Jack Dempsey: Enjoy the fisticuffs and remember to visit the confection stands.

Temporary stadiums are still built and torn down for some Olympic events, but the practice was pretty common for larger sports gatherings in the early-20th century when few permanent structures of tremendous size existed. No mere hole-in-the-wall could have contained a crowd for a boxing match featuring Jack Dempsey during the 1920s, when as Urban Oyster points out, he was an even bigger star than Babe Ruth.

Boxing promoter Tex Rickard outdid himself in 1921 for the Dempsey-Georges Carpentier fight, spending $250,000 to build an octagonal, wooden 91,000-seat stadium (see photo) called Boyle’s Thirty Acres in Jersey City, the largest such structure in the world to that point. A June 26, 1921 article in the New York Times fills in the details. It covered 300,00 square feet and took two months to complete. Reserved seats cost from $5.50 to $50.

Dempsey dispatched of the Frenchman quickly, knocking him out in the fourth round. According to New Jersey City University, the stands were full, though only 81,000 were paying customers (2,000 were women). The gate was close to $1.8 million. The stadium played host to several other prizefights before being torn down in 1927. A housing project was built on the land in 1950 and remains there today.