Elysian Fields (Hoboken, New Jersey)

Originally called "Hobuck Island," the area had in the 18th century been an estate owned by the politically prominent Bayard family. Because William Bayard was a British loyalist during the Revolutionary War, after America achieved independence the land was confiscated and sold at public auction. Col. Stevens acquired the estate in 1783. In 1788, Stevens bought another 125 acres in the rural area known as Weehawken. With these real estate purchases, Stevens owned more than a mile of Hudson River frontage. In the early 19th century, the Stevens property in Weehawken acquired notoriety as "The Dueling Ground," where New Yorkers went to settle disputes with pistols, because dueling was outlawed in their state. It was on these grounds that Aaron Burr fatally shot Alexander Hamilton in 1804. At the time, the rest of Hoboken was largely an undeveloped, mosquito-infested swamp. There was also an abundance of turtles to be found—the swampy wetlands were known as "Turtle Grove"—and this led to the founding, in 1796, of The Hoboken Turtle Club (see illustration below). According to a story published by the Penn Museum, "The Club became a venerable part of the local culinary landscape and continued throughout its existence to offer turtle soup and turtle steak dinners to its members." In the 1820s, the Stevens family began to drain the swamp and fill nearby marshes. The family, who shared interests in engineering, invention, sports, real estate, and business, began to envision the waterfront area below their estate as a combination recreational/pleasure resort for New Yorkers looking to escape from the city during sweltering summers and on weekends. In 1824, before the full development of the landscape surrounding Castle Point, Col. Stevens offered to sell the site to the city of New York for use as a public park. (This was decades before the creation of Central Park.) After the proposed sale was rejected by the city of New York, Col. Stevens decided to finish the project himself. ==Development of the grounds==

Stevens described the newly developed parkland as a "place of general resort for citizens, as well as strangers, for health and recreation". He further boasted that the grounds were "easily accessible, and ... in a few minutes the dust, noise, and bad smells of the city may be exchanged for the pure air, delightful shades, and completely rural scenery." '')The Elysian Fields became a popular destination for city-weary New Yorkers, with ferries to the grounds originating at Barclay, Canal, and Christopher Streets. "From the opening of the 'River Walk' to the public in about 1810, until the Civil War," wrote historian William Mann, "New Yorkers flocked to the Elysian Fields in the summer months. Among the luminaries that history records as visitors were Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Martin Van Buren, Daniel Webster, and Washington Irving. Descriptions of the place were made by many of the park's visitors, including William Cullen Bryant|[William Cullen] Bryant, Mrs. Frances Trollope, Frances Kemble, and scores of lesser-known writers." The Stevens villa was destroyed in a fire in the early 1850s, and was replaced by a castle in 1854. ==Baseball and cricket==

While the city of Hoboken boasts that the Elysian grounds were the "birthplace" of baseball in 1846, this is a myth. There were countless baseball clubs and games played during the 1830s, if not earlier—in Hoboken, New York City, Brooklyn, and elsewhere—and the first rules were drawn up by the Gotham Club of New York in 1837. Nonetheless, while Hoboken cannot claim to be "the cradle of baseball", it has historic standing for its pivotal role in the early game as it evolved from a pleasant leisure time pursuit to a highly competitive—and commercial—spectator sport. The Knickerbocker Club of New York City, which was founded in September 1845, is often cited as the first club to play baseball anywhere, and that their first game took place in Hoboken in 1846. However, a number of clubs played amateur baseball at the Elysian Fields before the Knickerbockers. John Thorn writes that the Magnolia Ball Club and the New York Club (a.k.a. the Gothams) were known to have played at the Elysian Fields in the autumn of 1843. By 1845, rapid urban development was claiming open spaces across the Hudson River in New York, prompting the Knickerbockers to choose the Elysian Fields, which was a 15-minute ferry ride from lower Manhattan, as their home grounds. In an un-bylined reminiscence, attributed to "an old pioneer" (later identified as Knickerbocker founding member William Wheaton), On June 19, 1846, the Knickerbockers faced off against the New York Ball Club. (Both clubs were offshoots of an earlier club, the New York Gothams.) This match is historically considered the first fully documented baseball game. Countless games had preceded this matchup; 37 prior matches at the Elysian Fields alone occurring before June 19, 1846, have been documented at Protoball.org. The Knickerbockers were simply the first to compile and preserve a batter-by-batter account of the action (arguably the game's first "scorecard"). In this match, New York defeated the Knickerbockers 23-1 in four innings. (It is worth noting that the Knickerbockers rarely challenged opposing clubs. "From 1845 through 1850, the club played over 200 games," wrote Tom Gilbert, "but only three of these were against other clubs. The rest were intramural games played between impromptu lineups made up of Knickerbocker members.") Pioneering sports journalist Henry Chadwick, then a cricket reporter for The New York Times, regularly attended baseball matches at the Elysian Fields in the 1850s. (Many athletes of this era excelled at both sports.) Chadwick recalled: "I chanced to go through the Elysian Fields during the progress of a match between the noted Eagle and Gotham Clubs. The game was being sharply played on both sides, and I watched with deeper interest than any previous ball match between clubs that I had seen. It was not long before I was struck with the idea that base ball was just the game for Americans." Chadwick's epiphany was not isolated—it was during this decade that newspapers began to carry accounts of local games. In fact, according to Tom Gilbert, "Clubs made up of newspapermen played at the Elysian Fields in the 1850s and 1860s; in 1871 a baseball diamond was set aside for them exclusively." In 1870, hooligans frequently attempted to disrupt amateur matches. As reported in the New York Clipper in 1871, "Last season crowds of roughs used to gather there every evening and annoy the regular ball players so much that finally the Hoboken authorities interfered and put a stop to ball playing except by clubs having special permission from the city authorities. ... [T]he south field has been engaged for the season by the Knickerbocker, Eagle and Social Clubs, and no other clubs will be permitted to use the field. On the north field the Gothams [and] the Columbia College Club [will play]. ... The western field has been set apart for the Saturday games of the newspaper nines." Baseball was played at the Elysian Fields for about 50 years, although the date of the last recorded game is unknown. Just about all games played at the grounds were amateur matchups. The last known published reference to a baseball game played at the Elysian Fields occurred in 1889; the Jersey City News, of September 4, 1889, carried a report of a September 2 game between the Jersey of Hoboken and the Palisades of North Hudson. In 1890 and thereafter, no known newspaper references to baseball games at the Elysian Fields have been found. This is not surprising since by the early 1890s, the Elysian Fields had been carved up by urban development and only a few patches of parkland remained. The only documented professional games played on the Elysian grounds occurred in 1888 between black (Negro league) teams as part of a series of championship matches. ==Colonnade Hotel==

