Old parks
Posted on February 6, 2012 12:11 am
This post reflects my own geographic bias. All of the stadiums I’m writing about here are located in the northeastern part of the country. I have lived 90 percent of my life in Pennsylvania and New York. The similarity of these two facts is not a coincidence.
All of the stadiums here meet, as far as I’m concerned, the definition of a soccer-specific stadium (or did). My definition is that the place should be shaped and used primarily for soccer, but that its use for other sports is OK. My view is that a soccer-specific stadium doesn’t have to be a soccer-exclusive stadium. The first stadium on this list, Steel Field, has also been used for baseball, football and track (and for one of the most grotesque “sports” events I’ve ever heard of, a contest among teams of Bethlehem Steel workers using their first-aid skills competitively in the face of simulated steel-mill catastrophes).
Steel Field in Bethlehem, Pa., is, I believe, the oldest still-standing soccer stadium in America, built in 1916. To call it a stadium is an exaggeration. It’s a grandstand, but a nice one. It holds 1,000 spectators, with a roof in case of rain and windows at the side to block the wind. It’s just right for its current use, as a small-college football stadium. It’s owned by Moravian College, which renovated it a few years ago. It looks very much the same as it did in 1916.
Metropolitan Oval in New York, near the border between Brooklyn and Queens, has often been referred to as the oldest continuously used soccer facility in the country, having been constructed in 1925. By the 1990s, it had fallen into disrepair, but it got a good renovation in 2001. It’s now the home field for several dozen amateur and college teams. It isn’t really a stadium, however. It’s a field, with bleachers that hold about 1,000 spectators. “Oval” was a common name for small soccer facilities in New York decades ago, but Met Oval is one of the last ones left.
Lusitano Stadium in Ludlow, Mass., which holds 3,000, has been in use for soccer continuously since 1918, but in its earliest years it was just a field, without any stands. Its main occupant for many years was the semipro Ludlow Lusitano team, which played in the ASL for awhile.
Gaelic Park in New York, in the Bronx just across Broadway from Van Cortlandt Park, is only a year younger than Met Oval, but for many years it was used primarily for gaelic football and only occasionally for soccer. It now is owned by Manhattan College, was renovated in 2007, and is heavily used for college soccer.
Clark Field in East Newark, N.J., where the United States played Canada in 1885, is a place that today makes Steel Field and Met Oval look spectacular by comparison. It’s neither a grandstand nor a field. It’s a parking lot. It was used for semipro soccer games up to the 1940s, but the only thing about it that suggests soccer now is its rectangular shape.
Mark’s Stadium in North Tiverton, R.I., built in 1922 by Sam Mark for his ASL team, the Fall River Marksmen, is now a large empty field. The spot where the 15,000-capacity stadium once stood is next to the Bourne Mill, a former textile mill that has been converted into apartments. It’s less than 100 yards from the Rhode Island-Massachusetts state line, which is why Mark built his stadium there, so that Fall River fans could reach it but the Massachusetts blue laws wouldn’t stop him from charging admission on Sunday. The vague outline of the field is still visible in aerial photos.
Starlight Park in New York has probably been visited by more Big Soccer readers than any of the others here. They didn’t go there for soccer. They went there to drive from New Jersey to Long Island (or vice versa). Many things across the central Bronx were buried when the Cross-Bronx Expressway was built in the late 1950s, and Starlight Park, which had been home to several ASL teams and the site of numerous big games over the decades, was one of them.
Maybe you’re aware or not, but the field at Jeld-Wen held its first association football match in 1893.
http://portland.daveknows.org/2010/08/16/first-soccer-game-at-pge-park-october-21-1893/
I can’t really call the park soccer specific when built in 1926 because it first housed a dog racing track and the stadium didn’t hold a professional soccer match until 1975. Nevertheless, the sporting roots on that field goes way back.
wow, that’s really amazing, thanks for posting.
Has USSF ever considered going to these respective towns and requesting the ability to put some sort of plaque or historical note regarding the stadium?
I don’t know about any of the other sites, but Steel Field has a bronze plaque explaining its origins and honoring Bethlehem Steel FC. It looks like it was put up by the Bethlehem Steel company itself, and you have to pick it out from a number other plaques honoring various other sports teams and donors from Lehigh University, who owned the field after Bethlehem Steel, and Moravian College, who received the field from Lehigh.
Time to try and find these on Google Earth.
Great stuff, as always.
While it wasn’t a soccer-specific stadium, Pullman’s Athletic Island, was the site of an 1883 match between the 39th Stree Wanderers and the Pullman Car Works soccer team.
A pic of the site can be found at the Pullman Museum:
http://www.pullman-museum.org/main/PF2007.27.116.jpg
The pic is unusual because it shows 2 grandstands facing the same direction. One was for watching soccer and other sporting events, while the second faced the water for watching regatas.
The island was built on landfill from Pullman’s car works factory and town.
Athletic Island’s life was short. The grandstands timbers rotted out and were demolished in 1898. It was eventually replaced by a railroad roundhouse.
