Stadium Wonders: A Look Inside Hinchliffe Stadium’s All-Time Comeback

After years of neglect, the stadium sat vacant for nearly three decades. But thanks to recent renovations, the only U.S. professional sports venue inside a national park has beautifully preserved its place as a Negro Leagues landmark.

Part of a $109 million project back in 2021, the renovations at the Paterson landmark were complete in 2023. | Michael Karas-NorthJersey.com / USA TODAY NETWORK

This is one of the greatest comeback stories in sports history. 

Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson, N.J., was once the pride and joy of this industrial city 15 miles from Manhattan. Opened in 1932, it hosted Negro Leagues baseball games (including home games for the New York Black Yankees and New York Cubans) and saw some of the biggest stars in Black baseball pass through its doors—names like Josh Gibson and Cool Papa Bell. It also served as the home field for the city’s high school athletes, including Paterson native Larry Doby, who went on to break the American League color barrier. 

But as the city of Paterson fell on hard times, so too did the stadium. The city was once a hub of silk manufacturing and later home to factories that built airplane engines during World War II. The wave of deindustrialization that struck other cities in the northern part of the United States was particularly harmful to Paterson, though. In 1983, Paterson was the fifth poorest city in the country, with an unemployment rate twice as high as the rest of New Jersey. 

In 1996, years of neglect and decay caught up with the stadium and it was forced to close due to a sink hole in the field. For nearly three decades, it sat vacant. The once-beautiful Art Deco ballpark deteriorated to the point that trees grew out of the grandstand. 

Hinchliffe has long been the heart of the Paterson community. | The Record/USA TODAY NETWORK

And then the comeback began. After a years-long push to preserve this historic ballpark, funding was finally obtained to begin a renovation and restoration. The renovation was part of a $109 million project funded mostly by state tax credits that also included construction of a senior housing complex adjacent to the stadium. Construction began in 2021 and was completed in ’23. Finally, Hinchliffe Stadium was something Patersonians could be proud of again. 

Tom Verducci detailed the stadium’s history and the efforts to revive it in a 2023 article for Sports Illustrated, and when we began brainstorming locations to feature as part of our Stadium Wonders video series, Hinchliffe’s story cried out as one that needed to be told visually. 

The stadium is modest, with room for 7,500 fans in a single tier of bleacher seating arranged in a horseshoe pattern around three-quarters of the ballpark. The stadium is optimized for soccer, football and track meets, so the current baseball layout is less than ideal. The placement of home plate means that the right field foul pole is almost comically shallow, seemingly no more than 250 feet from the plate. A tall Green Monster–like net prevents too many cheap home runs, but I did see at least one lazy flyball loop over the barrier for a homer. 

Still, the history of the place is evident from the moment you step inside. The Art Deco design is unlike any ballpark you can visit today, and the stadium is remarkably well preserved considering the hardship it endured. The concourses are lined with relief sculptures depicting sporting scenes and elements of Paterson history. Aside from the layout of the playing field, it’s more or less the same place where legends of Black baseball once wowed fans. 

The ballpark now hosts multiple sports for local schools (above) as well as The New Jersey Jackals of the independent Frontier League. | Chris Pedota/NorthJersey.com / USA TODAY NETWORK

Hinchliffe is also a place where fans can educate themselves about the history of the Negro Leagues. Montclair State operates a museum inside the ballpark dedicated to this oft-overlooked period of baseball history. The museum was established through a $5 million donation by Charles J. Muth, a Paterson native and MSU graduate. The museum is primarily dedicated to the Negro Leagues, but also highlights the history of Hinchliffe itself, including a film on the restoration process. 

The other highlight of any visit to Hinchliffe is its proximity to the Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park. (Hinchliffe is the only professional sports venue inside a national park.) The falls, where the Passaic River drops 77 feet, were crucial to the history of Paterson. The energy generated by the falls led Alexander Hamilton to establish Paterson as the first planned industrial city in the U.S., leading it to become the hub of manufacturing that would eventually support professional baseball. (Fans of The Sopranos will also recognize the falls as the place where a certain character meets an untimely end in Season 1.)

Of the five stadiums once used for Major Negro Leagues baseball that are still standing today, Hinchliffe is the only one that regularly hosts professional baseball. The New Jersey Jackals of the independent Frontier League left Yogi Berra Stadium five miles away on Montclair State’s campus to begin playing at Hinchliffe in 2023. The Jackals play all 48 of their home games in Paterson each year. A reincarnated version of the New York Cosmos soccer team plans to play at Hinchliffe beginning later this year as part of the USL League One (the third tier on the U.S. soccer pyramid). 

More importantly, Hinchliffe is once again at the heart of the Paterson community, hosting high school sports during the school year. What was once a blight and an eye sore is now a source of joy—preserving an important era of American history, while also continuing to serve present and future generations of Paterson residents. 

---