History, Natural History & the Arts
The Jonathan Sheppard Memorial Stakes race is scheduled to be run at Saratoga Race Course on September 2, this season. This Grade 1 steeplechase race, with a purse of $150,000 will kick off the final week of this year’s track season.
The featured jump race at Saratoga was renamed in 2021, and had formerly been the New York Turf Writers Cup, which had been run previously at other racetrack locations in the Empire State. [Read more…] about Saratoga Race Course’s Featured Jump Race: Some History
In late July the National Museum of Racing in Saratoga Springs debuted a new one-of-a-kind exhibition, “Equine Eyes,” during an open house.
The exhibit is an interactive, research-driven presentation designed to simulate how horses perceive the world. [Read more…] about Equine Eyes: A New Way of Looking at Things
The NFL training camps have begun for another season, with the preseason beginning in mid-August.
During the 1960s the New York Football Giants would play a series of preseason games during a five year period at Cornell’s Schoellkopf Field in Ithaca, NY, which would come to be called the Finger Lakes Pro Bowl. [Read more…] about The Finger Lakes Pro Bowls & The NY Giants
As the twentieth century dawned, precepts from the 1800s continued in many schools of thought and application, including the construction of buildings to house livestock. One tenet used was that of a round or multi-sided barn, thought to be more economically constructed than a rectangular structure, with good wind resistance and strength under snow loads.
By the late 19th century many round barns existed across New York State, though they have become a rarity in our time. [Read more…] about Farm Architecture & Saturday’s Preakness Stakes
Cortland County, NY native John McGraw left a deep imprint on professional baseball, first in Baltimore and later New York, before and after the turn of the twentieth century.
In mid-May of 1894 the Baltimore Orioles were visiting Boston’s architectural gem, the South End Grounds, to play the Boston Nationals; the franchise that is today’s Atlanta Braves. [Read more…] about Sports Betting History: Baseball & Horse Racing
After the cold, and snowy winter we experienced this year in the Empire State, it is difficult to imagine a major league ballclub preparing for the season by holding Spring Training in upstate New York.
Many contingencies emerged from the privations which occurred on the home front during World War II. [Read more…] about Bear Mountain Dodgers: Spring Training in the War Years
The principles of beauty and artistic taste and its appreciation in nature and art are very personal, yet aesthetics can often be shared. During the nineteenth century the industrial revolution, first in Europe and later North America, left a dearth of creative aesthetics among inhabitants. Many felt the impersonal civilization, where industrialization forced movement from agrarian societies to urban social life, stripped creativity and aesthetic expression.
Like the industrial revolution itself, what would become an international trend originated in England and would be spread to British colonies and former colonies of the Empire, with origins in the 1850s. This was an arts and crafts movement, spurred on by those with both a grasp of mechanical design and a gift for expressing themselves in writing and lecture, such as John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle and William Morris. Art of pre-industrial times, produced by the skills of craftsmen, were championed and embraced by the movement. [Read more…] about Philistine Elbert Hubbard, Roycroft, and the Arts & Crafts Movement
Wesley Bintz was a Civil Engineer who received his training at the University of Michigan, earning a BCE in 1916 and MS in 1918. He moved on to municipal work in Flint, Michigan with two pools made of reinforced concrete, and funded by municipal bonds, which he designed as their City Engineer and completed in 1920.
Bintz subsequently accepted an Engineering position with the City of Lansing, Michigan whose citizens also desired an ovoid swimming pool, and saw their aspiration fulfilled with another a Bintz designed 80 x 120 foot pool constructed during 1922-23. Other communities saw the need for such facilities, which caused Bintz to patent his design, and specialize in his own swimming pool enterprise. Many Blintz pools were built in New York State. [Read more…] about New York Historic Pools Designed by Wesley Bintz
A cursory view of free online aerial imagery displays various race tracks in Saratoga Springs. There are nine locations that appear in the imagery, and each has its own horse racing record.
The overview image displays the nine separate locations, with the track numbering system in chronological order of construction, which represents the geography as we know it now, with illustrations below of what had been. [Read more…] about Saratoga Springs’ Nine Horse Racing Tracks
All canals are a series of ponds, at different water stages, or elevations. These elevation changes are transitioned by locks, with the area between the locks being of any length, and referred to as a level. Simply put, canal transport is similar to a set of stairs, with the levels being the tread, and the locks the riser. The highest level of any canal is known as the summit level.
As water flows with any lock movement, it is necessary to constantly re-supply the canal, and by feeding the replacement water to the summit level, the entire canal may be supplied. The original Erie Canal, statewide from Albany to Buffalo, had three summit levels; Lake Erie, Jordan and Rome. [Read more…] about Feeding the Erie Canal: Rome Summit Level Reservoirs
The canal system of New York State is a complex network of natural and man-made waterways that connect two of the Great Lakes that border the state with the Atlantic Ocean. The canals also incorporate Lake Champlain and the Finger Lakes. The development of this system bridges several generations and gives the canal system a genealogy of its own. [Read more…] about New York State’s Canal Heritage: An Engineering Family Tree
Following the stock market crash of October 1929, an economic malady gripped the United States and much of the world, lasting several years. Loss of employment created excessive hardships, limiting even basic necessities of life.
