Recreation Park, Former sports venue in Pittsburgh, United States
Recreation Park was a sports venue in Pittsburgh, United States. It consisted of a field surrounded by wooden grandstands and later a banked cycling track.
Opened in 1865 as a skating center, it was adapted for baseball in 1867 and later hosted the Pittsburgh Pirates in their first National League season. It was converted into a velodrome in the early 1900s before being demolished in 1905.
The park was a gathering place for local baseball and football fans in the late 1800s. Its name lives on in the stories of early Pittsburgh sports.
The site is now covered by later development, so there is nothing left to visit. You can still walk around the block where it once stood to get a sense of the area.
In 1892, the park hosted the first known American football game with a professional player, who was paid $500. A single distant photograph of the grounds was found in 2015 inside a time capsule.
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