Lamar Porter Athletic Field is located at West 7th and Johnson Streets, in the Stifft Station neighborhood of

Little Rock ( The "Little Rock") , government_type = Council-manager , leader_title = Mayor , leader_name = Frank Scott Jr. , leader_party = D , leader_title2 = Council , leader_name2 ...

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage ...

. It is a

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

-built

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

field placed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

on December 6, 1990.

Hall of Fame A hall, wall, or walk of fame is a list of individuals, achievements, or other entities, usually chosen by a group of electors, to mark their excellence or Wiktionary:fame, fame in their field. In some cases, these halls of fame consist of actu ...

third baseman A third baseman, abbreviated 3B, is the player in baseball or softball whose responsibility is to defend the area nearest to third base — the third of four bases a baserunner must touch in succession to score a run. In the scoring system us ...

Brooks Robinson Brooks Calbert Robinson Jr. (born May 18, 1937) is a former third baseman in Major League Baseball who played his entire career for the Baltimore Orioles from 1955 to 1977. Nicknamed "the Human Vacuum Cleaner" or "Mr. Hoover", he is generally c ...

started his career at Porter Field. As described in its National Register nomination form, the construction of the ball field was "one of the bell weather events of the early years of the Little Rock Boys' Club." When it was built, the site was in what was then regarded as "west" Little Rock in an area identified as desirable for park and playing field development by John Nolen, a nationally renowned city planner and landscape architect who was dismayed by the lack of recreational facilities in Little Rock. Nolen observed that although school grounds offered the "opportunity for the sand boxes and apparatus used by small children, there remained a demonstrable need for two classes of playgrounds where boys between ten and sixteen and from sixteen upwards can have the opportunity for ��more seriously organized games." Construction of just such a field began in the fall of 1934 and employed workmen with the federal Works Progress Administration. The project took 18 months to complete. Tennis courts, playgrounds, and other recreational spaces complement the ball field. Lamar Porter was the son of Mr. And Mrs. Q. L. Porter of Little Rock, born August 17, 1913. He was educated in Little Rock's public schools, attended

Little Rock High School Little Rock Central High School (LRCHS) is an accredited comprehensive public high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, United States. The school was the site of forced desegregation in 1957 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation by ...

, and graduated from

Sewanee Military Academy St. Andrew’s-Sewanee School is a private, coeducational, Episcopal, boarding and day college preparatory school serving 216 students in grades six through twelve. It is located in Sewanee, Tennessee on the Cumberland Plateau between Nashvill ...

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

in 1931. Porter was a junior at

Washington and Lee University , mottoeng = "Not Unmindful of the Future" , established = , type = Private liberal arts university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.092 billion (2021) , president = William C. Dudley , provost = Lena Hill , city = Lexingto ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

when he was killed May 12, 1934, in an automobile accident between Lexington and

Staunton, Virginia Staunton ( ) is an independent city (United States), independent city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 25,750. In Virginia, independent cities a ...

. It was the family of Lamar Porter, in attempt to memorialize his life, who provided the land and money required to build the eponymous baseball field. His mother; aunt, Mrs. J.D. Jordan; and his brother, Jim S. Porter made the donation on the first anniversary of Porter's death, which coincidentally fell on Mother's Day. When the complex was complete, it held a lighted

softball diamond Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Hanc ...

with underground wiring, four lighted

tennis court A tennis court is the venue where the sport of tennis is played. It is a firm rectangular surface with a low net stretched across the centre. The same surface can be used to play both doubles and singles matches. A variety of surfaces can be u ...

s, a regulation

baseball diamond A baseball field, also called a ball field or baseball diamond, is the field upon which the game of baseball is played. The term can also be used as a metonym for a baseball park. The term sandlot is sometimes used, although this usually refers ...

, a 1,500-seat

grandstand A grandstand is a normally permanent structure for seating spectators. This includes both auto racing and horse racing. The grandstand is in essence like a single section of a stadium, but differs from a stadium in that it does not wrap a ...

complete with club rooms, shower and locker rooms, rest rooms, and a concession stand. It was first used by Boys' Club teams in the summer of 1936; by 1937, it was also being used by city leagues and American Legion teams. The property also held an apparatus area with swings, slides, and

jungle gym A jungle gym (called a climbing frame in British English) is a piece of playground equipment made of many pieces of material, such as metal pipes or ropes, on which participants can climb, hang, sit, and—in some configurations—slide. Monkey ...

s; a small children's play area that included hammocks, small slides, and kindergarten tables; a play area for older children with facilities for

handcrafts A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated re ...

and quiet games; and other areas for shuffleboard, marbles, horseshoes,

handball Handball (also known as team handball, European handball or Olympic handball) is a team sport in which two teams of seven players each (six outcourt players and a goalkeeper) pass a ball using their hands with the aim of throwing it into the g ...

, volleyball, and

table tennis Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...

, as well as picnic areas and a "stage for dramatics." Lamar Porter Athletic Field opened to the public in 1937 at the corner of Seventh and Johnson streets where it eventually became home to Pewee League, Midget League,

Little League Little League Baseball and Softball (officially, Little League Baseball Inc) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization American Legion The American Legion, commonly known as the Legion, is a non-profit organization of U.S. war War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militi ...

, and semi-pro baseball teams. The Little Rock Doughboys were the only Legion team in town until they were replaced by an eight-team Legion league in 1954. The baseball sequence from the 1984 film ''

A Soldier's Story ''A Soldier's Story'' is a 1984 American mystery drama film directed and produced by Norman Jewison, adapted by Charles Fuller from his Pulitzer Prize-winning '' A Soldier's Play'', an adaptation of Herman Melville's novella '' Billy Budd''. It ...

'' was filmed at the historic field.

References

External links

Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture entry
{{National Register of Historic Places Buildings and structures in Little Rock, Arkansas Sports in Little Rock, Arkansas Works Progress Administration in Arkansas Sports venues in Arkansas 1936 establishments in Arkansas National Register of Historic Places in Little Rock, Arkansas Historic district contributing properties in Arkansas Sports venues on the National Register of Historic Places in Arkansas Sports venues completed in 1936

See also

References

External links