Reconsidering Elysian Fields -- October 2022

Protoball is opening a page on the state of knowledge about Elysian Fields and its influence on the evolution of base ball.  Irwin Chusid and Jon Popovich have expressed strong interest in writing further about Elysian Fields, and will participate in this limited-term discussion. For a riveting presentation on Elysian Fields from a base ball researcher's point of view, see Irwin and Jonathan's recent Youtube presentation at: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwJGWeWDHPA

As something of a time-limited experiment in supporting current Origins research, we plan to resume the stimulating e-mail discussion of new research on the role of Elysian Fields in the evolution of ball-playing that Peter Mancuso initiated a couple of months ago.  That group included several of our best-informed authors and observers.  Irwin and Jon will participate.

Some issues that seem likely to be covered include:

[] A.  Aspects of the role of Elysian Fields that we wish we knew more about.  Possible example: what does EF tell us about the role of unavailable local playing grounds in the diffusion of base ball?

[] B.  Favorite sources of existing coverage of ballplaying at Elysian Fields for those who want to read up (or refresh their grasp) of current knowledge on Elysian Fields.

[] C.  Other factors ("threads") that we haven't thought of at this point.

While the main fun may well be in the e-mail exchanges that ensue, Protoball will import material from the discussion on this page for the benefit of future Origins researchers.

-- Larry McCray, 9/30/2022

Note:  By accident, an active email discussion among  a smaller group broke out on September 29.  Here are the 12 postings so far : we will next expand the conversation to a larger group. 

​Current  Protoball Thread on EF and the Lack of Manhattan  Playing Space

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1) Bruce Allardice, 9/2922
Irwin, Jon:

A question came up tonight in a conversation with Larry McCray. It is admitted that part of early baseball's attractiveness in NYC was the fact that because of the foul rule it could be played in smaller, more available spaces than alternate bat ball games such as cricket and town ball, which featured 360 degree fields. In fact this has been given as one reason early NYC baseball clubs played their games at Elysian Fields.

The question is: was Manhattan Island really devoid of open space for baseball in the 1840s and 1850s? Or was it instead because the open space was so far north of the city center that it was easier to take the ferry across the Hudson to Elysian Fields?

I'm informed that you may be doing a book project on Elysian Fields. Sounds great. Let me know if and how I can give any EF project of yours free publicity in the Origins of Baseball Newsletter.

Best wishes,

Bruce Allardice

Editor, SABR Origins of Baseball Newsletter

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2) Irwin Chusid, 9/29

I can't answer that question conclusively, as so far in my research, I've not seen the veracity of that issue addressed. The lack of open spaces in NYC due to real estate development is generally given as the reason for preferring Hoboken. I think the Wheaton letter mentioned this (but I can't find it online at the moment). I suspect Thorn could give a more knowledgeable answer.

Our projected book is about the totality of the EF, with base ball one of many aspects to be addressed. My sense of Protoball's involvement is to aggregate facts (journalistic and visual) about base ball, cricket, and other ball games being played at the EF, but not to delve into the history of the parkland, which pre-dates what we know as base ball. The fields were developed by Col. John Stevens as a public amusement area in the late 1820s and early 1830s. At the time of Col. Stevens' death in 1838, I suspect he had never heard of base ball.

Irwin

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​3)  Jon Popovich , 9/29

Hi Guys,

My thought would be that the answer is a little bit of both. Like Irwin, my research really hasn’t focused on the impetus for clubs to leave NY for Hoboken,  but shrinking open spaces coupled with the ease of getting to…and using…the EF simply sounds logical.

I do know that the clubs coming out of lower Manhattan in the 1840s and 1850s…particularly those in the area of the 9th Ward…had easy access to the Christopher St. and Barclay St. ferries that took them right across to Hoboken’s 1st Street Landing (at Otto’s Cottage) and the entrance to the Riverwalk that led north to the EF.

Later on, the steamboat landing that was built right at the foot of the Pavilion in the EF itself made it even easier for clubs to access.

Also, we know that the Stevens Family was welcoming of the ball clubs and their usage of the grounds until the large championship matches of 1865 upset that arrangement.

I think a combination of factors made the EF an easy and sensible location for the NY clubs.

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4)  Bruce Allardice, 10/1

Perhaps the question is better phrased: Was there an absolute lack of space on Manhattan Island in the 1840s, or just a lack of space convenient to where the Knickerbocker players lived and worked (basically, the southern part of Manhattan Island)? In that context, a trip to the Elysian Fields by ferry (approx. 4 miles from city hall) would be as or more convenient than a trip up north to Harlem (8 miles or so). And the trip to EF by ferry would (at least in the eyes of this Chicagoan) be more pleasant, and lead to a more pleasant, scenic venue.

