Atlanta Stadium Atlanta - Fulton County Stadium , often referred to as Fulton County Stadium and originally named Atlanta Stadium , was a multi - purpose stadium in Atlanta , Georgia . The stadium was built to attract a Major League Baseball team and in 1966 succeeded when the Milwaukee Braves relocated from Wisconsin . The Braves and Atlanta Falcons of the National Football League shared the venue from 1966 until 1991 , when the Falcons moved into the newly completed Georgia Dome . The Braves continued to play at Fulton County Stadium until the end of the 1996 season , when they moved into Turner Field , a converted Centennial Olympic Stadium originally built for the 1996 Summer Olympics . History . During his 1961 campaign for mayor of Atlanta , Ivan Allen , Jr . promised to build a sports facility to attract a Major League Baseball team . After winning office , Allen chose a 47 - acre plot in the Washington - Rawson neighborhood for the building site , citing its proximity to the Georgia State Capitol , downtown businesses and major highways . Allen , along with " Atlanta Journal " sports editor Furman Bisher , attempted to persuade Charlie Finley , owner of the Kansas City Athletics , to move his team to Atlanta . Finley was receptive and began discussing stadium design plans with Allen . The deal , however , ended in July 1963 when the American League did not approve the move . In 1964 , Mayor Allen announced that an unidentified team had given him a verbal commitment to move to Atlanta , provided a stadium was in place by . Soon afterward , the prospective team was revealed to be the Milwaukee Braves , who announced in October that they intended to move to Atlanta for the 1965 season . However , court battles kept the Braves in Milwaukee for one last season . The new stadium was built on the site of the cleared Washington - Rawson neighborhood , which 50 years previously was a wealthy neighborhood home to Georgia ' s governor , among others , but which by the 1960s had fallen on hard times . 47 dignitaries took part in a groundbreaking ceremony on April 15 , 1964 . Almost a year later , construction was completed on April 9 , 1965 for $ 18 million , and on the same night the Milwaukee Braves and Detroit Tigers played an exhibition game in the stadium . During that year the International League ' s Atlanta Crackers , whose previous home had been Ponce de Leon Park , played their final season in Atlanta Stadium . In , both the NL ' s transplanted Braves and the NFL ' s Atlanta Falcons , an expansion team , began to use the facilities . In 1967 , the Atlanta Chiefs of the National Professional Soccer League ( re - formed as the North American Soccer League in 1968 ) began the first of five seasons played at the stadium . After Ted Turner purchased the Braves in 1976 , the stadium ' s name was changed to the hyphenated Atlanta - Fulton County Stadium . The Falcons moved to the Georgia Dome in 1992 , while the Braves had to wait until the Olympic Stadium from the 1996 Summer Olympics was transformed into Turner Field to move out at the beginning of the season . The stadium sat 60 , 606 for football and 52 , 007 for baseball . The baseball competition for the 1996 Summer Olympics was held at Atlanta - Fulton County Stadium . Demolition . Following the Olympics , Fulton County commissioner , Marvin S . Arrington , Sr . , had a plan to save the stadium and use it as a professional soccer arena and share the parking facilities between it and Turner Field but he was unable to push it through . The stadium was imploded on August 2 , 1997 . A parking lot for Turner Field now stands on the site , with an outline of the old stadium built in . The monument that marked the landing point of Hank Aaron ' s historic 715th home run stands in the same place it did when the stadium was on the site . The stadium was demolished in the same week as another Atlanta sports venue , the Omni Coliseum . That arena was the former home of the NBA ' s Atlanta Hawks and the NHL ' s Atlanta Flames , and was replaced by Philips Arena on the same site . Layout . The stadium was relatively nondescript , one of the many saucer - shaped multi - purpose stadia built during the 1960s and 1970s , similar to RFK Stadium , Shea Stadium , the Astrodome , Three Rivers Stadium , Busch Memorial Stadium , Qualcomm Stadium , Riverfront Stadium , and Veterans Stadium . As was the case for every stadium that used this design concept , the fundamentally different sizes and shapes of baseball and football fields made it inadequate for both sports . In the baseball configuration , 70 percent of the seats were in foul territory . In the football configuration , seats on the 50 - yard - line — normally prime seats for football — were more than 50 yards away from the sidelines . One unusual feature of this stadium is the fact that , unlike most multi - purpose stadiums - where the football field was laid either parallel to one of the foul lines or running from home plate to center field - the football field here was laid along a line running between first and third base . Oakland Coliseum has a similar configuration . Thus , a seat behind home plate for baseball would also be on the 50 - yard line for football . The stadium was refurbished for the 1996 season prior to hosting the Olympic baseball competition . It was also known for the playing field ' s poor quality . Until , it didn ' t have full - time groundskeepers . Instead , it was tended by a municipal street - maintenance crew . Due to the relatively high elevation of the Atlanta area ( situated at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains ) , the stadium boasted the highest elevation in baseball when it opened , at 1 , 050 feet above sea level . It retained this distinction until the Colorado Rockies were born in . The high elevation made it favorable to home run hitters , resulting in the nickname " The Launching Pad . " Fulton County Stadium was designed by a joint - venture team of FABRAP ( Finch Alexander Barnes Rothschild & Paschal ) and Heery , Inc .