Year Completed: 1932 ~ Location: Paterson, New Jersey, USA ~ Capacity: 10,000 seats

 

The venue was completed in 1932 and is just steps from Paterson's National Historic Landmark Great Falls. The stadium is surrounded by the city's National Landmark Historic District, the first planned industrial settlement in the nation, chartered in 1792 by George Washington and Alexander Hamilton.

 

Hinchliffe Stadium is one of only a handful of stadiums surviving nationally that once played host to significant Negro League Baseball.

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Italian-born Gaetano Federici (1880-1964) was nothing less than the "Master of Paterson" in the great Renaissance tradition he admired. Federici's career as Paterson's near-official sculptor began in 1905 with the Congressman James Stewart memorial before the County Courthouse on Hamilton St. Scores more Federicis dot the city, including formidable life-size bronzes of Mayors Nathan Barnert (1924) and Thomas McBride (1947) outside City Hall, and exquisite popular culture icons like the Dublin Spring Water-Boy (1931) on Oliver Street.

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The sculptor’s connection with Hinchliffe Stadium began in the planning stages around 1931, about the same time that he was named a Schools Commissioner, and sculpted a model of the stadium for public view (shown below). The association lasted through '36, after he completed two bronze reliefs of student athletes (1932 & 1934), and a high-relief cast-stone “Roman Gladiator,” mounted on the stadium's northwest tower, above the concession stand.

 

The stadium was designated a National Historic Landmark in March 2013. It became a Paterson Historic Landmark in May 2013. In December 2014,  legislation passed in the United States Congress to include the stadium in the Great Falls National Landmark District.

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