As the summer winds down, nostalgic memories of other summers past bubble up to the surface. Recently I was reminiscing about my far-from-stellar career with the Phillies team of the Eastside Little League. I recall mostly long, hot practices in Tryon Park fielding grounders and running against my will. I recall even longer, hotter games where I stood mindlessly in the right outfield, blowing impressive gum bubbles; I recall my most stellar moment being when, alerted by the sudden commotion around me, I lifted my glove and snagged a fly ball from the air–despite being blinded by a huge pink bubble the size of my head. A brief career as a mostly accidental athlete gave way to what is usually condescendingly referred to as “bookishness”, and I never really looked back to the diamond.

I tell you this unsolicited anecdote both to thematically set up the following blog post, which will be largely about baseball(!), but also to stress the fact that I’m not a fan nor player of baseball in any fashion. My only times at a baseball stadium since have largely been at the promise of free beer and food. Baseball’s fine. Nothing against it. But definitely don’t expect any [heh, heh] “inside baseball” about baseball in this post. I’m just looking at maps and broadsheets, over here.

Let’s get to it, shall we! The year is 1886 and a new ballground is being built out towards the Brighton city line. In the below article, we embark on a streetcar journey from the Four Corners, trundling up Main Street Hill (with the help of additional horses), and coasting along the East Main Street line to University Avenue–now Atlantic Avenue–and finally, to the ball grounds, still under construction.

Above, how the Culver Field ballpark would have looked shortly after its construction in 1886.

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Culver’s Woods

Before we go on, let’s go back a bit, to when this location was a tree-covered area known as “Culver’s Woods”. Marvin A. Culver, a nephew of the pioneer settler Oliver Culver, owned the piece of land between University Avenue [today Atlantic Ave.], Culver Park [today University Ave.] and the New York Central Railroad near the engine roundhouse.

Culver’s Woods was a lush and beautiful patch of wooded land, where R. setigera used to grow wild.

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The Hop Bitters

During this period, professional league baseball in Rochester was represented by the Hop Bitters, who played in a field on North Union Street. Not to go too off-course right at the outset, but here I was hoping to insert a map and image of the Hop Bitters field on Union, and I kind of can but I’ve got words about it [bear with me]:

This slide from the Rochester Baseball History blog seems to make a fairly accurate assessment as to the location of the Hop Bitters field, however I have one small complaint: as one can see by examining the 1875 map is that the street to the south of the ball field is Tappan Street [now Lyndhurst]; whereas the red dotted line delineating the field seems to treat Weld Street as being the street to the immediate south of the ball ground. Tappan Street is south of Weld, which means Weld Street should be visible below the ball ground in the illustration below:

One can see, however, that it is not. Tappan Street is there, and the next more northern cross-street is not labeled.

Of course, it’s difficult to say; obviously, I could be making a mistake, or the map could contain a mistake, but from the looks of it the Hop Bitters ball ground should actually be a block south of where the Rochester Baseball History blog makes it out to be. The discrepency is confusing however, and made even more confusing by the fact that my reckoning places the field among numerous houses [never a good sign], whereas the reckoning of the baseball history blog places it conveniently among several empty plots! So I have to suppose they’re correct in their assessment, but then why is that street labeled “Tappan” in the illustration? I have no answer. If you have any guesses, feel free to comment!

Getting back to our baseball club, the Hop Bitters:

The Hop Bitters baseball club was organized under the auspices of Asa T. Soule, a patent medicine magnate whose claim to fame and fortune was Hop Bitters, a medicinal compound formulated around hops. In an attempt to ingratiate his name into the city of Rochester, Soule financed numerous clubs and organizations. Soule’s eventual repudiated attempts to donate the University of Rochester hundreds of thousands of dollars–hoping they’d change their name to Hop Bitters University–caused him to pull up stakes and take off to Dodge City, Kansas. [Adams]

After the Hop Bitters baseball club disbanded, another club was formed to get baseball up and running again in Rochester:

The above article describes the rental of Culver’s Woods by the baseball club which formed to replace the Hop Bitters franchise. Thinking they were but an amateur baseballing group, Culver “lowballed” the rent and was forced to hike it back up when it turned out to be a minor league stadium bulging with throngs of spectators.