The President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had previously been the two-term Governor of New York State, developed a composite plan to help citizens cope with the financial disaster and provide jobs, commonly known as “The New Deal.”
The ambitious program was multi-faceted, with one face being the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps (C.C.C.) established in 1933, where young men were organized into military style labor, housed in barracks at remote locations. [Read more…] about How The New Deal Helped Ignite Interest in American Skiing
A day at the races at Saratoga Race Course is one of the highly anticipated ways to spend a summer day. For fans of the thoroughbred horse, there is plenty of sport, yet a real pleasure is visiting the facility itself.
The grounds have a special heritage fostered across the years and generations, which is easily perceived, and a pleasure to combine with a visitor’s personal experiences forming an emotional connection to that communal place of competition. [Read more…] about Saratoga Race Course: An Architectural History
The Saratoga Springs community is home to fine memorial art devoted to those who were involved in the Spanish-American War. The largest of these tributes was dedicated on May 2, 1923 in Greenridge Cemetery, and provides a tangible remembrance of those times and conditions. The sculpture, known as “The Hiker,” was created by noted artist Allen G. Newman (1875-1940) who was born in New York City and studied at the National Academy of Design.
The term “hiker” was used to describe the troops of the Spanish-American War (and later Philippine-American War) campaigns, similar to the term “doughboy” in World War I, and “GI Joe” in World War II. [Read more…] about “The Hiker” at Saratoga Springs Memorializes Spanish-American War Service
The John J. McGraw Monument in Truxton, New York is a nice sculpture, dignified and uncomplicated.
Yet it captures a great deal of what might be described as the essence of baseball, with the man himself portrayed in bas-relief on a truncated obelisk wearing his New York Giants pinstriped flannels and cap. [Read more…] about The John McGraw Game: ‘Greatest Sporting Event in the History of Cortland County’
Through the nineteenth century in the Empire State a system of “blue laws” at every civic level were enforced, prohibiting all types of activities on the Christian Sabbath. As the twentieth century began, these “blue laws” prevented Sunday baseball.
The sport of baseball had swept the nation, and was popular since the Civil War; played anywhere a bat and ball could be put in use. Americans were baseball mad, they had the fever, and had it bad. [Read more…] about Sunday Baseball and the Titanic Game
I was pleased to recently learn through the New York Almanack and Lake George Mirror about the planned restoration of historic sculptures at the Lake George Battlefield Park.
I have a special interest in the “Mohawk Warrior” sculpture produced by Alexander Phimister Proctor and the unique history surrounding this monumental work.
This sculpture was a gift from George D. Pratt, who commissioned the artist. Interestingly, the sculpture was conceived as a component of the planned conception for the New York State Reservation in Saratoga Springs (now known as Saratoga Spa State Park). [Read more…] about George Pratt, Lake George’s ‘Mohawk Warrior’ & Saratoga Springs
The tourism fostered at Saratoga Springs by the mineral waters and baths spawned the spectacle of thoroughbred racing during the nineteenth century and also a clubhouse which operated as a casino. They were exciting diversions for those visiting to take the “water cure.”
With so many tourists at the numerous hotels and boarding houses by virtue of the convenient rail connections, another attraction of sorts was fostered, Indian Encampments which functioned much like carnivals. [Read more…] about Saratoga Springs’ Indian Encampments
There are many former race tracks across the Empire State, and one of them is an old race track in Watkins Glen, the county seat of Schuyler County, NY. Not a flat for thoroughbreds or an oval for trotters, but the original “open-circuit” Grand Prix track.
As the victors of the Second World War settled down after a few seasons at home they looked for some new entertainment. An early autumn festival in the marvelous Finger Lakes Region seemed like a siren’s call that extended the waning summer; the final rose of the season. [Read more…] about Racing Through The Streets of Watkins Glen
October is the month we celebrate Halloween and the anniversary of General John Burgoyne’s surrender at the Battles of Saratoga. It is also the month which precedes a much anticipated national election, which many look forward to, yet others fear the consequences.
One of the candidates seeking office has used a term, which for better or worse, has entered the American lexicon, “childless cat women.” Intended as a rather nasty insult, it has been seized upon by some as a mantra of opposition.
In Upstate New York, where Halloween includes spooky local lore, and where Burgoyne’s surrender took place, it might be interesting to consider a “childless cat woman” of the past who had also been considered a witch. [Read more…] about The Witch of Saratoga: Angeline Tubbs, History & Folklore
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