“Historic” Ground
There was a large tract of undeveloped land called Boyle’s Thirty Acres on Montgomery Street in what I once called that blue collar of blue collar towns, Jersey City, NJ. Actually, with rents in NYC shooting skyward, New Yorkers who are buying up old brownstones, spending significant sums refurbishing them, and moving to what was dreary Hoboken and Jersey City have dramatically changed the demographics and appearances of both places. High rise office buildings have been built near and facing the Hudson (Goldman Sachs, for example, purchased and rebuilt the old Colgate Palmolive manufacturing plant into an imposing office complex).
Now, my memory of Boyle’s Acres in 1946 and 7 is of an unkempt, seemingly waiting for post war prosperity, desolate piece of real estate. In the spring and early summer there were spots with grass, but for the most part it was just dirt and weeds. Without knowing its history it was important to us as an after school practice/scrimmage field for our high school football team. We had heard references about a famous event that occurred there, but could not tie it down (I remind you that there was no Internet then and further, I guess we did not give a damn).
I recall vicious practices in which each of us vied for the attention and approval of our coach, Milt Singer, who once played on the NY Giants football team. Some of the scrimmages there were rougher than a regular game. At Indian summer time – September and early October – it would get so humidly hot that as I reflect on those years, I don’t know how with all of that equipment on we made it through without heat exposure. In those years we were discouraged from drinking much water when playing in that brutal heat and humidity, on the one hand to prove our toughness and the other because it was said it would result in an upset stomach. I remember leaving that field at the end of a practice, uniform and body filthy, soaked with perspiration and exhausted. We were high school kids, however, and after a shower, were ready to go again.
Why bring this up? A few weeks ago I was sitting in a doctor’s office (now one of my repetitive activities) sifting through one of those typically ancient magazines when I saw a piece on the first million dollar gate sports event. In tracing the history of big money sports the article referred to the Jack Dempsey vs. Georges Carpentier heavy weight championship fight on July 2, 1921 at – you guessed it – Boyles Thirty Acres in “Joisey” City. The fight was witnessed by 80,000 people, raked in over $1.7 million in ticket sales, and was the first world championship bout to be aired on the radio (there was no TV back then).
Carpentier who was a very popular boxer earned large purses for the time until war broke out. A loyal Frenchman, he answered the call for military service at the start of the First World War as a soldier and exited as a national hero. As a French Air Force observation pilot, he flew dangerous missions over battlefields. Decorated with the French War Cross and Military Medal, his new status helped to popularize professional sports. At the time of his fight with Dempsey he was already a veteran of 80 fights and a past holder of the world middleweight championship.
Jack Dempsey, in spite of his making only six defenses of his title in his more than seven-year reign, was one of the most celebrated heavyweight champions in boxing history. At the time, widely unpopular, he was a rough/tough guy from a place called Manassa, Colorado who was. It seems that he had received an exemption from the US draft board because of “economic commitments to his family” and did not enter service in the First World War. He was tried on charges of draft evasion in 1920. In the case, prompted by a bitter divorce from his then wife and a photo of him “working” in a defense plant wearing expensive dress shoes, Dempsey was acquitted, but not without angry criticism.
The great promoter, Tex Rickard, who made extravagances out of several of Dempsey’s most important fights, latched on to and promoted that bad press for the fight; a good vs. bad guy scenario. While Carpentier was given no significant chance of winning, Rickard saw the battle between the respected French war hero and the alleged draft-dodger as an ideal sports event and, I might add, a chance to make a pile of money for his investors and himself.
After signing them to the bout, Rickard borrowed $250,000 to build a 91,000 seat stadium at Boyle’s acres. The outdoor wooden bowl took only nine weeks to construct and covered some seven acres of the field. While the furthest row of bleachers was a distance of just over 300 feet from the ring, the great HL Menken, at the time writing for the NY World and not the Baltimore Sun, wrote that you could see very well from even the cheapest seats. A relevant question for me at this time in my life is what did they use for restrooms? Also, somewhat related to that is can you imagine, the Volstead Act not withstanding, the quantity of “refreshments” imbibed on that hot, sultry night.
Ticket prices ranged from $50 for ringside seats to $5.50 for bleacher level seats. When the final gross receipts were tabulated, the amount was a staggering for the time $1,789,238. Prior to the Dempsey/Carpentier fight a live gate of $1,000,000 was unthinkable. As a matter of fact, the amount of money that it pulled in was the lead story in the N Y Times the morning after the fight.
As for the fight, it was a mismatch. Dempsey pummeled Carpentier unmercifully until the Frenchman, beaten and discouraged by the 4th round, was counted out after a vicious punch from Dempsey.
So there you have it. That dump of a playing field really did have a history, and just think, I played and got beaten up football-wise daily on that “historic” ground. As for John P. Boyle himself, I could not find anything except his great grandson asking for information about him. As to the bowl, by 1927 most major title bouts in the New York area were being held either at Yankee Stadium or the Polo Grounds. In June, 1927 a wrecking ball brought the short history of Boyle’s Thirty Acres to an end and in 1953 that “historic site” became a Jersey City housing project named Montgomery Gardens.[
