1865 Olympic, Philadelphia (Olympics)

This rendering is based on partial or inconclusive documentation for uniform style and color. Important details may be undocumented or difficult to determine and an artist’s conceptualization is used to the complete rendering.

Rendering accuracy:Year: approximate    Team: documented

Sorry Cincinnati, the red stockings started here.

I love it when SABR members send me things. The image below came to my inbox recently. It is an accomplished watercolor of men playing baseball in Philadelphia, dated 1865. This relatively unknown image holds an important place in baseball-uniform history. Can you see why?

Photo A

Dated 1865. Watercolor painting of the Olympic baseball ground in Philadelphia by Augustus Köllner (1813-1906). From the Print and Picture Collection at the Free Library of Philadelphia. Read more on Köllner and the full citation for this image further below.

As you can see — the men on the field were depicted wearing blue knickers and red stockings — yes, red stockings! This image may be the earliest known visual of a baseball team wearing this style — and two years before Cincinnati first wore red as a team in 1867.

More importantly, this painting strengthens the claim for Philadelphia, not Cincinnati, as the birthplace of the soon-to-be-famous red stockings.

Let’s zoom-in.

Dated 1865. Three detail views of the Köllner painting. Each player was depicted wearing the same uniform: a brimmed red hat (not a cap), a white shirt, blue knickers, red stockings and dark shoes.

Can we confirm the setting is Philadelphia?
Yes. The hand-written caption beneath the artwork stated the scene was of the “Olympic B. B. Ground” at “New 27th and Master.” SABR researcher Jerrold Casway wrote about this ballpark in 2013, stating that the field was indeed located in Philadelphia “at Jefferson and Master Streets, between 27th and 25th Streets.” Casway noted that the diamond was first laid out by the Olympics in early 1864 after securing a lease. They “immediately built a clubhouse along Master Street and made substantial improvements by leveling and re-sodding the playing surface.” The first game was played there on May 24, 1864.

Two views of the Olympic clubhouse along Master Street in Philadelphia. Top, photograph dated mid-1860s, photo from John Thorn, Our Game; bottom, detail view of the Köllner painting, dated 1865. Both views are almost identical to each other.

We can further confirm the Philadelphia locale by two other landmarks depicted in the painting. Casway wrote that “along the third base/Master Street side was the grass embankment of the old Spring Garden Reservoir,” and that “visible behind the 27th and Master home plate intersection, on the Girard College campus, was the towering Greek-styled Founders Hall with its Corinthian columns.” Both of these landmarks, especially the elevated reservoir behind the clubhouse, can be seen in the Köllner painting.

Can we confirm the year?
Yes, approximately. The date of 1865 appears to have been added to the painting after the artist had signed the work. However, research by Casway has noted that the Olympics added an “encircling fence” to the ground in 1866. This suggests that Köllner’s painting, probably sketched from life and then painted afterwards, was a depiction of the ballpark between May 1864 and the end of the 1865 season.

What team was on the field?
The Jefferson Street ground was shared by other teams, most notably the Mercantile team of Philadelphia. However the uniforms in the painting tell us it was the home team on the field that day. Charles A. Peverelly wrote, in The Book of American Pastimes (1866), that the Olympic uniform consisted of “dark blue pants, white shirt trimmed with scarlet, white cap with blue trimming, and red Morocco belt.” The blue pants, white shirt and red accents in Kollner’s painting point to this being the Olympics. Peverelly made no mention of knickers — but we’ll get to that a little later.

Revisiting the red-stocking timeline.
Harry Wright (1835-1895), of course, was the central figure in the red-stocking story. In 1865, Wright, as a member of the St. George cricket club of New York, played a home-and-home series against the Young America cricket club of Philadelphia. According to his brother George in 1888, Harry was presented a pair of red stockings from the Young Americas before one match, adding that “when my brother went on his western trip [to Cincinnati in 1866], he took these stockings with him.”

One newspaper commented on the St. George-Young America match played at Hoboken, NJ, on September 20, 1865. It noted that “the new style of uniform adopted by the Young American[sp] club is quite unique, and just the thing for cricketers and base ball players.” This may have been the very match where Harry received his gift.

As Harry Wright came to Ohio, baseball became the game of choice. He and the entire Cincinnati baseball team first wore their famous short pants and exposed red stockings in a game against the Nationals of Washington, DC, on July 15, 1867. In a game report the following day, one newspaper noted that “the Cincinnati Nine were captained by the well-known cricketer, Harry Wright, and they appeared on the field in the unique costume worn by the Young America Club of Philadelphia.”

Young America was a cricket club formed in Philadelphia about 1855. They were not a junior team as the name suggested but a club of seasoned “new Americans” organized to compete against the rival Germantown Cricket Club, which had been established with an English heritage. The photo below of the Young America team, dated circa 1867, showed several members wearing knickers and dark-colored stockings.

Dated circa 1867. Photo (detail view) of the Young America cricket club. Photo from John Thorn, Our Game.

So, were knickers common in cricket? No, not really. In 1858, one newspaper remembered that Samuel Redgate (1811-1851), a noted English cricket player, wore “nankeen breeches and stockings” when bowling. However in general and outside of the Young Americas, reports of cricketers wearing this style were scarce.

