Shown is a circus that performed during the heyday of the stadium and the Savin Rock Amusement Park.
By Dominic Konareski
Voice Writer
Usually once a week I scroll on eBay looking for West Haven sports history memorabilia, mainly surrounding the West Haven Yankees and racing programs from Donovan Field as I collect game programs, tickets and really anything having to do with West Haven sporting history.
Several days ago, I happened to come across a ticket stub from Savin Rock’s White City Stadium, featuring a boxing bout between Nathan Mann vs Eddie Blunt. The event was dated August 31st, 1938, which was a Wednesday.
Now, for those who don’t know, West Haven’s White City was named after Chicago’s “White City” as Savin Rock had a 220-foot-tall tower strung in 60,000 electrical lights. Before the area became known as Savin Rock Amusement Park, it was called White City in 1903, before undergoing its final name change as Savin Rock Amusement Park in 1919.
The stadium itself, which once stood in what was like a mini city inside the West Haven park, is now long demolished with no recognition it even was onthe shoreline.
Despite hours of research, I was unable to find a photo of the stadium itself as any media of it is likely lost in time or in a dusty box in someone’s attic.
White City Stadium (not to be confused with Donovan Field which sat just a few hundred yards away), stood next to the trolley station and The Sky Blazer roller coaster which were across tracks from the famous carousel ride.
Donovan Field housed semi-pro baseball along with West Haven High School football games and later expanded to auto racing as well. Meanwhile, White City Stadium hosted boxing matches primarily. Overall, though both Donovan Field and the Stadium had their fair share of boxing matches throughout their history.
Going on boxerlist, which is a database of all professional bouts dating back to nearly a century, shows the match between Mann and Blunt at the Stadium. But one thing is off: the date. According to boxerlist, the date of the bout was Tuesday, Sept. 6, 1938, for what is a six-day gap. It is very possible the date entered into the database is wrong, considering the bout was nearly 100 years ago, or the match got postponed to the next week.