking water from the turf or watering it make the system work. The pipes are located 16 inches from the surface and covered with a mixture of sand and filler. This allows the turf to be adequately watered and playable at all times.