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MOURIS PARKS FUIURE. That the present splendid racing plant at Morris Park is doomed to obliteration is a certainty, but an interview with Mr. A. H. Morris, published in a New York newspaper, seems to assure that racing will be conducted at Morris Park longer than has been anticipated. He is credited with saying: "The Morris estate has not sold the property out. right to the underground railroad company. The underground company has acquired a mutua interest in the property with the Morris estate, and Morris Park will not be destroyed until it is nbso-" lutely necessary. There is no danger of the owners of the property, the Morris estate and the railroad company, asking the. Westchester Association to surrender its lease next spring. "Bailroad construction, especially the building of a railroad of the underground variety, in which cutting through solid masses of rock with dynamite, tunneling under hills and such difficult work are features, is slow and tedious work. There is no telling when the two construction gangs to be put at building this important branch to the Manhattan system will reach Morris Park. It may be three or four years. And, until they do get there, Morris Park-will not be molested. Every inch of work that can bo done before it becomes necessary to demolish the racing plant will be done to the end that Morris Park, with its exceptional advantages as a place for the holding of race meetings, may be preserved. "I do not know what the plans of the railway company are, but I understand that they will begin the construction of their division above the Harlem at its northern and southern termini Port Chester and Willis avenue and 132d or 133d streets. "The territory included in Morris Park will not become valuable as building property until this railroad is completed and it is made easy of access to the business portion of the city. The delay and inconvenience of getting from the neighborhood of Morris Park, due principally to the impossibility of crossing the Harlem river expeditiously, is what has retarded development up this way. "AH cities expand in directions most easily reached from business centers, and New York has built up most rapidly along the lines of the Harlem Division ofctbe New York Central Bailroad. There are comparatively denBe populations over Fordham way in portions of Greater New York much farther from Madison Square than Morris Park. "We all dislike to see Morris Park destroyed as a racing plant, but we cannot help it. The property will become much more valuable as building prop- i erty. after the completion. of the trans-Harlem division of the underground system, than as a racetrack." By way of comment on the foregoing Daily America says: "Metropolitan turf patrons keenly regret the approaching demolition of Morris Park. The site is admirable. It was picked out by a man who had an eye for the beautiful. The Westchester hills which hedge it in are as picturesque as any in the etate, and they are covered from early spring until late fall with the richest and greenest vegetation. The grass and trees this fall, owing to the fortnights rain which fell while the horses were running at Gravesend track, are as fresh and green as in May. Not a leaf has turned so tar, and it begins to look as though the Morris Park patrons who have a taste for. gorgeous autumnal tints are not going to see any. It will require a lot of frost during the two weeks the current meeting has yet to run to bring out enough purple and gold to make a showing in all this green. "The Westchester Bacing Association has, it is said by persons whose sources of information are excellent, decided to erect its new plant on Hempstead Plain, L. I. Its plans are not yet matured, but it is understood that the now plant will consist of a main track one mile and a furlong around, with a turf course of one mile on the inside, as at Sheepshead Bay. and a mile straightaway. All tho gentlemen in the Westchester Association just now will onter the new enterprise and there will be many recruits. "The Hon. William Collins Whitney, president of the Saratoga Bacing Association, who had not taken up racing as a diversion when the Westchester Association was organized to fulfill the mission of the old New York Jockey Club, which in the old days held its meetings at Jerome Park, will take stock. Mr. Whitneys other interests will not prevent his contributing heavily in cash and in dovot-inglmuch of his timejto the new concern. No man interested in racing in this country nas a greater capacity for work. Mr. Whitney can do more work and harder work in promoting a racing enterprise than he ever could .in managing financial combinations which were to net him handsome profits, because it is not work to him. It is diversion. "The shifting of the Morris Park meeting to Long Island will be advantageous in many ways. Hempstead Plain is within easy striking distance of Long Island City, and may be reached in half an hours time by Long Island Bailroad specials. The trains will get to it more quickly than they can get to Gravesend, Brighton and Sheepshead Bay, because traffic down that way is comparatively light and the tracks do not run through a built-up section of Greater New York. The only objectionable part of the trip will be the crossing of the East Biver on the ferry boats. Turf patrons do not mind that, because they have become used to ferry boats these last ten or fifteen years. It beats riding to Willis avonue and One Hundred and Thirty-third street in stuffed, ill-smelling elevated trains all hollow, anyway. The ferry-boat nuisatice will not last forever, either. One of these days, after the Pennsylvania Company has overcome the fat-witted objections of obtuse municipal governments to small details of its East and North Biver tunnel schemes, wo will be able to take a train at Forty-second street and pass under the East Biver through a white-tiled, electric-lighted subway in three or four minutes. "Horsemen will find tho bunching of the tracks of the metropolitan circuit on Long Island of great convenience, because it will eliminate the expense of transporting stables from Long Island to Westchester; also the danger. "The officers of the Westchester Association have never bad even the remotest notion of renting the new track at Jamaica or the trotting track at Yonkers, where the Empire City Jockey Club held a fairly successful meeting during the autumn of 1900, for future meetings. The stories to that effect, published last week and the week before, were as ridiculous as the reports of the impending destruction of the Morris Park plant were premature. Neither the Jamaica plant nor the track at Yonkers is suitable to the needs of the Westchester Association. They are not nearly elaborate enough. They are mile tracks, admirably equipped for ordinary meetings, but not for great affairs like the sessions at Morris Park. The Empire City track will never be used for a running track. The Jamaica plant will, it is understood, be included in the metropolitan circuit next year with a regular set of dates. "The transformation of a portion of Hempstead Plain into a big racing plant, the kind the Westchester Association will require, will be comparatively easy and inexpensive. The territory is flat and the soil iB sandy. It is a much better sort than the clay and stone of Morris Park. The Morris Park courses require constant attention to be kept in such shape that racers may be worked and raced over them without imperiling joints, tendons and feet. There is no clay and there are no stone3 in Hempstead Plain. It will not be necessary for the engineers to hew away hills and fill in hollows to make room for stretches and turns. "When the proposed mile straightaway on Hemp-Btead Plain is built Salvators record of 1 :35i will be lowered. We are breeding faster horses these days than Salvator was and his mark would have been beaten long ago if there had been a mile straightaway convenient. Fast as the great Prince Charlie horse, was, he was never faster than the black colt Water Color, which bore his owners colors last season and during the early part of this year. "Perhaps some flyer bearing the all scarlet of the brothers Morris may beat Salvators record. The retirement of the Morrises is only temporary. When Morris Park is definitely disposed of they will return to the turf with a strong stable."