This small but intriguing snippet hints at the segregated history of baseball: a team from the Douglass League, a club for prominent Black Republicans in the city of Rochester, face down an all-Black team from Elmira, NY, the Casinos.

This source seems to conflate the burning of the stadium’s grandstands with the loss of the Hop Bitters franchise; in reality, as I’ve laid out above, this fire happened nearly a full decade after the Hop Bitters had vacated the city.

After the fire, the field sat empty for five years.

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The Second Ball Field

In 1898, a new owner took on the ball field, and had plans drawn up for an up-to-date stadium to be constructed on the lot.

As one can see by the plan above and the map below, Culver Field had three seating areas: the bleachers, the grand stand for baseball games, and a “bicycle grand stand” oriented for better viewing of bicycle races, which were to take place on the kite-shaped bicycling track around the perimeter of the baseball diamond and outfield.

Above: a photograph of Culver Field from the Rochester Herald. The view is south from University [Atlantic] Avenue showing the bicycle grandstand at right, the baseball grandstand at center, and the bleachers at left. Over the bleachers at left can be seen the Union Foundry Co. Far right are some houses, most likely along Jersey [Russel] Street.

Another photo of the field can be found in volume XV of the Genesee Country Scrapbook:

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Bronchos/Beau Brummels

The Rochester professional baseball team at the end of the 19th century was the Rochester Bronchos. They seem to have had a bit of a “fancy lads” image, which probably led to their eventual (and temporary) name change: the Rochester Beau Brummells. Under the Beau Brummells epithet, they had such a dismal showing that they were considered the worst team in Rochester history.

Apparently it was a common struggle for the team to have members who are too old? Frank Scheibeck would have been around about 38 years old as of the above 1903 article. The whole article is a bit slangy and difficult to parse, so it’s probably just sports fan combativeness set to print.

“‘Number ‘13’ pills that are served in ‘submarine’ Chinese laundries”, in particular is a head-scratcher. I looked into it and it may be referring to gurgum-13 pills, a guar gum-based traditional Tibetan medicine preparation taken to cleanse the liver–but the quote seems to imply a mental affect to the pill; perhaps a sly reference to opiates, but those aren’t usually found in pill form. My googling is weak in this area. If anyone knows more about that, I’m very curious so… let me know!

Another interesting thing to note is how the contemporary paper refers to the team routinely in numerous articles as “Arthur Irwin’s Beau Brummels”.

The Canadian-American baseball manager and shortstop Arthur Irwin is famed for having “invented” and popularized what eventually became the modern baseball glove. The “Irwin glove” manifested after Irwin broke his fingers during a game and, not wanting to miss subsequent games, “he obtained an oversized buckskin driving glove, padded it and sewed the third and fourth fingers together to allow space for bandages.”

Soon after, other fielders began to take to the field with similar gloves. Similar claims are made by others, however, and I personally believe glove use probably arose simultaneously in multiple places as players fucked up their fingers and kept playing.

Another, less innovative practice of Arthur Irwin was bigamy. After receiving a diagnosis of stomach cancer and granted a life expectancy of days, Arthur booked upon a ship to Boston, ostensibly to see his brother and die at his home. Instead, Arthur Irwin seemingly tossed himself overboard.

During the investigation into Irwin’s disappearance and death, two widows emerged; one lived in Boston and the other lived in New York. He first married Elizabeth, the woman in Boston, in 1883. Together they had three children, including a son who was 37 at the time of Irwin’s death, and nine grandchildren. In the 1890s he married again, this time in Philadelphia to May, a woman he met while coaching baseball at the University of Pennsylvania. They settled in New York and had a son who was 24 when Irwin died.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Irwin]

Below, some T206 baseball cards were made of Rochester Bronchos players during the 1909 season, just prior to changing their name [again!] to the Rochester Hustlers.
(The constant name changes would finally settle down after Red Wings Stadium is built and the team officially becomes the Rochester Red Wings, which the team still goes by today.)

John “Big Jawn” Ganzel would go on to become manager of the Rochester Hustlers.

