Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and Museum turns 20
On Sept. 25, 2004, the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and Museum opened its doors to the public for the first time. The street in front of the building was shut down for a special dedication ceremony that featured a host of dignitaries and multiple Reds Hall of Famers. When the ceremony was completed, the doors to the Museum were opened and the gathered fans were ushered in for their first look at the largest team museum in all of baseball. Two decades later, the Reds Hall of Fame and Museum has been recognized as the finest museum of its kind and established itself as an integral part of the Reds organization.
Given the long history of the Reds -- a team that traces its origin to 1869 when the Cincinnati Red Stockings became baseball’s first all-professional team, and given the fact that the Reds had created a team Hall of Fame in 1958 -- it might come as a surprise that it was only 20 years ago a dedicated space was created to both house the Hall of Fame and celebrate the club’s rich history. But that was precisely the case. Before the Hall of Fame and Museum opened, the Reds Hall of Fame did not have a physical home. Beginning with that first induction class in 1958, Hall of Famers were selected each year, inducted in on-field ceremonies and presented plaques. But there was no dedicated Hall of Fame space to view the plaques after the induction ceremonies.
When the Reds became the second Major League team to create their own team Hall of Fame in 1958, they played at Crosley Field. There was no unused space in the small, antiquated ballpark for a Hall of Fame gallery, so the club created a makeshift solution. Hall of Fame plaques were hung at random on beams in the concourse and around the concession areas under the main grandstand. When the Reds moved to Riverfront Stadium in 1970, the plaques were put into storage. The Reds hoped to open a posh dining area in center field called the Stadium Club that would also house the Hall of Fame plaques. But the club was never built as it required the approval of both tenants of Riverfront, the Reds and the Bengals, and the teams could never agree on terms.
Despite the lack of a public space for the plaques, the Reds Hall of Fame elections continued. Plaques kept going into storage, emerging rarely on temporary display stands that were placed near Riverfront’s entry gates and, beginning in 1997 with the inaugural Redsfest, were displayed each year at the Reds’ annual winter fan festival.
It wasn’t until the Reds began the design work on Great American Ball Park that a permanent home for the Hall of Fame became a possibility. Freed from the limitations of sharing a stadium with another tenant, the Reds had the flexibility to allocate space in the design of the club’s new ballpark for a Hall of Fame and Museum. The decision was made to dedicate the majority of a free-standing building on the west side of the ballpark to the Hall of Fame. And from the beginning, the club envisioned much more than just a home for the Hall of Fame plaques. Recognition of the club’s history was a central design focus of the new ballpark, and the Hall of Fame and Museum was to be the centerpiece of that recognition.
The new ballpark opened to much fanfare on Opening Day in 2003, but its construction was not yet complete. Clearing the remnants of the imploded Riverfront Stadium from the park’s west side took extra time, delaying the completion of the fan zone and the building that was to become the Reds Hall of Fame. Construction of the Hall commenced in earnest in the middle of the 2004 season and was completed in time for fans attending one of the last three home games to add a visit to the new Museum to their game day experience.
To reinforce the Museum’s core purpose -- to serve as an entity dedicated to the celebration and preservation of Reds history -- a new organization was created to oversee it. Then as now, the Reds Hall of Fame and Museum operates as a not-for-profit charitable organization.
What greeted those first visitors in 2004 was unique. No team had ever been the beneficiary of such a robust representation of its history. The Museum touched on all eras of Reds history through a varied mix of artifact displays and interactives with the highlight being the Hall of Fame gallery, the place where decades of Hall of Fame plaques finally found a permanent home. This elegantly designed space was the last gallery that visitors entered, and the galleries that preceded it were designed to build up to it.
As well-received as the Museum was, in the buildup to the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the 1869 Red Stockings’ historic season in 2019, it was apparent that, after 15 years, the Museum was due for a reimagining that would better position it for the future. A successful campaign generated funding for a comprehensive renovation of the Museum that took place during the offseason between the 2018 and 2019 seasons. When the renovated museum reopened the day after Opening Day in 2019 it was, like its original iteration, a hit. The current rendition of the Museum boasts a robust array of technological enhancements including a redesigned plaque gallery that, like its predecessor, is one of the unquestioned highlights of the museum.
The 2019 renovation positioned the Museum for exponential growth and has helped to ensure that the countless memories preserved and celebrated within it will live on for future generations of Reds fans. And as it has for the last 20 years, the Museum will continue to make new memories through its wide array of special events, activities and initiatives. The Reds Hall of Fame and Museum is much more than just a physical structure; it is a dynamic organization, the impact of which extends far beyond its physical walls. And as it embarks on its third decade of operation, it is an organization that looks forward to developing new and innovative ways to bring the incomparable history of Reds baseball to life.
It may have taken a while for the Hall of Fame to find a permanent home, but the Reds Hall of Fame and Museum was certainly worth the wait.