Nickerson Field is an outdoor athletic stadium in the Northeastern United States, on the campus of

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original c ...

(BU) in Boston, Massachusetts. The stadium is owned by BU, and is the home field for some Boston University Terriers athletics programs, including soccer and

lacrosse Lacrosse is a team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensi ...

. It was also the home of the Boston University Terriers football team until the program was discontinued following the 1997 season. The stadium is located on the site of

Braves Field Braves Field was a baseball park located in Boston, Massachusetts. Today the site is home to Nickerson Field on the campus of Boston University. The stadium was home of the Boston Braves of the National League from 1915 to 1952, prior to the ...

, the former home

ballpark A ballpark, or baseball park, is a type of sports venue where baseball is played. The playing field is divided into the infield, an area whose dimensions are rigidly defined, and the outfield, where dimensions can vary widely from place to pla ...

of the Boston Braves, a major league baseball team in the

National League The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League (NL), is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, and the world's oldest extant professional team ...

; the franchise relocated to

Milwaukee Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at th ...

in March 1953, and relocated again in 1966, becoming the

Atlanta Braves The Atlanta Braves are an American professional baseball team based in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The Braves compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) East division. The Braves were founded in B ...

. Parts of Braves Field, such as the entry gate and right field pavilion, remain as portions of the current stadium. The old Braves Field ticket office at Harry Agganis Way also remains, now used by the Boston University Police Department. The stadium has been the home of BU teams longer (50-plus years) than it was the home of the Braves (parts of 38 seasons). The field is named for

William Emery Nickerson William Emery Nickerson (November 5, 1853 – June 5, 1930) was an American engineer and inventor. He worked with King C. Gillette at the onset of the The Gillette Company and was later elected to Gillette's board of directors. Nickerson has been ...

(1853–1930), a partner of King C. Gillette during the early years of the Gillette Safety Razor Company.

History

The university's previous athletic field was in the town of Weston. That field had been named for Nickerson, a member of the BU

board of trustees A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organ ...

who had donated funds for the facilities in Weston in 1926. Nickerson "was an MIT graduate who was the principal inventor of the machinery used to manufacture the first

Gillette Gillette is an American brand of safety razors and other personal care products including shaving supplies, owned by the multi-national corporation Procter & Gamble (P&G). Based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, it was owned by The ...

safety razor." The first Nickerson Field was dedicated on October 6, 1928, with a game against the New Hampshire Wildcats. BU purchased the former home of the Braves on July 30, 1953, and in April 1954 renamed it Boston University Field. In 1955, the left field pavilion and the "Jury Box" were demolished and in November, 1959, the grandstand was taken down to make room for three high rise dormitories that were completed in 1964. The existing right field pavilion was squared off on the west side and filled in on the east side where a section had been removed to accommodate the Braves Field right field foul pole and

bullpen In baseball, the bullpen (or simply the pen) is the area where relief pitchers warm up before entering a game. A team's roster of relief pitchers is also metonymically referred to as "the bullpen". These pitchers usually wait in the bullpen if ...

s. The three dormitories overlooking the field coincidentally suggest the outline of the original main grandstand section. In February 1956, BU was awarded $391,000 for the Weston field, which had been taken by

eminent domain Eminent domain (United States, Philippines), land acquisition (India, Malaysia, Singapore), compulsory purchase/acquisition (Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, United Kingdom), resumption (Hong Kong, Uganda), resumption/compulsory acquisition (Austr ...

for construction of Massachusetts Route 128. BU used the proceeds, in part, to renovate the former baseball park, and on September 28, 1963, renamed it Nickerson Field, inheriting the name of the prior field in Weston. In 1968, the field underwent a renovation. The four Braves Field light towers were dismantled. That year, BU became the second college in the United States to install

AstroTurf AstroTurf is an American subsidiary of SportGroup that produces artificial turf for playing surfaces in sports. The original AstroTurf product was a short-pile synthetic turf invented in 1965 by Monsanto. Since the early 2000s, AstroTurf has ...

. The following year, not only did the BU football team practice on that field, so did the

Boston College Eagles football The Boston College Eagles football team represents Boston College in the sport of American football. The Eagles compete in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) as a member of t ...

team and the Boston Patriots. Both used the field to prepare for away games they would play on AstroTurf fields. During the 1983 season, Nickerson Field was the home field of the Boston Breakers of the

United States Football League The United States Football League (USFL) was a professional American football league that played for three seasons, 1983 through 1985. The league played a spring/summer schedule in each of its active seasons. The 1986 season was scheduled to be ...

. From the mid-1980s to 1995, the stadium hosted the New England Scholastic Band Association's marching band field show championships. In 1989, to accommodate commencement speakers U.S. President George H. W. Bush and French President

François Mitterrand François Marie Adrien Maurice Mitterrand (26 October 19168 January 1996) was President of France, serving under that position from 1981 to 1995, the longest time in office in the history of France. As First Secretary of the Socialist Party, ...

, a large platform was constructed to Secret Service specifications on one side of the field. In 2001, the antiquated turf was replaced with a newer, more player-friendly artificial surface ( FieldTurf) as part of a deal with the

Women's United Soccer Association The Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA) was the world's first women's soccer league in which all the players were paid as professionals. Founded in February 2000, the league began its first season in April 2001 with eight teams in the U ...

to host the Boston Breakers games. With a professional soccer team playing at Nickerson the football lines, which had remained on the field even though BU no longer had a football program, were not repainted. The platform built for Bush and Mitterrand was removed during the summer of 2008, when the field was expanded and resurfaced. In the summer of 2015, the field received a new artificial turf, GreenFields MX Trimension; the new surface was installed over a period of five weeks, covering .

Use by professional sports

Since its reconfiguration in the 1950s, multiple professional sports franchises have used the stadium: : The Tea Men used Nickerson after

Foxboro Raceway Bay State Raceway, later known as New England Harness Raceway, Foxboro Raceway, and Foxboro Park was a harness racing track located in Foxborough, Massachusetts, United States that operated from 1947 until 1997. It stood next to Foxboro Stadium and ...

filed a

temporary restraining order An injunction is a legal and equitable remedy in the form of a special court order that compels a party to do or refrain from specific acts. ("The court of appeals ... has exclusive jurisdiction to enjoin, set aside, suspend (in whole or in par ...

preventing them from using

Schaefer Stadium Foxboro Stadium, originally Schaefer Stadium and later Sullivan Stadium, was an outdoor stadium in the New England region of the United States, located in Foxborough, Massachusetts. It opened in 1971 and served as the home of the New England P ...

. : The 2004 and 2005 Major League Lacrosse championships were played at the stadium.

History

Use by professional sports

References

Further reading