Source: Times Union, Albany, N.存倉Y.July 26--Across the centuries, denizens of Saratoga Springs displayed a taste for the carbonated life and the edgier aspects of gambling.The Spa was built upon this beguiling contradiction of healthiness and naughtiness.In its first iteration, tourists chased the therapeutic claims of its mineral waters in the early 19th century and flocked to large downtown hotels. In more recent times, magnums of champagne have been uncorked at polo matches and ballet galas or by the swells and horsey set at soirees along North Broadway's mansions in a version of Palm Beach transported north.Through cycles of boom and bust, with the waxing and waning of public opinion on the ills versus the pleasures of gambling, Saratoga has embraced the money quote from journalist Nellie Bly in the New York World on Aug. 19, 1894: "Saratoga is the wickedest spot in the United States. Crime is holding a convention there and vice is enjoying a festival such as it never dared approach before."Since the storied thoroughbred track, which celebrates its 150th year this season, opened along Union Avenue on Aug. 3, 1863 -- a humble oval known as "Horse Haven" across the street from what became an iconic gabled, Victorian-era grandstand -- the city has given in to an addiction for the two-minute, pulse-pounding adrenaline rush of horse racing.It is like a roll of the dice writ large, where a heavily favored horse can be an also-ran in front of 50,000 fans or a longshot can claim the $1 million Travers Stakes, the Midsummer Derby known as "the graveyard of champions."Meanwhile, across town in the 1870s, after betting all afternoon on the horse races, the high rollers came out after dark and gathered around the gaming tables upstairs in the Canfield Casino in Congress Park. Even for a nouveau riche 19th-century tycoon, there was nothing more thrilling than to let a bet of $125,000 (about $2 million in today's dollars) ride on a single turn of a card.Between the horses and the casino, Saratoga was a place where gambling could be mainlined around the clock.It's what drew the likes of John "Bet-a-Million" Gates to the Spa. A Gilded Age industrialist who made a fortune in the oil industry and marketing barbed wire, Gates was a compulsive gambler who bet heavily in all-night poker games.In one marathon gambling session at Canfield Casino, according to lore, he was down about $500,000 (roughly $9 million today) but he rallied after many hours at the table and returned to his Broadway hotel as the sun was rising with a mere $125,000 lost."People love the action of Saratoga. Horse racing is exciting and there's no denying that betting on the races is exciting," said Jim Melia, an associate historian at the National Museum of Racing who relocated from Manchester, N.H., to Saratoga Springs with his wife, Faith, after retiring in 2006 from a career in banking.He has loved horse racing since he was a teenager and has visited more than 100 tracks around the country."There is no place else like Saratoga," Melia said. "It's simply the best."Prior to its wicked streak, the city was put on the map by a slim scientific treatise published by Dr. John Steel in 1817, "An Analysis of the Mineral Waters of Saratoga and Ballston," which supported medicinal claims. Doctors began recommending a month's stay, with a cup of mineral water from a particular spring in the morning, a second spring in the afternoon and a third in the evening.There were more than 200 springs tapped around the city at its peak in the Victorian era, compared to 21 springs in operation today. It was an accident of geology. The remnants of shallow tropical seas from 500 million years ago were trapped in ancient bedrock below layers of sandstone and limestone sediment. When faults formed 10,000 years ago, the sulfurous mineral water reached the surface and could be collected at free springs and public pavilions -- each with a different mineral composition and a unique taste."The mineral waters were the vitamin supplements of their day," said James Parillo, executive director of the Saratoga Springs History Museum and curator of a Saratoga 150 exhibit at Canfield Casino titled "The People Behind the Track.""Some of the therapeutic claims were legitimate and some were quackery," Parillo said. "It was a tourist destination for the waters long before the track opened. The springs were free and working-class and regular people could rub shoulders with the likes of J.P. Morgan in Saratoga."Ethnically, the city was built upon the backs of Irish and Italian immigrant labor on the railroad and in its hotels, spa baths, bottling plants, textile mills and breweries. In the 1830s and 1840s, the city's west side around Beekman Street became an Irish enclave and was dubbed "Dublin." A second wave of immigration came in the 1880s and 1890s, when Italians came in large numbers and settled on the west side.The naughty side to the city's personality was kept on the down-low, indulged but not