Landscape Information
Situated west of downtown on land once occupied by the Lenape, this irregularly shaped 52-acre park, founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1792, spans both sides of the Passaic River and reflects the town’s industrial heritage. The following year the Society for Useful Manufactures (SUM) began concentrating industrial development, including a hydropower system with raceways (1790s), designed by architect and engineer Pierre Charles L’Enfant. Growth continued into the nineteenth century, including the extant SUM Electric Generating Plant (1912) on the east side of the river. To the west, atop an abandoned quarry (later a burial ground, town reservoir, and industrial property), the site was dubbed Monument Heights Playground by the 1930s. Here, the Olmsted Brothers and architect John Shaw designed Hinchcliffe Stadium (1932, rehabilitated 2023), which became home to two Negro League baseball teams: the New York Black Yankees and the New York Cubans.
Connected by a footbridge overlooking Great Falls, the park’s west side is level with the top of the falls, while the east side has a lower elevation. Designated viewing areas situated across the varied terrain provide panoramic views of the 77-foot falls, concrete dam (1830–1840), and precipitous, rocky bluffs framing the chasm. One is Mary Ellen Kramer Park, west of the waterfalls, which features a plaza and looped walkways that connect to a pedestrian bridge to the east side, where it continues down to Overlook Park. A small plaza offers a staircase down to rows of roughhewn-stone and concrete seating set into a grassy slope. The waterway sustains deciduous canopy trees, ferns, and expanses of grass along its riverbanks and faces of the bluffs.
The park is a contributing feature in the National Register-designated Great Falls of Paterson and SUM Historic District (1970). It was designated a National Historic Landmark (1976) and Hinchcliffe Stadium was individually listed in the National Register of Historic Places (2004). The site was designated a National Historic Park in 2011.
