Durkee, Joseph H., Athletic Field

About this property

J. P. Small Memorial Stadium is a baseball park in Jacksonville, Florida. It is located in the Durkeeville community in northwest Jacksonville. Constructed in 1912 and rebuilt in 1936, it was the city's first municipal recreation field, and served as its primary baseball park before the construction of Wolfson Park in 1954. Throughout the years the stadium has been known at various times as Barrs Field, Durkee Field, and the Myrtle Avenue Ball Park. The original facility was constructed in 1911–1912 on a patch of land owned by Joseph H. Durkee, a former Union officer during the American Civil War who had settled in Jacksonville, where he became a prominent businessman and politician. In 1911, Durkee's son Jay Durkee turned control of the property over to Amander Barrs, a local businessman and President of the Jacksonville Baseball Association. Barrs ordered the construction of a recreational field to be used by local teams on the property. The facility was completed in 1912 and was known as Barrs Field, but was generally known as the Myrtle Avenue Ball Park to locals. One early tenant was the Jacksonville Athletics, an African-American club for which James Weldon Johnson played. One of the rare professional clubs was the Jacksonville Scouts of the Florida State League, who played in 1921. However, as the city had no municipal park, other teams used fields at the Jacksonville Fairgrounds or across the river in South Jacksonville during this time. In addition to local teams, Major League clubs including the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers held their spring training at the field. The Philadelphia Athletics were the first major league team to use Barrs Field for spring training, from 1914 until 1918. In 1918, the Pittsburgh Pirates held their spring training at the ballpark. From 1919 until 1920, the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers called Barrs Field their spring training home. The Dodgers would return for one last spring at Barrs in 1922. The lack of a city park led both major and minor league teams to avoid Jacksonville after 1922. In 1926, the city government decided to purchase Barrs Field from Durkee in hopes of bringing back professional baseball. On March 13, 1926, the city signed a binder to purchase the park, which was renamed Durkee Field. Shortly after this, the city entered into negotiations to bring a Southeastern League franchise to the city. This was successful, and the original incarnation of the Jacksonville Tars was born. In 1932, the city purchased Durkee Field for $348,000. The original stadium was destroyed in a fire in 1936, but the city immediately rebuilt it in 1936–1937. The new structure was larger, and included a section for African-American patrons in the era of segregation. In 1938 and from 1941 to mid-1942, Jacksonville's only Negro league franchise, the Jacksonville Red Caps of the Negro American League, used the park as their home field.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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