About the Friends of Hinchliffe Stadium

The Friends of Hinchliffe Stadium is a 501c3 non-profit organization founded in 2002. It is made up of volunteers of all ages and ethnicities, from Paterson and beyond, who love Hinchliffe Stadium, respect and reverence its history and meaning to the local and larger communities, and are dedicated to seeing it preserved and revitalized as a great sports venue and centerpiece of a great and thriving city.

Where others see a weed-overgrown concrete oval, its stands scrawled with graffiti, we see a key to unlocking one of the most vivid, creative and inspiring American stories of several generations.

We see great athletic feats on the field and roaring crowds in sunlit stands--those in the past and those to come. We see people of every faith and nationality struggling through hard times. We see them then--working-class kids and the parents who supported them--trying to make it through poverty, recession, war and every kind of trouble that trickles down from the mighty to the little guy.

But we see the same struggles now. And we see what a place can do for the spirit.

Our goal is to partner with those who share any part of this vision to protect this remarkable space as living history and have it recognized as the National Treasure it is. We have joined with the Paterson Public Schools, who own the stadium, the City of Paterson, who have signed a Shared Services Agreement with the Schools, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, who have declared Hinchliffe Stadium a “National Treasure” (and featured its story in their magazine and on their website); and the National Park Service, who have declared it a National Landmark and who, with the Congress of the United States, are considering it for inclusion in Paterson’s National Historical Park.

All of us together are partners in the task of visioning and restoring the stadium as a working, linchpin piece of a vital North Jersey urban community. We want to keep this great place alive-by keeping its history alive and by helping re-vision its future in the city and region.

Hinchliffe Stadium:

A Story that has to keep being told, a Future that has to keep on making a difference.

“The story this Stadium tells is about sticking together, working together, playing together, taking chances together. It's a story full of lessons about sportsmanship and athleticism and sound minds in sound bodies. About defying prejudice and judging people (as Martin Luther King said) "not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character....

“But most of all it's a story about getting beyond defeat.

“Hinchliffe Stadium is a time-capsule of America in the twentieth century, but it doesn't have to end there. It can be a triumphant story we make as well as one we inherit. It is memory and it is vision. The bright walls and green fields that once glowed here with the hope the young gave to the future can do it again in this new century.”

Flavia Alaya, from the original Friends website, 2006-2013

The Friends of HInchliffe Stadium are thrilled at the increasing drumbeat of support in Washington for the inclusion of the stadium in the new Paterson National Historical Park. Readers of this page can see the letter we sent the Park Service during their comment period on the original Park designation back in 2007, which was quoted in Congressman Pascrell’s testimony!