That is the best stadium ever!!.. very quirky
That’s great, as is the one in Portland that Kejsare posted about. This one in Chicago reminds me a bit of my favorite sports spectator facility I’ve ever seen, in Holland, a rowing course with a motorized grandstand on rails.
I know of a lot of 19th century American soccer games, hundreds of them, but I’ve never heard of one before with a grandstand as large as the Athletic Island grandstand looks. The game in Portland is the only one I’ve heard of that was played on a site now used by an MLS team (Harrison, where the Red Bulls play, has a lot of soccer history, but not on the very spot of Red Bull Arena).
As soon as I saw your blog title, I thought to myself that Gaelic Park and Met Oval better be on that list. As usual, you did not disappoint. The Met Oval renovation, complete with artificial turf field, did take a lot of the old-time charm out of the place, but I guess it was necessary with the heavy use it gets. Still a great place, especially with a great view of the NYC skyline.
Great list. Another spot of interest is Balmoral Park in Andover, MA. The small stadium was originally built (1924)for Shawsheen F.C. (Shawsheen Indians) of the minor National League and, for half a season, the Americal League in 1926. The grandstands are long gone but the field lives on today. It is in very good shape and is used by local youth soccer leagues. It is now called Shawsheen Field.
Your right the field is in excellent playing condition. Every once and a while I like to go there and kick the ball around with my kids.
Balmoral park has some nice history too the Shawsheen Indians won the U.S open cup in only thier 2nd year of excistence in 1925. For anyone interested this book tells all abot Balmoral Park.
http://books.google.com/books?id=dQWzRxP-a7sC&pg=PA166&lpg=PA166&dq=boston+old+ballparks+shawsheen+indians&source=bl&ots=LZJlN-d3H-&sig=ZtaNf5UqkPWMGagUdEdz5dHq0lY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=8FswT9HgHeLZ0QGz6qylBA&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=boston%20old%20ballparks%20shawsheen%20indians&f=false
Thanks for the plug for my book.
No problem, thank you for writing the book.
I didn’t even realize Gaelic Park was that old, although now that I think about it, I could certainly see it. I was attending Manhattan when they did the renovations. The field conditions before and after were night and day. To call it a mud pit after a rainy day was probably putting it nicely. Didn’t help that it’s mostly below street level. But it looks good nowadays.
Now if only they could put a decent team on the field to match. Go Jaspers!
Iirc, isn’t the bar at Gaelic Park the longest in the country?
Here’s an oldie but a goodie; Pierce Memorial Stadium in R.I
“For anyone to truly appreciate soccer’s legacy in East Providence, let’s start at square one. Pierce Memorial Stadium was constructed as part of a WPA project back in the 1930s. ”
http://houseofsoccer.blogspot.com/2008/12/pierce-memorial-stadium-memories.html
Pierce stadium was host to the R.I oceaneers of the old ASL a team the great Eusebio played for. It’s now used for throwball and soccer. The brick wall around the stadium gives it a lot of chracter.
Glad you mentioned Lusitano Stadium in Ludlow. The Revs played a few Open Cup matches there, including one against Chicago with Snack Thornton in goal. Dave Sara-can’t called the cops on the fans behind the goal because they were “bothering the goalie.” Yeah, if they weren’t bothering him, they weren’t being very good fans, were they?
Fans are right up close which is nice, and the Portuguese restaraunts in the neighborhood are second to none for pre-game food. Now that Western Mass boy Heaps is the coach, hopefully they will return for a USOC game this year.
To the former residents of Ponta Delgada on Sao Miguel island, Azores!
its pretty awesome that a couple of my college track meets were at one of the oldest soccer stadiums in america. learn something new everyday
Roger, what stadium is in the photo? It looks like the shirt facing us says Indiana Flooring. I’m not sure where they played or whether or not they were home in the photo.
My best guess is that it’s New York Oval, which was in the Mott Haven section of the south Bronx. Originally, I thought it might be Starlight Park, because it looks a little like the few pictures I’ve seen of Starlight Park, but I changed my mind after noticing that Indiana Flooring shirt. Indiana Flooring only played in the ASL for three seasons, 1924-25, 1925-26 and 1926-27, and there were no ASL teams using Starlight Park as their home field in those seasons. There were three New York teams in the ASL in those seasons, Indiana Flooring, Brooklyn Wanderers and New York Giants. Indiana Flooring and New York Giants both played their home games at New York Oval.
I think you are correct Roger. There’s a photo in the March 13, 1927 NYT of a Indiana Flooring v. Brooklyn Wanderers match at the New York Oval — the stadium in your photo looks to be a match to me. With the Giants and Indiana Flooring sharing a stadium and the Wanderers and Giants dividing most of the former Hakoah players, there were some intense derby matches between those teams during this time.
Speaking of the Wanderers, doesn’t some remnant of Hawthorne Field in Brooklyn survive?
There’s a high school athletic field on the site of Hawthorne Field. I’ve never been there, so I can’t say for certain that no sign of the old stadium survives, but it sounds like it would be hard to spot amid the current stuff. Maybe the remnant is the fact that the location is still used for sports.
anybody have any photos of the old clark soccer field in east newark nj? very hard to find
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