Hinchliffe Stadium is a 10,000-seat stadium located in Paterson, New Jersey, USA. The venue was completed in 1932 and sits on a dramatic escarpment above Paterson's National Historic Landmark Great Falls, and surrounded by the city's National Landmark Historic District, the first planned industrial settlement in the nation (chartered 1792). It is one of only a handful of stadiums surviving nationally that once played host to significant Negro league baseball during America's Jim Crow era. The stadium was designated a National Historic Landmark in March 2013 and a Paterson Historic Landmark in May 2013. In December 2014 legislation passed in the United States Congress to in include the stadium in the Great Falls National Landmark District.Early daysThe stadium, a large concrete oval with near-continuous seating laid out like a classical amphitheater, was inspired by a decade-long popular "stadium movement" in the 1920s, and was finally brought to fruition through the persistent efforts of Mayor John Hinchliffe, for whom it is named. It opened on July 8, 1932, as a combination athletic 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. Many workers laid off from the mills found work under a New Deal-financed program to provide enhancements to the stadium in 1932 - 34.
