HINCHLIFFE STADIUM (dedicated 1932; structurally completed 1934) is a grand concrete sports arena modeled on Rome’s Circus Maximus and planted majestically above the Great Falls in Paterson, New Jersey.
This remarkable place now has a permanent niche in the nation's sports and social history as one of a handful of surviving stadiums that were home to professional black baseball--the Negro Leagues--during the so-called "Jim Crow" era.
At a time when baseball was an indisputable game of greats, HINCHLIFFE STADIUM featured some of the greatest ballplayers in America, many who had no access to the major leagues because of the color of their skin.
Built with a combination of private fundraising and public funds at the start of the Great Depression, HINCHLIFFE STADIUM was designed as a haven for working-class kids struggling through hard times in an industrial city.
City officials as well as stadium builders, designers and managers said they were bent on making their new, expensive stadium a "paying investment." They were less vocal about stepping over what was called the “color line” to succeed, but step over it they did. In Hinchliffe’s very first summer--even before it was officially dedicated--they recruited barnstorming and Negro League baseball and offered unsegregated seating and racially integrated play. As word spread, Hinchliffe became known not only as one of the most beautiful but also one of the most welcoming stadiums in the state. Within its first full year of operation It attracted “The Colored Championship of the Nation”--a Negro Leagues’ World Series.
Ironically, this first season also launched the twentieth-century New York-Metro area tradition of basing Big Apple sports teams in “Joisey.” In fact, two New York Negro League teams, the New York Black Yankees & the New York Cubans, made Hinchliffe “home.”
For decades onward, the stadium’s 10,000-seat capacity proved an instant draw for football, boxing, auto-racing, major track and field meets, and star-studded musical entertainment.
Hinchliffe began a slow decline in the late ‘fifties, and was sold in 1963 for a single dollar to the Paterson Public Schools, which had managed it since 1932. After two overhauls (the first in ’63-’64 to enlarge the running track and outfield, the second in 1983 to put in itchy fiberglass seating and lay Astroturf) and many years of scrappy maintenance, it was officially closed in 1997.
Since that time the Friends have sought to protect it from demolition, broadcast its stellar history, and mobilize the resource partnerships that can restore it not just to its original glory but to the service of a new generation of young athletes.
On March 15, 2013, Hinchliffe Stadium was officially added to the list of some 2500 iconic places nationwide considered NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARKS. On December 18, 2014, the stadium was included in the Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park.
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Below, HInchliffe overgrown with weed trees, waiting for rescue! Behind it, Paterson School No. 5 (1940). Students & faculty there have contributed generously to support the rehabilitation of Hinchliffe Stadium.
All material on this website is under copyright: © The Friends of Hinchliffe Stadium 2009-2013. If you find it useful and would like to reproduce it selectively, we ask that you please acknowledge our work and credit the Friends of Hinchliffe Stadium, Paterson, NJ.
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