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5) Tom Gilbert, 10/1

Manhattan  island had plenty of open space in the middle 19thc. there were numerous places where informal games were played and also formal playing grounds for baseball cricket etc such as the red house. the elysian fields offered convenience to the wall st area, a less expensive trip, friendly landlords - the stevens family, who were encouraging nyers to use the elysian fields for recreation in order to promote real estate development in hoboken, and who had a family member or two who were members of the knicks -- and high quality dedicated exclusive playing space.

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6) John Thorn, 10/1

Playing space in lower Manhattan was indeed limited as (1) the populated city grew, (2) a Grand Central rail terminal was built at the north end of Madison Square, and (3) the Collect Pond was filled in. But the principal attraction of the Elysian Fields may well have been its reputedly clean air and immunity to epidemic disease. Yellow fever and cholera were recurring pestilences and New Yorkers imagined their chances of survival to be better for having fresh air in their lungs via spirited exercise, outdoors in Hoboken or in gymnasiums in New York.

[[Note: At some point I had mentioned the theory that Elysian Fields may have led to the 270-degree rule for foul ground (perhaps the only Knick rule not borrowed from English base ball?) -- because the EF field was situated somewhat close to the Hudson River and long hits could go splash.  LMc]]

As to the foul rule: it may indeed have had something to do with the playing grounds available at Madison Square, rather than the clearly constricted space at the Elysian Fields (cricket grounds were at Fox Hill, not down by the river). William Rufus Wheaton wrote the playing rules for the New York Club (Gothams, Washingtons) in 1837; they played at the south end of Madison Square while the Knicks and their unnamed forebears later (post-1840) played at the north end.

See: https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/the-lost-ball-club-and-its-lost-home-b25889f1d69b

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7) Bruce Allardice, 10/1

Wilkes' Spirit of the Times claimed in 1863 that there was only one baseball ground left in Manhattan, at 63rd St. And 3rd avenue. Cited in [ Bill Ryczek's\“Baseball’s First Inning.”]

The park commissioners of Central Park didn’t allow ballplaying at this point, and for four more years.

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8) Tom Gilbert, 10/1

​

That may be true but there was lots of open space in upper manhattan in 1863. i think it may be reductive and somewhat misleading to view the presence or absence of baseball grounds solely in terms of available space - there were other reasons why grounds were located in some places and not others. 

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​9) John Thorn, 10/1

That would have been in Jones' Wood, the site initially proposed for Central Park. By 1850 Andrew Jackson Downing proposed a new location for a vast public park in New York City — a Central Park that would be located between Fifth and Eighth Avenues, running north from 59th Street. Poet William Cullen Bryant had proposed a public park six years earlier, but his idea was to place it along the rustic eastern shore of Manhattan Island, on the site then known as Jones’ Wood. “The heats of summer are upon us,” Bryant wrote,

"and while some are leaving the town for shady retreats in the country, others refresh themselves with short excursions to Hoboken or New Brighton, or other places among the beautiful environs of our city. If the public authorities who expend so much of our money in laying out the city, would do what is in their power, they might give our vast population an extensive pleasure ground for shade and recreation in these sultry afternoons, which we might reach without going out of town…. All large cities have their extensive public grounds and gardens, Madrid and Mexico their Alamedas, London its Regent’s Park, Paris its Champs Elysées, and Vienna its Prater. There are none of them, we believe, which have the same natural advantages of the picturesque and beautiful which belong to this spot."

Further, my caption and image from New York 400 (2009):

Picnic Season, 1873: This early summer number of the popular illustrated weekly Daily Graphic provides a handy key to New York’s garden spots for excursions—even after the opening of Central Park. Steamboat excursions up the Hudson or ferry rides across it had been popular for decades. By 1873 the Elysian Fields of Hoboken were in decline as commercial interests had gobbled up much of the former workingman’s paradise. But now he had Fort Lee and good old Jones’ Wood, the spot rejected as the site of Central Park but still popular for German turnvereins, Caledonian games, and good rowdy fun of the sort depicted here by Jules Tavernier. The Daily Graphic was one of many illustrated weeklies popular at the time—Harper’s Weekly, Leslie’s, Police Gazette and more—but it was notable for its focus on city affairs and historic for its launch in 1880 of photomechanical engraving, the halftone process by which photographs might be reproduced. Within twenty years engraving would go the way of the dodo. 

