view raw text
HOW NEW YORK MISSES RACING. The prestige New York used to have as a summer resort for a certain class of wealthy people has suffered a decided slump in the last two years, according to views expressed by hotel men yesterday. They attribute it to tlie abandonment of horse racing. "Until two years ago there was a large southern and western contingent that used to come to New York during the summer and stop at the big hotels for a week or two, said one manager. "The visitors used to spend their money pretty freely. They would take in the races at Belmont Park or Sheepshead Bay or Brighton or wherever the horses were running, and then conic back for a fine dinner, with a look in at a roof garden afterward. "Nowadays these people do not stop in New York in summer longer than a night. They are going to Europe to spend their money or putting in all their time at seaside or mountain resorts, just liecause New York does not hold out to them the attractions it once did." "Two or three days before every big event on the local race tracks," said the representative of another hotel, "a lot of rich people with considerable leisure would come to town. They would stay for a week or more, and the women would spend their mornings shopping and then in the afternoon they and their husbands would go down to the race course, got all the excitement they wished for a day. and then come back to a dinner with friends. "Now these people, when they come to New York in the summer, never stay more than over night. Why. it used to be so that visitors at every summer resort within a hundred miles of New York considered a weeks racing in New York as one of the most attractive parts of a summer vacation. "No. baseball does not begin to take the place of horse racing. Not one woman in ten ever learns enough about the game to take an intelligent interest in the plays. As for a horse race, every woman knows when a horse comes out ahead. Why, lots of people if the big race was on a Saturday, used to come here and remain over Sunday and make business for us on that day." "Yes," that is absolutely true, said the representative of another hotel when the views of the two others had been mentioned to him. "I could name dozens of men and their wives who used to come to New York especially for the races and remain a week or so. but who never come hen; in the summer time now if they can help it. They are liberal spenders too, and it goes without saying that they are missed." "We used to have a regular procession of automobiles from this hotel to the race track," was said at another hotel, "and we no longer see the occupants of them in New York in summer. Neither baseball nor the shows at the summer theaters or the seaside resorts lake the place of racing. "You can see professional baseball in any big city of the United Slates, and there are summer shows everywhere. But racing as it used to he seen in the neighborhood of New York they could witness nowhere else in the country. You can take it from ine that the abandonment of racing In the neighborhood of New York has kept, away a lot of money from this town." New York Sun.