Home of the reds.
We now know that two Philadelphia teams, Olympic (baseball) and Young America (cricket), on occasion wore red stockings, circa 1865. As there are no known reports to suggest otherwise, I believe this points to Philly as the birthplace of the red stockings in baseball. Both Cincinnati and Boston can make an early claim, but red belongs to Philadelphia.

Let’s look at the painting again. Notice that there was no apparent opponent shown on the field.

Dated 1865. Another detail view of the Köllner painting.

It’s somewhat dangerous to take a sketchy watercolor painting as fact, but it could be suggested that the artist captured a practice session of the Olympics, one in which several dozen Philadelphians had come to witness. A Philadelphia newspaper reported on June 24, 1865, that “everything pertaining to the game is a matter of interest to thousands of men young men in the city.” Researcher Richard Hershberger, in writing about the Olympics in 2013, noted that “baseball went through a boom immediately after the Civil War” and that “the Olympics participated fully in this [by adding] new members in 1865.” Could this painting represent some of those new members?

The casual nature of knickers.
If our assumption about the Köllner painting is correct, we can further speculate that knickers were likely worn more often for practice sessions and “friendlies,” than for match games. After all, Peverelly made no mention of knickers or stockings when describing the official Olympic uniform of 1866.

To support this notion, there are other fragments. At least one member of the Cincinnati club, George Ellard, wore knickers in 1866. A recollection in 1871 noted that Ellard “in three or four games [in 1866] wore the red stockings. Harry Wright played [in these same games for Cincinnati], but appeared in ordinary citizen’s clothes.” This seems to reaffirm the informal, casual nature of knickers.

There were, of course, other reasons to wear short pants. On July 7, 1866, the Liberty club of New Brunswick, NJ, trotted onto the diamond wearing “blue breeches with white stockings,” which one newspaper described as “somewhat of a novelty.” The weather that day was reported as being “scorching hot,” and it was likely the team wore knickers to stay cool. At some point, teams must also have realized the increased mobility that knickers offered.

The reality of evolution.
Changes in the game typically do not occur overnight. Cincinnati’s red stockings didn’t just suddenly happen in 1867. The fashion slowly came into being over a period of years during the mid-1860s. Knickers, in all likelihood, started as informal practice gear, as demonstrated by our friends, the Olympics. At times, knickers were worn on hot summer days, and when Cincinnati starting winning, knickers became part of the baseball uniform. With the arrival of the National Association in 1871, almost every team in North America was wearing baseball pants and stockings. And it seemingly all started in Philadelphia.

—Special thanks to Ed Morton for discovering this image and sending it my way. Info on the history of the Olympic ground from The National Pastime: From Swampoodle to South Philly (SABR, 2013), chapter by Jerrold Casway, The Jefferson Street Ballparks (1864-91), retrieved November 9, 2024. Recollections of George Wright from the Boston Herald, 1888, research from Todd Radom. Report of the Hoboken match from the New York Herald, September 21, 1865. Report of Cincinnati first wearing knickers from the New York Tribune, July 16, 1867, research from Tom Shieber. Info on George B. Ellard wearing knickers from the Cincinnati Commercial, February 23, 1871. Report of renewed interest in baseball from the Philadelphia Inquirer, June 24, 1865. Info on the Olympic club and the baseball boom from Peter Morris and others, Base Ball Founders (2013), chapter by Richard Hershberger.

Augustus Köllner (1813-1906) was born in Germany and came to the US in 1839. By the following year he had settled in Philadelphia and worked there for the remainder of his life as a lithographer and fine artist. According to one of his advertisements, Köllner offered “portraits of ladies and gentlemen on horseback, military persons, portraits of horses, correct and in every position from nature executed in oil or watercolor.” The painting above is currently in the Print and Picture Collection at the Free Library of Philadelphia and is included in the scrapbook collection of Samuel Castner, Jr. (1843-1929). Castner was a successful Philadelphia coal merchant who seemingly had a lot of time on his hands. He assembled a large collection of prints, drawings and early photographs in a series of scrapbooks, many of which related to Philadelphia landmarks and early city buildings. Köllner’s depiction of the Olympic clubhouse was surely the reason it was included in one of Castner’s scrapbook. Info on Köllner from the Free Library of Philadelphia and the Schwartz Gallery, Philadelphia. Info on Castner from the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY.

Citation for the Köllner painting: Castner, Samuel, Jr., 1843-1929 – Compiler. Castner Scrapbook v.31, Old Houses 5, page 43. Scrapbooks. Free Library of Philadelphia: Philadelphia, PA. https://libwww.freelibrary.org/digital/item/61897. (accessed Nov 9, 2024)

Written documentation on this uniform:
None

Team genealogy: Olympic, Philadelphia, 1833-1889
Olympic was formed in Philadelphia in 1833 when two earlier clubs merged. Olympic played a bat-and-ball game called “town ball” for decades before adopting the rules of the New York game in May 1860. Olympic stopped playing competitively in the late 1860s. Info from Peter Morris and others, Base Ball Founders (2013), chapter by Richard Hershberger.