Greensboro's Athletic Park was used periodically by Guilford in the early 1900s before the formal construction of their own, similarly-named athletic field.

Overall, NC State had a record of 2-0 at this field, once as a neutral site and once as a road team. Both games were nonconference games.

  * Non-conference games

First, a note: it is not fully known if the canceled Oak Ridge game in 1894 was meant to be played on the grounds of the Athletic Park location, however, given that this park was the only one listed in the 1899 city directory, it seems almost certain that this was the intended location [1] [2]. Similarly, though no reports specified where the 1895 Guilford game took place, Guilford's periodical, The Collegian, noted that the game took place in Greensboro rather than stating it took place on the college grounds, which at that time were a considerable distance away [3].

Following the organization of the Greensboro Athletic Association in June of 1893, construction of an athletic park on the grounds of the North Carolina Steel & Iron Company began, though details are somewhat scarce. The NCS&I was a company which, after buying a great deal of land to the north of Greensboro city limits -- at that time, this was roughly the location of Bessemer Avenue -- repeatedly failed to deliver on promises of founding the state's first ironworks, largely due to false promises of securing funding. Though they did succeed in opening a blasting furnace, which was located along Buffalo Creek, the furnace was never known to be operational due to prohibitive costs. In mid-August, the first known match at the park, a baseball game between the Guilford Battleground team and an Alamance Club, took place. Though no post-game summary has been located, a brief report published not long thereafter stated that "Greensboro has the nicest baseball park in the state" [4] [5].

And early on, the park's billing lived up to such heights. Despite Greensboro lacking a professional minor league baseball team until 1902 (and then only for a short while *), the park hosted a variety of prestigious events, including a performance by the US Marine Corps Band in 1895 and a neutral-site baseball game between the Universities of North Carolina and Virginia to determine the Champion of the South -- UNC lost 7-1 [6] [7] [8]. Three years later, the grounds hosted the spring training of the Boston Beaneaters [9].

Besides those big events, sporadic circuses, and minor ball games, the park was largely either unused or its usage went unreported. Athletic Park remained in use sporadically through 1901, though its use as a professional venue was supplanted by Cone Athletic Park starting in 1902. The park saw a revival in advertized usage starting in the mid-1910s, hosting a variety of ameteur teams and fraternal organizations, as well as the practice grounds for the Greensboro Patriots [10]. The last report of the park's usage was on June 4th, 1932, with action as the practice field for the American Legion's junior team, though photographic evidence may suggest the grounds existed into the late 1940s [11] [17].

Though a "Base-Ball Park" is referenced in several city directories, the location of said park is decidedly vague. The first references to the park in the 1899 and 1900 city directories state only "Proximity," a suburb located 1/4 mile north of city limits, with no indication of a street address [2]. The main details from this are that its location was to the north of the city, as suggested by the report of its construction in 1893 on NCS&I grounds.

The main tentative object linking the current location of this park to this location is a report from 1910, briefly mentioning a US Marine Band concert in the park from 1895. Notably, 1895 reports only say it took place in "the Greensboro Base Ball Park," while the 1910 article refers more specifically to the "old baseball park" [7] [12]. While that in-and-of itself is not exactly a smoking gun, several articles from the period refer specifically to an "old ball park on Church street" [13]. Finally, an 1897 writeup on the Greensboro Athletic Association noted that the city team would use "the ball-ground north of the city" for games, "and the vacant Fisher lot on North Elm will probably be used for practice games" [14].

Unfortunately, I have been unable to determine exactly when the field was destroyed, or even its exact, precise location. It was not captured in any maps of the city I have found.

* The Greensboro Farmers belonged to the abortive North Carolina League, which collapsed before the close of the season.

Pictures of Greensboro's Athletic Park