In 1830, the Stevens family erected near Turtle Cove a Grecian-style pavilion, known as the Colonnade, which opened for business in 1831. Stevens boasted that it was "devoted largely to the worship of Bacchus" (drinking and revelry). The Colonnade appears prominently in countless 19th century illustrations of activities at the Elysian Fields. It was one of the favorite hangouts of ball players after the conclusion of games. The Colonnade continued to operate for years under a series of new owners, many of whom renamed the hotel. In the 1880s it was known as Charles W. Roedenburg's lager beer saloon. The building was torn down, most likely in 1893. (A November 1893 article in the New York Herald claimed, "The old hotel was demolished but a short time ago.") ==Sybil's Cave==

The spa Sybil's Cave was excavated around 1832 by Hoboken's founder, Col. John Stevens III, and adorned with a gothic-style stone arch. Named after the ancient Greco-Roman prophetesses, from the 1840s through the 1880s it was one of Hoboken's biggest tourist attractions for the allegedly healthful magnesium-infused water that supposedly flowed from a spring within the cave. From the mid- to late-1800s, glasses of this water were sold for a penny. "The Stevenses carved out an old iron mine to create the Sybil's Cave, a fake grotto that functioned as a folly and refreshment stand," wrote Tom Gilbert. "Here visitors strolling along the river walk stopped to buy water that supposedly came from a spring in the cave, and supposedly had health-giving properties. A wink to the waiter would bring you hard liquor instead." ==Other features==

In the 1830s, a tribe of Native-American Penobscots arrived from Maine to entertain and sell handmade merchandise. For over a decade they staged "Indian dances," held canoe races, and sold fine handwoven baskets to tourists. Because of this and a rougher clientele frequenting the recreation spots, in 1836 the New York Herald was ready to declare the impending demise of the town's shorefront and the Elysian Fields: The character of Hoboken is gone forever. It is now as bad as the Five Points—as dirty and drunken as Walnut street—and as riotous as the Burnt District during the strikes. Its beautiful arbors are filled with cigar-smoking blackguards—its serpentine walks crowded with drunken vagabonds—its sea shore resounds only to all the graces of Billingsgate, and the swearing of a man of war. No gentleman—no lady—no decent—no respectable people go there. It is the rendezvous for loafers, pickpockets, filles de joie, thieves, burglars, and Thomas street fashionables. The Hoboken boats are just as filthy and disagreeable as Hoboken itself. The Canal street steamer, the other day, was so crammed with loafers that it almost capsized. The Elysian Fields have been turned into a perfect and unapproachable Hell. Their drinkables are poisons, and their milk punch death. As a result of such incidents and the consequent negative publicity, attendance at the grounds began to fall in the mid-1830s. "During the last years of Colonel Stevens' life [he died in 1838]," wrote Mann, "his park began its gradual decline—a fact hard to imagine for the student of baseball who assumes the park and the game flourished in tandem."The Elysian Fields were also notorious as a preferred suicide spot, with the semi-famous (composer S.H. Dyer and Colonnade proprietor Michael McCarty) and the unknown among the victims. According to the Jersey Journal in 1884, "The bodies of suicides found dangling from the trees and those washed ashore during the past three decades would give the [Elysian] Fields a startling record as a morgue, as during that period more than 300 corpses were found in that locality." ==Decline==

