The facility was built as the Coleman Athletic Field and included the entire expanse from the back of the Parish House at South Wilbur Avenue and Hayden Street and extended west to Brock Street. One lot and house at that corner were not included. The north side of the field was bounded by Packer Pond and hospital property. Included in all that area were the athletic field, tennis courts, an outdoor gymnasium, children's playground and the Round Pond. The ball diamond lasted the longest and is best remembered today. The facility was constructed in 1911 through the generosity of Mary Packer Cummings, the Church of the Redeemer's long time benefactor. Much of the information for the first part of this article was found in a pamphlet printed by the Physical Department of the Church of the Redeemer in 1920?.
The original field was 385 by 310 feet. Around its outside was a cinder track, five laps to a mile. Inside that area was space to be used for baseball and football games. Seating for 1,000 was provided by a covered grandstand along with permanent open portable bleachers along the first base side near the tennis courts. Initially, the use of the field by was membership - $2.00 for a year.
Two tennis courts were built immediately to the east of the ballfield and were fenced in on all sides by twelve foot netting. The yearly tennis court membership was $2.00, but only $1.00 if the person already held a $5.00 membership in the outdoor gymnasium.
The outdoor gymnasium was built adjacent to the ball field and to the rear (north) of the tennis courts, toward the hospital property. It opened in 1913. Equipment included "parallel bars, horizontal bars, flying trapeze, flying rings, climbing ladder, parallel rod slide, traveling rings, giant's stride, teeter ladder and may other apparatus too numerous to mention."
Completing Sayre's grand playground was an area around the Round Pond designated for those too young to use the other facilities. The Children's Playground included "sand pits,
merry-go-round, swings, baby's hammocks, sailing boats and other pieces of apparatus to entertain the children."The Round Pond, mentioned sometimes as Coleman Pond or Mrs. Packer's Pond, was at the base of a gentle slope extending westerly from the rear of the Parish House. The area around it was nicely landscaped providing a pleasant scene/ The late Paul Seibel has written that for a period of time canoes were allowed on the pond and fishing for goldfish was common although the canoes were later eliminated because of safety concerns.