Lincoln Park Grounds

Lincoln Park Grounds

Union Grounds The Grand Duchess
Location	Hopkins & McLean Ave. Cincinnati, Ohio
Capacity	4,000
Surface	Grass
Tenants
Cincinnati Red Stockings

The Lincoln Park Grounds, commonly known as Union Grounds, were a former baseball park located in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Grounds were built for the Union Cricket Club in 1856; they "were used for cricket and baseball in the summer and were flooded for skating in the winter."^[1] In 1865 Harry Wright became the professional of the Cincinnati Cricket Club, which also used the grounds, and the next year Aaron Champion, president of the new Cincinnati Base Ball Club, "approached Wright to propose a limited use of the grounds if the CBBC and Live Oaks club would put in $2000 each to revamp the Lincoln Park Grounds."^[2]

A year later the [Red Stockings] leased the grounds of the Union Cricket Club for its home tilts. Most club members referred to the field as the Union Grounds, although it also was known as the Union Cricket Club Grounds and the Lincoln Park Grounds, given the fact that the eight-acre, fenced grounds were located in a small park behind Lincoln Park in Cincinnati, near the Union Terminal. It was a twenty-minute ride by streetcar to the Union Grounds from the heart of downtown Cincinnati. Aaron Champion ordered that approximately $10,000 worth of improvements be made to the home grounds for the 1867 season, including grading and sodding of the field and building of a new clubhouse and stands.^[3]

The Union Grounds were used until 1875; the next year a new Cincinnati Red Stockings club moved to the Avenue Grounds two miles to the north.^[4]

References

1. The Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin, v. 27 (1969), p. 30.
2. Christopher Devine, Harry Wright (McFarland, 2003: ISBN 0-7864-1561-4), p. 30.
3. Stephen D. Guschov, The Red Stockings of Cincinnati (McFarland, 1998: ISBN 0-7864-0467-1), p. 10.
4. Reds Ballparks.

Coordinates: 39°06′32.23″N 84°31′56.97″W / 39.1089528°N 84.5324917°W