THE APEX TIMES
Kansas City’s old Municipal Stadium was home to multiple baseball eras and later the Chiefs. This month’s Chiefs.com Artifact of the Month highlights the cast-iron-and-wood seating that the team brought to Arrowhead, preserving a look fans may recognize from classic ballparks.
The Kansas City Chiefs’ Hall of Honor is using one of its most distinctive artifacts to tell an old-stadium story with a new audience: a set of Municipal Stadium seats that the organization kept as a reminder of the team’s earlier home.
According to the Chiefs, Municipal Stadium was a multi-sport venue in the early days of professional football, and the seating design reflected its baseball-first purpose. The seats were originally intended for baseball and rebuilt in the 1950s for Major League Baseball’s Kansas City A’s, with Kansas City’s later American League expansion team, the Royals, also playing there after the A’s moved to Oakland.
The Chiefs describe the seating as slat-backed and made of iron and wood, built in a style common to older baseball stadiums across the country. Over time, those materials aged, and the team notes that rust and loosened bolts became part of the lived-in experience for fans sitting in rows like these.
When the Chiefs moved from Municipal Stadium to Arrowhead Stadium, they took with them a few sections of the cast iron and wood seats to carry that visual history forward. The Chiefs say one section of the Municipal seating can be found on display in the Hall of Honor at Arrowhead today.
The team also points to a broader point of connection for fans: if you have visited Fenway Park in Boston, these seats will look familiar, a throwback to what ballpark visitors once considered normal for comfort.