Walkabout: Brooklyn and the Sport of Kings, Part 1

For many people today, the words horse racing bring up one of two images: rich people with thoroughbreds and fancy horse farms, or seedy looking guys memorizing the racing forms outside of OTB.

But for your 19th century man, horse racing, the sport of kings was a popular and serious topic. The races were the football games of their day, everyone had a favorite, and everyone thought they knew more about the players and their moves than anyone else.

While your working guy may take to the cheap seats at the races in Brooklyn, at the turn of the century, the business of horses and racing was taken up by professionals, spurred on and much admired by the upper classes.

Just as almost everyone today is familiar enough with a car, perhaps enough to have make and model preferences, one hundred years or more ago, the same could be said about a man and his horse.

Most men, and quite a few women, thought they were expert judges of fine horseflesh. And if those horses were running on a track, all the better.

Brooklyn had quite a few outlets for the racing bug. Prospect Park had the Fair Grounds Trotting Track.

Impromptu races, the drag races of their day, took place on Sunday’s on Ocean Parkway, on the way down to the beach.

By the turn of the century, all of the beaches around Coney Island had their own racetracks, put there by the men who vacationed in the large, fancy hotels that dotted Coney Island, Manhattan and Brighton Beaches.

The first was the Brighton Beach Racing Association, founded in 1879, followed by the Coney Island Jockey Club, founded by among others, August Belmont Jr, of Belmont Cup fame. It opened in 1880.

The last club to open was the Brooklyn Jockey Club, which went into operation in 1886. This club opened a track at Gravesend, just off Ocean Parkway. Among the founders were two Brooklyn brothers, butchers by trade, who would be among the most important horsemen in the history of Brooklyn racing.

Philip and Michael Dwyer were Brooklyn butchers. They made a fortune in the meat packing industry, and supplied meat to butcher shops, restaurants and hotels.

They would joke that they got into racing because in the perishable nature of their business, butchers had to own fast horses. In 1874, they set up their stables, buying their first prize thoroughbred colt, Rhadamanthus, from August Belmont himself.

By the 1880’s, it was they who operated Prospect Park’s Fair Grounds track, andthen they decided to build their own track, founding the Brooklyn Jockey Club in 1887, and operating the Gravesend Race Track on Coney Island.

Coney Island was now the racetrack capital of the country. The high stakes races included the Brooklyn Handicap, the Suburban, the Futurity and the Preakness.

They owned some of the best horses in the history of thoroughbred racing in those years, and between 1883 and 1888, they won the Kentucky Derby twice, the Preakness Stakes once, and the Belmont Stakes five times.

Some of their horses and their jockeys have been inducted into the National Museum and Racing Hall of Fame. Their prize runner Hindoo won the Kentucky Derby, along with his sire, Hanover, the leading sire in the country when his racing days were done.

They also owned Kingston, Runnymeade, Miss Woodford, Bramble, Cleophus, Bonnie Scotland, Ben Brush, another Kentucky Derby winner, and the great horse, Luke Blackburn.

Their jockeys would become household names in Brooklyn: James Jim McLaughlin, and Edward Snapper Garrison, among others.

Philip, the older Dwyer brother, became president of the Brooklyn Jockey Club, and was the controlling shareholder. He and his brother dissolved their partnership in 1890, and went their separate ways in the racing business.

In 1904, he gained a large shareholding of the company that owned and operated Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. He became the president of Aqueduct and remained so until his death in 1917.

He is credited for buying more land, increasing the track’s circumference and rebuilding the viewing stands, making Aqueduct a major racing center.

He became the president of the Brooklyn Jockey Club, and the Queens Jockey Club. Along with partner James Butler, Philip also bought the Laurel Park Racecourse in Maryland, in 1913.

Philip Dwyer died of pneumonia contracted at the damp Belmont Track in the spring of 1917. He died the same day as the Suburban Handicap, on June 9th of that year.

He died at his home in Manhattan, missing the first Suburban since the inauguration of the race in 1884. He death was felt by all of racing.

The next year, the Brooklyn Derby was named the Dwyer Stakes in honor of both brothers. It ran at Aqueduct until 1955, and is run at the Belmont to this day.

After the dissolution of their partnership in the Dwyer Brothers Stables, in 1890, younger brother Mike would go on to further racing success and eventually gained control of the New Jersey Jockey Club, which operated a track in Elizabeth, NJ. Philip was always known as a man who loved racing for the joy of the sport.

Mike, on the other hand, was known as a heavy gambler who would bet enormous amounts of money on races. This could have been the real reason for their breakup.

When the brothers split their partnership, Mike was said to be worth over $2 million. He thought nothing of betting $100,000 on a race.

Mike took his fortune to England and lost a lot of money on races there, and then came back to Brooklyn. By 1906 he was dead, destitute in his home in Gravesend.

The obituaries reported that he had died in poor circumstances, but the truth was that he had lost millions on races. The Times said that he paralyzed the betting ring with the magnitude of his wagers.

Other reports stated that he himself figured that he had lost over $1.5 million betting on favorites. In 2009 money, that would be over 35 million dollars.

Now racing may be the sport of kings, but it is also a great business for crooks and scoundrels. The Dwyers were not above a bit of that, either.

When NY City bookmakers wanted instant access to race results for free, the track owners put up high fences preventing people from looking in. The bookmakers put up high poles for telegraphing, the track owners had the pole climbers arrested.

Then the bookies had people leave the stands to make reports on winners and losers. The Dwyers went so far as to lock up the entrances to the track, so patrons were confined in the stands until the entire day’s races were over.

Finally, the Manhattan bookmakers gave up, and paid for the privilege of getting instant track information. The Dwyers were also the ruling force in the Racing Trust, the state board of control which oversaw the sport of horse racing.

There were complaints that the Trust routinely acted in their own self interest over that of competitors and the public. Soon prominent men, like August Belmont got involved and a new governing board called the Jockey Club was formed.

However, all the members of the old Racing Trust were granted automatic membership of the new Jockey Club, and Philip Dwyer just moved his seat over, maintaining control of the new club.

Eventually, he gained the respect of the industry, and the Jockey Club still plays a part in the industry today. The Dwyers, the jockeys and those that admired them and wanted to hang out with them, all had to live somewhere.

They picked Park Slope, and that part of the tale takes place next time.

Next time: The Dwyer boys, rich jockeys, Park Slope, Sportsman’s Row, and hanging with the Big Dogs.