WEMBLEY STADIUM (1923-2000)

The first Wembley Stadium originally known as the Empire Stadium, was a football stadium in Wembley, London, England. It opened in 1923 and was demolished in 2002 to make room for the new Wembley Stadium The stadium's first turf was cut by King George V and it was first opened to the public on 28 April 1923. Much of Humphry Repton's original Wembley Park landscape was transformed in 1922–23 during preparations for the British Empire Exhibition of 1924–25. First known as the "British Empire Exhibition Stadium" or simply the "Empire Stadium", the construction was carried out by Sir Robert McAlpine. The stadium cost £750,000 (equivalent to approximately £49.81 million in 2023) and was constructed on the site of a folly called Watkin's Tower. The architects were Sir John Simpson and Maxwell Ayrton and the head engineer Sir Owen Williams. The original intention was to demolish the stadium at the end of the Exhibition, but it was saved at the suggestion of Sir James Stevenson, a Scot who was chairman of the organising committee for the Empire Exhibition. The ground had been used for football as early as the 1880s.