Episode 2445
Fleetwood Park Racetrack
Sun, 2024-Jan-14 01:05 UTC
Length - 1:57
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.
The featured article for Sunday, 14 January 2024 is Fleetwood Park Racetrack.
Fleetwood Park was a 19th-century harness racing (trotting) track in what is now the Morrisania section of the Bronx in New York, United States. The races held there were a popular form of entertainment, drawing crowds as large as 10,000 from the surrounding area. The one-mile (1.6 km) course described an unusual shape, with four turns in one direction and one in the other. For the last five years of operation, Fleetwood was part of trotting's Grand Circuit, one travel guide calling it "the most famous trotting track in the country".
The track operated under several managements between 1870 and 1898. Most notable was the New York Driving Club, consisting of many wealthy New York businessmen, including members of the Vanderbilt and Rockefeller families as well as former US president Ulysses S. Grant. Robert Bonner, owner and publisher of the New York Ledger, was a member, as was his brother David, who at one time served as president.
For most of its history, the track failed to turn a profit, the shortfall being made up annually from financial assessments of the membership. Economic pressures forced the track to close in 1898, and within two years the property was being subdivided into residential building lots. One of the few remaining vestiges of the track is the meandering route of 167th Street, which runs along a portion of the old racecourse.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:05 UTC on Sunday, 14 January 2024.
For the full current version of the article, see Fleetwood Park Racetrack on Wikipedia.
This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
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Until next time, I'm Stephen Neural.
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