discussed. What happened in Saratoga, it seemed, stayed in Saratoga."There are very few records of what really went on here at the casino," Parillo said.The official visitor's guide to Saratoga Springs in 1887 offered this purple prose PG version: "Its mineral waters flow in exhaustless abundance from year to year. While the waters flow, Saratoga will flourish in all the glory of its splendid places."The gushing reputation of the springs grew. Bottling plants sprouted and the market for Saratoga water spread across the U.S. and to Europe. But the commercial water boom was too much of a good thing. Over-pumping depleted the springs in the early 1900s and in 1909 the state passed laws that placed limits on water extraction that rationed and protected the resource.Eventually, the novelty wore off, mineral water sales went flat and the arrival of the automobile and expansion of the railroad network opened up long-distance travel. Saratoga the tourist destination began a period of decline in the early 1900s. It needed to diversify.Saratoga's narrative is sprinkled with outsized entrepreneurs and colorful characters whose time upon the stage of America's summer place was at turns triumphant and tragic.Consider the poor sot Caleb Mitchell, a Troy native who started as a newsboy, made a fortune running illegal gambling operations and migrated north where he became village president of Saratoga Springs in the late 1800s. Wealthy and eccentric, Cale, as he was known, was a partner in the racetrack and owned a gambling hall near the track as well as saloons and bookmaking operations in Albany and Troy.Mitchell's "conduct led his acquaintances to believe that he was not in full possession of his mental faculties," according to an obituary in The New York Times on Jan. 29, 1901. Mitchell shot himself to death outside the door of the downtown office of state Sen. Edgar Brackett. Mitchell had feuded publicly with Brackett over a bill that the senator sponsored that gave Richard Canfield a virtual monopoly on gambling in the city. Mitchell purchased a revolver earlier that day and said he needed it to shoot cats. Authorities thought he intended to shoot Brackett, but since he was not in his office he walked out, became agitated and turned the gun on himself. "He fell dead on the door mat," the Times said.Others who made headlines were outsiders who left their mark with shows of conspicuous consumption and a celebrity forged 1自存倉0 years before TMZ. Some of their flashy accoutrements remain, such as the circa-1900 purple velour camisole and lacy pink lace-up corset worn by starlet Lillian Russell.There are roulette and faro tables in the high-stakes gamblers' room frequented by the likes of Diamond Jim Brady, a bejeweled dandy and raconteur who made millions as a financier in New York City. He was known for his extravagant jewelry collection and an enormous appetite -- he could consume dozens of raw oysters and a 16-ounce, 2-inch-thick prime rib in a sitting. A confirmed bachelor, Brady horsed around Saratoga with paramour Russell on his arm and tongues wagged over their larger-than-life relationship."We only found evidence that they were good friends," Parillo said.At the center of the track's sesquicentennial history looms John Morrissey, a Troy-born force of nature with broad shoulders, bearish build, bushy beard and booming voice. He grew up poor, dropped out of school and became a champion bare-knuckle boxer feared for "sledgehammer fists." The marathon slugfests in that era only ended when one pugilist beat the other senseless; one bare-knuckle epic lasted 89 rounds. Outside the ring, Morrissey was a street thug and gang member indicted as a teenager on charges of burglary, battery and assault with intent to kill.His checkered past was not an impediment to a career in New York state politics. Morrissey became a Tammany-backed U.S. congressman who later testified against Boss Tweed and was elected as a state senator on an anti-Tammany ticket.In Saratoga, Morrissey opened a gambling den in 1861 known as the Club House Casino, a precursor to the Canfield Casino, which drew the wealthy and famous, including John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Mark Twain and Ulysses S. Grant. It was a palace of decadence, with menus that included caviar, quail, vintage wines and expensive cigars. The married Morrissey had capacious appetite and he conducted public affairs with young ingenues Kate Ridgely and Lolita Fernandez.Of course, women were rarely allowed in Morrissey's testosterone-soaked boys' club. The Canfield Casino had a women's gallery on the main floor dubbed "the library," where ladies in hoop skirts, bustles, silk, brocade and lace convened for tea and pastries and to gossip, read the local newspapers and exchange tips about fashion. The museum has a remarkable collection of 1,500 period dresses, hats and shoes that will be displayed this summer.Men and women existed in parallel universes in Saratoga. Even at the