Soldier Field was built as a war memorial, and its Doric colonnades face you. Soldier Field opened in 1924 and was dedicated in 1925 to the soldiers of the World Wars, its long Doric colonnades meant to evoke an ancient temple. Before football claimed it, this was the city's great civic arena: it hosted the 1926 Eucharistic Congress, the Dempsey-Tunney long count boxing match of 1927 before more than 100,000 people, and decades of pageants and rallies.
The Chicago Bears moved in only in 1971. A controversial 2003 renovation dropped a modern glass-and-steel seating bowl inside the old colonnades, so jarring that the stadium lost its National Historic Landmark status. Walk along the surviving colonnade and look at the simple stone columns; they were raised to remember the dead, and they still stand guard around a bowl of Sunday noise.