A Legendary Ballpark Gets a New Playing Surface: FieldTurf at Historic Hinchliffe Stadium

Key Takeaways

• Hinchliffe Stadium, a National Historic Landmark and former home of Negro Leagues baseball, reopened in 2023 after a $100 million restoration.
• FieldTurf installed the stadium’s new synthetic turf, preserving the footprint of the original diamond while delivering a durable, multi-sport surface for modern use.
• Beynon Sports built the stadium’s new track, giving Paterson student-athletes a running surface inside one of American sports’ most historic venues.
• The project shows how modern playing surfaces can honor a landmark’s history while meeting the demands of everyday community use for decades to come.

Restoring a Landmark of Baseball History
Built in 1932, Hinchliffe Stadium, in Paterson, New Jersey, is one of the last surviving ballparks built specifically for Negro Leagues baseball. Once the home field for the New York Black Yankees and New York Cubans, it also served the same purpose for the city’s high school athletes.

For years, however, it was also a ruin: closed in 1997, overtaken by graffiti, brush, and a fire-damaged locker room.

In March 2013, the stadium received National Historic Landmark designation — the first ever for a baseball site. The following year, Congress added Hinchliffe to Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park, making it the only sporting venue within the boundaries of a National Park.

A $100 million restoration saw Hinchliffe eventually reopen in May 2023. That restoration included the installation of a new FieldTurf artificial turf system and a track system from Beynon Sports — both leading solutions from Tarkett Sports.

Preserving history by preparing for the future
Restoring a landmark like Hinchliffe meant painstaking preservation work, alongside a playing surface built for year-round, multi-sport use. That’s where FieldTurf came in. The new synthetic turf field preserved the original baseball diamond used by the Negro Leagues, keeping that history visible while providing the durability needed to host the Frontier League’s New Jersey Jackals along with Paterson’s school and youth athletics programs.

The restoration also added new track-and-field elements, built on a Beynon Sports running surface, giving Paterson’s student-athletes an elite track system inside one of the most historically significant venues in American sports.

More than a renovation
The renovated stadium is now a 7,800-seat venue where a new generation of athletes trains and competes on the same ground where baseball history was made. For FieldTurf and Beynon Sports, projects like Hinchliffe are a reminder of what’s possible when a community commits to preserving its history — and why getting the surface right matters just as much in a restoration as in a brand-new build.