The “Dead-Ball Era” was well underway and the Bronchos were packing the stands with fans of low scores and tedious gameplay. Much like modern hockey games, the main appeal of the game of this era seemed to be extremely cheap beer and the possibility of player fights. During one thronged match, the structural integrity of the bleachers was put to the test–and failed.

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Gleason Works

In 1905, Gleason Works purchased the lot containing Culver Field and began constructing the first factory and office buildings in what would become a now-familiar large façade.

Next door to Gleason Works starting in 1917 is the plant of the Symington-Anderson Co., a corporation formed to manufacture thousands of weapons for the first World War, later to become a government arsenal.

I know the angle’s not quite the same on this comparison image. They can’t all be perfect, I tried really hard!

The Gleason company still held company ball games on their grounds, probably in the area towards Atlantic Avenue that didn’t have any buildings yet.

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Bay Street Ball Grounds

Booted off their home base, the Bronchos took their baseball business to another ballground by Bay Street. These grounds were most often known as “Baseball Park”, not the most imaginative name but a descriptive one!

The Bay Street ball grounds were carved out of a section of the Rogers Tract, part of the land once belonging to Hosea Rogers [who we’ve touched upon previously.]

During its tenure at the Bay Street ball grounds, Rochester’s team would burn through three whole new names: The Hustlers, the Colts, and Tribe, before settling on “Red Wings” just before the construction of their new stadium.

Judging from the angle of the above shot, the houses pictured are ones in the newly-developing Rogers Tract, including Parkside Avenue, Denver Street, Alexis Street, Iroquois Street, and part of Rosewood Terrace, as pictured below in 1918:

The above view is far less interesting; to the northeast, the undeveloped lots north of Bay Street, along Bedford Street, Gilburne Street, and Suffolk Street.

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Red Wings/Silver Stadium

The St. Louis Cardinals purchased the Rochester Red Wings and built a new stadium. The Rochester Red Wing’s new home at Red Wings Stadium opened May 2, 1929 at the northwest corner of Joseph Avenue and Norton Street.

The most charming item of note in these aerials is the evidence of other, smaller baseball diamonds outside the stadium. These fields invariably spawn ballgames, it is nature at work.

The Red Wings Stadium was renamed Silver Stadium in 1968 after Morrie Silver, who led a 1957 stock drive to buy the Red Wings from the St. Louis Cardinals, keeping the team in Rochester. His name is now given to Morrie Silver Way, the access road to Innovative Field [formerly part of Platt Street].

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Bill Nill

One diehard fan, William “Bill” Jacob Nill, had been regularly attending games since 1909, always sitting in the bleachers.

Bill Nill died on August 24, 1978. His ashes, as per his wishes, were spread beneath the bleachers, and marked–at least temporarily–with a plaque.

The bleachers were briefly removed in the 1979 season, at which point the plaque was returned to Peg Nill; however, the Coca-Cola Bottling plant brought back the bleachers as part of a promotional deal the following season.

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Silver Demolished

If you’re looking to read more, a much better blog than mine rochistory.wordpress.com goes into more detail on several elements of this post.

[https://rochistory.wordpress.com/2020/09/10/500-norton-street-a-rochester-destination-part-1/]

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Frontier/Innovative Field

And that brings us to today’s baseball stadium, the stadium formerly known as Frontier Field, now known by the clunky, un-stadium-like “Innovative Field“. Innovative Field. It just doesn’t roll off the tongue. I never thought anything would make me pine for Frontier days.

The site where Frontier Field would eventually be built was mostly, by 1935, freight houses for the New York Central Railroad. The Alling & Cory Company would still be there by the time of demolition sixty years later; the paper company operated out of that building since 1907. They moved to 1059 West Ridge Road.

Construction photos of Frontier Field.
https://www.frontiernet.net/~rochballparks2/rochester/frontier.htm

There’s been loads of history since this point, but I think I’ve done enough for this post. I have to keep things under control!

Easier said than done.

With Frontier’s 2020 bankruptcy, the company began divesting itself of financial commitments, one of which was sponsorship rights to Frontier Field. Stepping in, a Henrietta-based company Innovative Solutions:

Innovative Field. I dunno. I just dunno. Maybe I’ll get used to it.

I’ve gotten used to a lot of other changes.

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