6 Dec
Visit Piscataway High School on Behmer Road and you’ll find a large sprawling school complex, a well kept parking lot and a small stadium for the football team, the Chiefs. You will also find the FitzRandolph Cemetery, a collection of barely a half dozen graves belonging to one of Piscataway’s most prominent families in the 1800’s.
11 Dec
Located just behind the Great Falls in Paterson, Hinchcliffe Stadium was used for football and baseball as well other athletics activities for 5 decades before falling into disrepair and disuse. It now sits abandoned right behind one of Paterson’s many public schools. Hinchcliffe stadium opened on July 8, 1932, and was named for the mayor of Paterson, John Hinchcliffe. It immediately hosted Negro league baseball games and was the site of the Colored Championship of the Nation, the Negro League equivalent of the World Series. The stadium was the home of the NY Black Yankees until 1945., when they moved to Rochchester, NY. The stadium was home to boxing matches, auto racing, as well as professional football.
The stadium was owned by the city until 1963 when it was turned over to the public school system. many repairs and upgrades were made. Over the next 20 years, the stadium would host antique car shows, concerts and the Great Falls Festival on labor Day. Further upgrades were made in 1983 with the addition of handicap access among other things. In 1988 the stadium became home to the NJ Eagles of the American Soccer League. Eventually though, funding problems prevented necesary repairs from being made and by 1997 the stadium was closed for safety reasons. By 2002 a non profit group called Friends of Hinchliffe Stadium announced plans to try to revive the stadium. In 2004 the stadium was placed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places. Little has been done in the past 6-8 years, however. In 2005 a local ballot endorsed the idea of restoring the stadium. A similar ballot initiative passed in 2009 and provided for over 10M to restore the site. The creation of a National Park out of the Great Falls may further spark the restoration process. The National park will incoporate the land on which sits the former ATP ruins. It would seem natural to include Hinchliffe in such renovations as part of a historical look at Paterson’s past.
All of my pictures of Hinchcliffe can be found here
8 Apr
There is a legend of a house behind the main buildings of Ramapo College which has sunk into the ground because it was built on unstable, marshy land. In the early 1900’s, the land in that area was mostly owned by the Havemeyers, a wealthy family from NY. The campus was their weekend estate. The sunken house was really a roof that covered an open well, used to provide drinking water to the estate. The mansion was sold to Stephen Birch, and it remained in the Birch family until then 60’s when Stephen Birch Jr died in the home. In 1971 the land was donated to Ramapo College…. Allegedly his ghost wanders the administration building from time to time.
I visited the campus and asked around and explored a little but found nothing. Eventually I found someone who would show me that the sunken house was nothing more then a big well with a roof to keep the leaves and branches out. Unfortunately it had been recently torn down so there was nothing to see.
7 Apr
The school was built in 1854, remodeled in 1926, and then closed in 1955. A fire gutted the center portion of the building and the roof in 1992. (arson of course) The central part of the school burned completely, and in the past few years the floor collapsed in one section, eliminating the infamous “children on the blackboard”. This was a series of eerie faces carved into a blackboard on the second floor.
THE LEGEND OF BUCKEYE
The legend begins in 1935 as Lambertville HS plays an annual football game against the Buckeyes from New Hope. Unfortunately this annual Thanksgiving event is marred by the death of a wide receiver on the opposing team. The parents protest that football is too dangerous, and the New Hope school closes it’s football program.
After the school closed in 1955, it became a hangout for the rowdy kids. One night some kids got drunk and the subject of the dead wide receiver comes up. One of them yells out a challenge to the dead football player, a 100 yard dash. A pair of eyes appear across the field, and orders them to race the field or die. One boy runs and collapses. The remaining boys reluctantly run the field, but once to the other side, they realize one of the boys isn’t with the group any more. They run home, their parents call the cops, and eventually the bodies of the two boys are found, their heads turned almost backwards. Ever since then it is said then anyone challenging Buckeye will not live thru the night….don’t even say the word, lest you die on the spot….
Photos come courtesy of a reader who wishes to remain anonymous.
The abandoned school is on private property, and entering it would involve trespassing. The school is structurally questionable and going inside is very risky. We do not encourage you to trespass or to take unnecessary risks.
The Lostinjersey Blog 