By the early 1870s, as Hoboken's waterfront become more industrial and the neighborhood more run-down, the allure of the Elysian Fields, the Colonnade, and Sybil's Cave as tourist attractions began to fade. By this time, all of the founding fathers of the grounds—the Stevens patriarchs—had died, the last, Edwin Augustus Stevens, in 1868. The original Stevens family plan to build the grounds to attract buyers of Hoboken real estate had been successful, and the Elysian Fields no longer served that purpose. With the construction of two significant baseball parks enclosed by fences in Brooklyn in the early 1860s (the Capitoline Grounds and Union Grounds), enabling promoters to charge admission to games, the prominence of the Elysian Fields as a baseball and cricket venue began to wane. The St. George Cricket Club, which had relocated from the Elysian Fields to Hoboken's nearby Fox Hill, left the latter grounds in 1865 to secure playing space in New York. The completion of Central Park in the 1860s gave New York residents a Manhattan-based alternative to crossing the Hudson for relaxation and amusement in a landscaped meadow. (Ironically, the city of New York prohibited baseball in Central Park.) The once-preeminent New York clubs who had begun playing at the grounds in the 1840s and 1850s—the Gothams, the Knickerbockers, the Empire, and the Eagles—continued playing in Hoboken until the 1870s. However, by then the sport had evolved to paid professionalism (the first major league, the National Association, debuted in 1871), and these old clubs were competitively irrelevant. In 1879, the New Jersey Athletic Club opened new multi-use grounds at what remained of the northeastern part of the Elysian Fields. The grounds showcased bicycle and foot-races, pole-leaping, hammer throwing, shot-put, and other competitive athletic pursuits. (By enlarging the image, the name of the NJ Athletic Club can be seen printed along the perimeter wall in the accompanying 1881 map.) Sybil's Cave was closed in 1880 due to health department concerns about water quality, and it was used as a cool storage locker for a nearby eating establishment. That establishment devolved into a seedy waterfront tavern and closed in the 1930s, when the cave was filled in with concrete and dirt. Tom Gilbert wrote that by the mid-1890s, "The baseball fields gave way to piers, warehouses, and more railroad tracks." A November 1893 article in the New York Herald was even more apocalyptic: its headline was "Last of Famous Elysian Fields," followed by a succession of three sub-heads, which read, "The Long Favored Amusement Haunts of New Yorkers Soon to Disappear / Time's Destroying Touches / Historical Retreats and Honored Landmarks of Early Days Now Being Rapidly Obliterated." The article stated: Even up to the past year was the hand of progress and time stayed and inroads toward the utter obliteration of the former spot so dear and memorable to New Yorkers sparsely advanced, so that it appeared as if it was really with reluctance that the despoilers of the grounds almost held sacred cared to go on at any rampant pace, as though fully mindful of the fact that when the news was spread of the final destruction of the old Elysian Fields, the work would be by many felt as an utter desecration. But during the past four months the march of improvement in Hoboken as a modern suburb and town of stimulated enterprise has been steadily asserting itself, and piece by piece the approaches to the Elysian Fields have been encroached upon, until the very centre of the greatly admired domain, filled with its treasured romantic and historical surroundings, is now in readiness for speedy and complete obliteration. First the lower approaches to the famous pleasure grounds were cut into by the establishing of a number of steamship wharves for foreign traffic, just below the grounds of the Stevens Institute ... To those with whom a lingering regard still exists for Elysian Fields and who have not of late frequented the old grounds, the transformation now being wrought and already accomplished will be indeed surprising. In fact, certain quarters of the favorite, ancient domain to old Gothamites who were wont to make the Elysian Fields the one retreat for their Sunday's recreation will scarcely be recognized. ==The area today==

The Elysian Fields has long since been supplanted by a modern street grid. A Maxwell House Coffee plant was built on a section of the former Elysian grounds in 1939. During its heyday it was the largest employer in town, and its towering "Good to the Last Drop" sign, featuring a giant tilted coffee cup, dominated Hoboken's skyline along the Hudson River. The Maxwell House plant closed in 1990 and was later demolished, to be replaced by a high-rise condominium. The only recreational remnant of the Elysian Fields is a small playground named Elysian Park. It is bounded on the west by Hudson Street, on the north and east by Frank Sinatra Drive (which winds around the park's northern perimeter), One scene from the 1954 Elia Kazan film On the Waterfront, starring Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint, was filmed in Elysian Park along its iron fence overlooking the Hudson. There is no baseball field on the grounds. The Stevens name lives on at the Stevens Institute of Technology, located south of where the Elysian Fields were situated. The institute was established in 1868 through a bequest from Edwin Augustus Stevens. As of 2021, there were over 8,000 students enrolled. At the intersection of 11th and Washington Streets, a few blocks west of Elysian Park, a marker was placed where one of the two Elysian Fields baseball diamonds is thought to have been situated; however, the spot is historically speculative, as the neighborhood and streets have changed drastically since the mid-19th century and the waterfront has been extended by landfill. In 2003 a civic improvement organization called the Hoboken Industry and Business Association placed concrete and bronze "base" monuments in the sidewalk at the intersection's corners. A bronze plaque denoting the connection to early baseball was placed in the median strip of 11th Street between first and second bases. == Notes ==