. Belmont Park, Racetracks (Horse racing). Aqueduct, undergoing improvements and enlargement during ensuing decades, remained a favorite with racing fans until, after its ac- quisition by the New York Racing Associa- tion, it was closed down in 1955 to make wa) for the $34,500,000 new Aqueduct track which opened on Sept. 14, 1959. Jamaica was the next stop on the Queens county circuit after Aqueduct was established in 1894. On April 27. 1903, a new track called Jamaica was opened on Baisley Blvd. by a group incorporated as the Metropolitan Jocke) Club and boasting the leadership of
. Belmont Park, Racetracks (Horse racing). Aqueduct, undergoing improvements and enlargement during ensuing decades, remained a favorite with racing fans until, after its ac- quisition by the New York Racing Associa- tion, it was closed down in 1955 to make wa) for the $34,500,000 new Aqueduct track which opened on Sept. 14, 1959. Jamaica was the next stop on the Queens county circuit after Aqueduct was established in 1894. On April 27. 1903, a new track called Jamaica was opened on Baisley Blvd. by a group incorporated as the Metropolitan Jocke) Club and boasting the leadership of "Big Tim" Sullivan, the Tammany leader of the East Side, and Eugene Wood, another Tammanx celebrity after whom the Wood Memorial was named. This was a starkly functional track, and was always to be one until it finally shut down on August 1, 1959. On Opening Day in 1903. a crowd of 18,000 attended and saw Sullivan's Setauket win the second race. Big crowds poured into the plain Jamaica course down through the years, and. on Memorial Day, 1945, patrons mana- ged to shoe-horn their way into the establish- ment. When the I\ew York Racing Association, original!) the Greater New York Association, took over the assets of the New York tracks to operate them on a non-profit basis, Ja- maica, because of its tight quarters and gen- eral insufficiency, was regretfully ticketed for oblivion. On its site now stands Rochdale Vil- lage, a non-profit co-operative housing de- velopment. The only other New York thoroughbred track immediately preceding Belmont Park was Empire City in Yonkers. It was built in 1900 by William H. Clark, who died before it opened. The peripatetic Phil Dwyer ran a meeting there in October of 1900. Later, it won its greatest renown under the owner- ship of James Butler, the grocery Beauty spot: Manicc Mansion, bought at time parcel uas assembled for building of original Bel- mont Park, became Turf and Field Club headquarters and flourished u
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