Belmont: 'Plain' To Extraordinary

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE nowadays to fully appreciate the importance of the horse in colonial America, not only as a beast of burden and a means of transportation, but also as a source of entertainment and competition. Teenagers would race horses in impromptu matches, and pride in one's town was often expressed in races that matched the fastest local horses against those of a nearby community. Literally everyone, whether or not they owned horses, came into contact with the animal as part of daily life.

The Dutch who settled New Amsterdam were a people not particularly interested in racing as it existed in Europe. But the British who followed were.

In 1665, shortly after Peter Stuyvesant surrendered the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to Colonel Richard Nicolls, whose share of the spoils was the governorship of an infant New York, the first formal, measured racecourse in North America was established on the Hempstead Plain, near the present-day Garden City, and named Newmarket, after the famed British racing center. Thus Gov. Nicolls became, in effect, the father of American racing and Long Island its cradle.

There is scant information concerning the exact configuration of the original course, but it is generally agreed to have been two miles in circumference. Its location was entirely fortuitous, a convenient, grassy setting amidst the dense forest that covered most of the Island, a site that gave relief from the labor-intensive clearing of ground. Upon the completion of the Newmarket course, which remained in use for almost a century, Nicolls announced the offer of a silver cup to be awarded each spring and fall, the first known trophy for the winner of a horse race. In that announcement, he explained the motive: ``Not so much for the divertisement of youth as for encouraging the bettering of the breed of horses, which through great neglect had been impaired.''

One of those trophies, a silver porringer, is displayed at the Yale University Museum. The oddly spelled inscription: ``1668. wunn att hampsted plains. march 25.'' Presumably, it was the last trophy donated by Gov. Nicolls, who returned to England a few months after the inscribed date.

Newmarket gave rise to an age during which several courses would be built on Long Island, primarily as a source of amusement for British officers, who required that ``God Save the King'' be played every hour during a race meeting.'' They also owned most of the best racing stock. The Revolutionary War, however, brought about the demolition of racing. Horses were as important in war as ammunition and food were, and much of the finest native and British stock was lost in action. The most prized British horses were returned to England. It was not until the early 19th Century that recovery would begin to take shape and American racing would take on a flavor and character of its own. Much of that reshaping would begin on Long Island.

Several racecourses were constructed on the Island during the first half of the 1800s: the Union Course, near the present site of Aqueduct; the Centreville Course, in the present-day Corona; the National Course, New York's first elaborate racetrack, located near what is now LaGuardia Airport. The Union Course, however, was perhaps the most important of the Island's antebellum racing venues.

Built in 1821, the Union Course was the site of the first ``skinned'' -- or dirt -- racing surface, precursor to what would become the standard in American racing. Racing on dirt was a curious novelty at the time. These courses were originally without grandstands. Ladies rode to the course in carriages and young men on horseback. But as demand for increased comfort, shelter from the elements and competition for patrons grew, the face of racing changed during this age. The custom of conducting a single, four-mile race consisting of as many heats as were necessary to determine a winner, gave way to programs consisting of several races. Professional management took over the operation of race meetings. The first grandstands, where sumptuous dinners and the choicest liquors were served during the afternoon, were constructed. Betting, which had consisted primarily of stakes put up by contending owners and side wagers between friends, became more important. The Civil War, however, would mark the end of this era.

The reconstruction of racing in New York began almost simultaneously with that of the war-ravaged South. While the newly built Jerome Park, in Westchester County, immediately became the principal venue for the most powerful stables and influential owners of the post-war era, a resurgence of racing was also underway on Long Island's southwestern coast. The newly formed Queens County Jockey Club opened Aqueduct, the sole survivor of that era, on the shores of Jamaica Bay. New courses were established at Brighton Beach, Coney Island, Gravesend and Sheepshead Bay, in Brooklyn. Of these, Sheepshead Bay and Gravesend were the most prominent and prosperous. Important stakes races which endure today were first run there. Neither, however, survived anti-betting legislation that closed every racetrack in New York from 1910 until 1913.

The reign of Jerome Park in Westchester County was short-lived as well. Completed in 1888, the last race meeting there was held in 1894, the same year the sport's highest echelon established The Jockey Club. August Belmont II would become its leader and occupy the most powerful position in American racing until his death in 1924.

Led by Belmont II, The Jockey Club formed the Westchester Racing Association and conducted several meetings at nearby Morris Park, but there was already strong sentiment among its members to re-establish a prominent presence on Long Island, where many of them resided in lavish, North Shore estates. So the decision was made to begin acquiring the land upon which racing in the United States was first conducted; or, at least, land as near to the original site of Newmarket as was possible, where they would construct a massive facility patterned after the great European courses. Two centuries after its birth, racing would return permanently to the Hempstead Plain on a scale never before imagined by Americans.

Centerpiece of the sprawling patchwork of properties acquired for the development of Belmont Park, in what is now Elmont, was Oatlands, the estate of William De Forest Manice. Its central building, a turreted Tudor-Gothic mansion surrounded by ancient trees, served as the original Turf and Field Club and remained in use until 1956.

In March, 1903, a force of 500, primarily Italian, Irish and Polish immigrants that would soon number 1,000, was assembled to begin the most ambitious and expansive racetrack construction ever undertaken in North America. On May 4, 1905, the original Belmont Park opened with some 40,000 in attendance. The inaugural was responsible for what is believed to be Long Island's first traffic jam, as a melange of horse-drawn carriages and automobiles clogged the roads leading to the track. In the Metropolitan Handicap that afternoon, Sysonby and Race King finished in a dead heat.

The 20th Century has seen a golden age of racing rise and dissipate on Long Island; seen the very underpinnings of the sport changed by time, circumstance, politics, economics and technology. Two things remain unchanged, however: As it was on the day it opened, Belmont Park is the most important single venue of American racing. And the sport endures on the Hempstead Plain.