track in the early eras, women were relegated to a separate area for spectating and betting. The key was to provide enough diversions for both genders to keep them returning summer after summer."Morrissey realized he needed something to keep his gamblers and their wives busy during the day because they could soak in the spa waters for only so long without getting bored," said Allan Carter, historian at the National Museum of Racing and co-author with Mike Kane of a new book, "150 Years of Racing in Saratoga."Morrissey advertised thoroughbred racing at a trotting oval known as "Horse Haven" he leased on the north side of Union Avenue near today's Oklahoma training track. The first race on Aug. 3, 1863, just one month after the bloody Battle of Gettsyburg, proved a popular diversion from the the gruesome reports of the Civil War. More than 15,000 spectators arrived on foot and by horse-drawn carriage and paid $1 for an admission card. The four-day meet featured best-of-three heat races with 27 horses from 14 racing stables that competed for a $2,700 purse.The first race was won by Lizzie W., trained by Bill Bird, an African-American trainer, and ridden by Abe Sewell, a one-eyed black jockey.The wagering initially was informal, with person-to-person betting. This later morphed to a ring of dozens of bookies from New York City. Folks liked the action and socialites were hooked on the grace and speed of thoroughbreds, but they lodged several complaints after the first meet. There were not enough places to sit; trees and hillocks obscured the backstretch from patrons; the turns were too tight; the track was too narrow and it was 297 yards short of the advertised 1 mile.At the end of the inaugural August meet, Morrissey formed the Saratoga Racing Association and they paid $20,600 for 94 acres across Union Avenue, the present site. They built a grandstand that offered plenty of seating and opened the second meet at the new facility in August 1864."Morrissey couldn't put his name on the track because he was a thug," Carter said. "A brilliant thug, but a thug."He tapped his rich patrician pals Cornelius Vanderbilt, William B. Travers and Leonard Jerome to give the new Saratoga track legitimacy and cachet. It flourished and helped Saratoga rival Newport among the country's blue bloods. Morrissey died of complications from pneumonia in his suite at the Adelphi Hotel in Saratoga in 1878 at age 47. By then, the seeds of horse racing he planted had flourished.There were other intriguing footnotes in the vibrant annals of the city, underscoring its resourcefulness. After anti-gambling crusaders shut down Canfield Casino in 1906, the gambling simply shifted across town to the rural outskirts and lakehouses around Saratoga Lake and Lake Lonely that were transformed into casinos, including Riley's, Newman's, The Brook, Arrowhead, Piping Rock and the Chicago Club. During Prohibition, they were centers of rum-running operations and the booze never stopped flowing. A series of investigations led by the state Legislature ended the last vestige of vice when Riley's Lakehouse shut down in 1953.The gilded age of Saratoga continues to echo down history's long byways to this very day. Marylou Whitney, the doyenne of Spa society, is the wife of the late Cornelius Vanderbilt "Sonny" Whitney, who died in 1992 at 93. The founder of Pan American Airways, philanthropist and patron of horse racing and the arts was a grandson of William Collins Whitney. The family's patriarch was a railway tycoon and financier who established the Whitney family as one of the golden names in American thoroughbred racing with its stable colors of Eton blue and brown.After the nefarious Gottfried Waldbaum ran the track into the ground with crooked ways that sullied Saratoga's reputation, William Collins Whitney rescued thoroughbred racing in Saratoga. In 1901, he bought out Walbaum for $365,000 along with a group of his wealthy friends, who enlarged the grandstand, improved the track and and restored respectability to the race course. A century later, Marylou Whitney bears that mantle as Saratoga's biggest booster and proudest standard-bearer.Another connection to the track's storied past can be found in the family tree of George R. Hearst III, publisher and CEO of the Times Union. His great-great grandfather, George Hearst, a rancher, mining tycoon and U.S. senator from California, was part of a syndicate that bought the track in 1890 after it had fallen into disfavor behind a crusade against gambling led by Wall Street titan Spencer Trask.Hearst had a racing stable and was named president of the Saratoga Racing Association in 1890.Sen. George Hearst died on Feb. 28, 1891, six months after he became a part-owner of the track.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 Times Union (Albany, N.Y.) Visit the Times Union (Albany, N.Y.) at www.timesunion.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉新蒲崗
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