Old Negro League Stadium to become Historic landmark

When you think of historic landmarks you think of statutes or beautiful scenery. You would not think of an old crumbling graffiti-covered shell of a ball field surrounded by abandoned cars, broken glass and piles of garbage.

Hinchliffe Stadium once in Paterson, NJ was once the hub of activity in its heyday. During its heyday it was filled to capacity for the Negro league.

The Stadium opened in July 8, 1932 as a combination facility and a “paying investment” for the working people of industrial Paterson, New Jersey, who were by then struggling through the early years of the Great Depression.

In 1933, the stadium’s first complete season hosting baseball, HInchliffe hosted the Colored Championship of the Nation, the Negro League equivalent of the World Series. That following year, the New York Black Yankees made the stadium their home, a tenure that lasted till 1945 and was interrupted only once, when the team booked Triborough Stadium on Randall’s Island in New York for the 1938 season.

The baseball played at Hinchliffe Stadium was some of the best and most competitive in the game, including prodigious athletes like Monte Irvin, Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston and Cool Papa bell among many others. Hall of Famer Larry Doby the legendary player who broke the American League color barrier in 1947, grew up in Paterson playing football and baseball in Hinchliffe Stadium for Paterson’s Eastside High School.

Hinchlifee Stadium is currently owned by the Paterson school system. The school system shut down the stadium in 1997 because it could no longer afford to keep it up.

Renovation cost estimate reaches as high as $20 million to bring the park back to life. The City Council voted to recognize it as a local landmark a few weeks ago and have allocated $1.5 million for its immediate stabilization, Mayor Jeffrey Jones said.

The next challenge, the mayor said, will be trying to raise the rest of the funds from private donors, grants and the state to restore the stadium to its former glory.

On May 19, 2010, the stadium was designed one of the 11 Most Endangered Historic Places for 2010 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The voters of Paterson approved a ballot initiative to renovate the crumbling stadium in November of 2009.

The National Park Service is working to acquire the land around the waterfall from the city and other owners and to develop a plan to make the park more visitor friendly. In March of 2013 the stadium was declared a historic national landmark.

An audio tour will be available this month. It will be narrated by NBC “Nightly News” anchor and New Jersey native Brian Williams, with contributions from Paterson native and New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz and Pulitzer Prize winning author Junot Diaz.