Year Completed: 1932 ~ Location: Paterson, New Jersey, USA ~ 

Original Capacity: 10,000 seats / 2023 Capacity 7,500 seats

 

Hinchliffe Stadium is one of the last remaining Negro Leagues stadiums in the United States. It is the first National Historic Landmark that honors baseball, and the only sporting venue within the boundary of a National Park. Over 20 Hall of Famers graced Hinchliffe's hallowed grounds, many of whom played in the Negro Leagues.

 

Hinchliffe's horseshoe style is reminiscent of the Polo Grounds, the long-time home of baseball's New York Giants. Paterson's ballpark opened to great fanfare in July of 1932. The sports promoters of the day noticed that when visiting African American ballclubs played at Hinchliffe Stadium, attendance would increase.

 

The following year, Hinchliffe Stadium was one of the sites for the 1933 Colored Championship of the Nation. Although the series was mired in controversy, that series was the impetus for having steady Negro Leagues games at Hinchliffe beginning with the 1934 season.

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Hinchliffe Stadium served as the home park for the New York Black Yankees, New York Cubans, and on occasion, the Newark Eagles.

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In 1942, Larry Doby, a fresh-faced graduate of Paterson's Eastside High School was offered a tryout with the Newark Eagles at Hinchliffe Stadium. Doby made the ball club, a day that would change his life forever. On July 5, 1947, Doby made his Major League Baseball debut with the Cleveland Indians as the first African American player in the American League, a mere 11 weeks after Jackie Robinson integrated the National League.

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The venue was completed in 1932 and is just steps from Paterson's Great Falls. The stadium is surrounded by the city's National Landmark Historic District.

 

Hinchliffe Stadium is one of only a handful of stadiums surviving nationally that once played host to significant Negro Leagues 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 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 1936, after he completed bronze reliefs of two Paterson athletes (1932 and 1934), and a high-relief cast-stone “Roman Gladiator.” 

 

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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Baseball returned to venerable Hinchliffe Stadium in the spring of 2023. After sitting lost to the ages to all but local supporters, Negro Leagues aficionados, and ballpark fans alike, the State of New Jersey issued tax credits  toward Hinchliffe Stadium's restoration. This plan called for the reconstruction of the stadium built in 1932 with about 7,500 seats, a 315-space parking garage, a fast food court, an interpretive space, and a senior citizen housing complex.

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The New Jersey Jackals of the Frontier League signed a six-year lease to play their home games at Hinchliffe Stadium, and their owner, a Paterson native, relocated the team from nearby Yogi Berra Stadium in Little Falls, N.J., in hopes of capitalizing on the rebirth of this Negro Leagues Ballpark. The Jackals began play at Hinchliffe on May 21, 2023.

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