News

City seeks National Register spot for historic Berkeley stadium

By Bill Moss, Published: December 24, 2014

Hendersonville's historic Berkeley Mills Park, the public stage for the old textile league teams from 1949 to 1961 and the home field for at least one high school state championship team, could earn a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.

The city's Historic Preservation Commission is submitting a grant application that would pay for a consultant's research and nomination to the historic registry.
Built in the post-World War II boom years when Berkeley Mills and other textile plants in the mountains and foothills buzzed with activity, the stadium was home to the Berkeley Spinners for 14 years. It has hosted high school baseball teams and is still in use today for Babe Ruth and middle school baseball.
In 2007, Patrick W. Gallagher Jr. published "The Berkeley Spinners: A Baseball History 1948-1961." Gallagher's book is rich in detail and packed with statistics about the 14 seasons the Spinners played at the stadium. Gallagher assembled box scores and sports stories from nearly every game and compiled dozens of charts of single-game records, league standings, pitcher ERAs and career batting averages. But Gallagher's work, valuable as it is, lacks the cultural, architectural and historical context that the state Historic Preservation Office and U.S. Department of Interior demands for inclusion in the National Register.
"I talked with the guy that did the book (about the Spinners era), and since then Hendersonville High School used it as their home field when they won the state championship," said Lu Ann Welter, an administrative assistant in the city Planning Department who prepared a preliminary history on the ballpark. "It's gone on and on. It's been one of those fields that different people have used at different times. Like Dana High School playing Edneyville or something like that. It was a big deal to play in a real stadium."

'State is really excited'

Welter said that a professional researcher would focus on the stadium's role in the context of the mill as well as the games that had been played there and the players.
"I put together the basics that got them to say, 'Yes, we're interested,'" she said.
State Historic Preservation Office officials told Welter and Planning Director Sue Anderson that although mill village stadiums were once common most did not survive.
"The state's really excited about it," Anderson said. "It's unusual."

The next step is using the expertise of a consultant who can dig deeper into the ballpark's history and draft the nomination in a way that meets the criteria of the National Register. "I tried to do a bit of a timeline as well — when the league stopped, who's used it since then," Welter said. "Hendersonville High School has two state baseball championships. I talked to (HHS principal) Bobby Wilkins and he said they were definitely out there in '64 but there's also a possibility that they were still out there in 1990."

Waddell grades field

Gallagher traces the beginning of the stadium to the front office of the mill, crediting General Manager E.A. (Ellison Adger) "Joe" Smyth III, chief engineer L.T. "Luke" Rindal and Mack McDowell for spearheading the project.
"Dan Waddell & Co. began construction in early 1949 and their efforts were aided by Berkeley employees who would come to the construction site after their regular working hours to assist in the project," Gallagher wrote. "Plans called for covered spectator stands, dugouts complete with drinking fountains, a wooden outfield fence, separate team dressing rooms with showers, concession stands, and restrooms for the fans." The playing field was 325 feet down both foul lines and 365 feet to dead centerfield.
Hall Waddell, Dan Waddell's son, confirmed his father's role in building the field.
Dan Waddell's father-in-law, Hall Reaben, owned a bulldozer.
"Daddy kind of took that over and started a grading company called Dan Waddell & Co. and that was the only business he was in until 1960," Waddell said. "And then in 1960 he sold a half interest to Bob Brummett and it became Brummett and Waddell and Daddy came down and started running Reaben Oil Co."
While Dan Waddell would have graded the field and prepared the site for construction, he was not a general contractor that would have built the structure, his son said.

First year was on dirt

Gallaher dug up a column by Asheville Citizen columnist Red Miller in July 1949 that praised the new stadium in Hendersonville.
Miller remarked on the seats of wood and steel along the first baseline, concrete block seats behind home plate, "a finely constructed screen towering 40 feet behind home plate to protect fans" and the modern dressing rooms. Although it did not have grass that first year, Berkeley, the columnist wrote, was "a park that few Class D, and not many Class B ball clubs in American could equal."
(As Gallagher reported, the Asheville Tourists played in the Class B Tri-State League that year.)
"Following the 1949 season, further work and improvements were made to the Berkeley Mills Baseball Park," Welter wrote in her historic summary (also using some of Gallagher's research). "Grass was planted in both the infield and outfield, the spectator stands along the third base side were doubled in size and construction began on a roof which converted the seating area to a grandstand. Covered stands were also built behind home plate. Hendersonville Mayor A.V. Edwards threw out the first pitch. In May of that year, lights were installed allowing night games."
Gallagher, 8-10 years ago, and Welter recently have relied on Dewey Hunnicutt, a longtime Berkeley Spinners star, as a source for their research. Now 90, Hunnicutt was a stalwart on the mill team from 1948 until 1959 and played a few seasons of pro baseball for Carolina and Coastal Plains league teams.
Declining fan interest and a lack of younger mill employees willing to play on the company team led the mill to disband the squad.
"In 1962, Berkeley decided they would be unable to continue adult baseball, along with three other industries, effectively ending the league," Welter wrote. "Six weeks later, the Times-News reported that Hendersonville would field a team in the Buncombe County Independent Baseball League using Berkeley Park as their home field. Several of the Berkeley Spinners played on this team."
Since then, high schools and youth and adult leagues have used the field.
The baseball diamond and its historic and intact grandstand are important historically, an emblem of an era that we'll not see again, Welter notes.
"The importance and influence of the textile industry in Henderson County and the area cannot be overstated," she wrote. "Mill housing, stores and ball teams were a way of life, now lost to the past. For a mill to have a baseball team gave the entire community a sense of pride and a rare opportunity to attend a live sporting event."
"The Berkeley Mills ballpark," she reports, "is a rare example of an intact recreational field from the heyday of the textile industry."