Yorkville was also the site of a baseball grounds, cited in Peverelly as being, in 1859, at Eighty-first street and Second avenue.​ 

​The last, I promise. I sent this to the 19cbb list on Sept 6, 2004, with a header of  Pre-1871 NYC, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and NJ Ball Grounds:

"This is a subject of increasing interest to me and I will be grateful for any info any of you may have. Flipping through Peverelly's Book of American Past​imes I noted that on August 17, 1865 the New York Base Ball Club (which I thought had disappeared by then!) played the Knickerbockers at their 65th Street Grounds. [At this same site on Sept 22, 1862 the Mutuals squared off against the Atlantics.] I presume this site to be part of the Jones Wood area, which ran from 65th to 75th Streets along the east River and had been a hot contender for the location of Central Park. The sylvan setting had long been host to ethnic sporting festivals and perhaps also at some time provided grounds for the New York Cricket Club. Cato's was a famous trotting hostelry on the site. For an image, see [dead link by now]: http://gkkapp.home.infionline.net/turnfest.jpg . . . Another baseball grounds previously unknown to me appears to coincide with the hostelry of Hazard House, located on the crown of Yorkville Hill at 82nd Street and Second Avenue. While New York ball clubs such as the Empire, Eagle, and Mutual--and of course the Knickerbockers--felt compelled to leave lower Manhattan for playing grounds in Hoboken or Brooklyn, others simply went north. Of course the Gothams played at the Red House Grounds at 105th Street for many years, which was also famous for trotting and cricket. Phil Lowry has done an admirable job of describing the ballparks used for league contests from 1871 forward, but he has not concerned himself about these parks, or Wheat Hill and Greenpoint in Brooklyn, etc. (Phil does describe some early grounds, such as Brooklyn's Capitoline and Union, because they hung on long enough to host the odd National Association game.) This (i.e., the locators and physical descriptions of pre-1871 ballparks) seems to me a wide-open and thus singularly appealing area for research, especially perhaps by some of our group's newer members.

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10) Bruce Allardice, 10/1

Protoball has the following early fields entered in for Manhattan, with approx. addresses. See Fields in NY - Protoball​

City Hall Park, site of ball play in 1827

Jones' Retreat in Broadway, site of ball play in 1821

Independent Club Grounds at 81st St. and 2nd Ave.

Madison Square park, 23rd/24th Sts. and 5th/5th Ave.

Central Park, with 1st game in 1868

Hamilton Square, 66th-69th Sts. and 3rd/4th Ave. (close to Jones' Wood)

Mount Morris Square, 124th St. and 4th Ave.

Red House, 105th/106th Sts. and 1st Ave. Champion grounds (Columbia College) at 49th St.  and 5th Ave

Obviously, these venues had alternate names.

These locations and nomenclature can be a starting point for further research on early NYC baseball grounds.

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11) Bruce Allardice, 10/1

John and all:

The Yorkville venue you mentioned might be Conrad’s Yorkville Park, described as being on 86th Street and East river. It was a common resort for German-American concerts.

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12) Bruce Allardice, 10/2

I've gone through the major newspaper databases up to 1870 regarding Jones Wood and haven't found a specific mention of a baseball game being played there, though in 1858 the Scottish games were played there. Ditto Conrad's Yorkville Park. Lots of newspaper mentions, lots of concerts and Fenian gatherings, even a balloon launching, but no baseball. It is no surprise that EF had competition in northern Manhattan Island for weekend excursions.

The games John cites as perhaps being in Jones' Wood (9-22-62  Mutuals, 8-17-65 Knickerbockers) are reported as being at the "New York Club ground"--which is treated elsewhere as being at 65th and 3rd. The location is, basically, Hamilton Square (or adjacent to the south) at the time. Same with the Yorkville game John mentions--the cited location is quite close to the "Independent" club grounds at "81st and 2nd" that's already listed in Protoball.

I went through Bob Tholkes RIM file of games 1857-65 for game venues. Venue reporting is frustrating inconsistent, but basically I was able to link the NYC venue description to the venues already in Protoball and which I sent out earlier--with one exception which I added to Protoball last night. The exception is the grounds of the Champion BBC at 49th St.  and 5th Ave.--which my map-reading locates as approximately the modern site of Saks 5th Avenue. Games there were played in 1863 and beyond.

I've also tried to see if people living in southern Manhattan could make it to EF as fast or faster than they could to Red House. The distance to EF is less, and in 1845 at least it appears the trip would be faster. Whether this would hold true post-Civil War is something I haven't studied.

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13) John Thorn

Great stuff, Bruce. Thanks.

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