Washington Winter Show 2013

50 This page is sponsored by Sheila Proby Gross Square, General Edward Beale, the wealthy adventurer and California rancher who owned Decatur House. There is an often-repeated tale that Grant in his first term received a speeding ticket from a black policeman named Mr. West while driving two thoroughbred bays down Sixteenth Street toward the White House at breakneck speed. The Critic Record (a Washington newspaper) ran the story early in 1885, but no contemporary evidence has surfaced to document the incident. What is certain is Grant’s passion for fast pacers. Racing, both flat and harness, remained highly popular sports in Washington after the Civil War. A short-lived harness track opened near St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Anacostia, where the celebrated trotters Dexter and Rarus gave exhibitions of Dexter, famed for his ideal trotting action called the“Dexter stroke,” won 46 of 50 races and trotted a mile in a record 2:17.1/4 during the 1860s. Robert Bonner bought and retired the horse, but allowed presidential candidate Ulysses S. Grant the thrill of taking the reins at top speed in this 1868 lithograph by Currier and Ives. Library of Congress. The White House Stables on the Day of Grant’s Second Inauguration, 1873, oil on canvas painting by Peter Waddell, WhiteHouse Historical Association their speed. Another course, Ivy City in Northeast Washington, near the present Gallaudet University campus, opened in 1879, where flat, steeplechase, and harness races were held. President Rutherford B. Hayes attended the groundbreaking ceremony on an overcast day on September 2, 1879. The meetings held in the spring and fall usually featured five races on the card. The top jockeys at the track were “Snapper” Garrison and Jim McLaughlin, who both sported luxurious mustaches that “curled devilishly at the ends.” There were also outstanding black jockeys, such as Isaac Murphy, Willie Simms, and Tony Hamilton, riding at the meetings. The Ivy City track closed in 1890. RACING AT BENNING The most prominent horseracing complex ever in D.C. was founded in the 1870s as a harness racing venue. Commonly called Benning’s Track, named after the Benning neighborhood that lay along the tidal flats east of the Anacostia River in today’s Kenilworth/Deanwood area of Northeast D.C., the Washington Jockey Club acquired the property in 1890 and after major improvements converted it to flat racing and steeplechases. (Its site became today’s Mayfair Mansions in 1942, a landmark and attractive housing complex for middle-income blacks.) In its heyday the Benning stables accommodated 400 horses and the track had renowned riders, such as Walter Miller, Arthur Redfern, and Tommy Burns. Miller, one of the greatest jockeys of the early twentieth century, who rode the superhorse Colin to 11 of his 15 victories, rode all eight winners on the card at Benning one day in 1906. Benning drew the cream of Washington society along with throngs from Washington and Baltimore as the spring and fall race meetings grew into gala events that opened and closed the national flat-racing season. Thanksgiving Day was the biggest race day of the year, and the crush around the betting ring was likened to a New York subway train at rush hour. A conspicuous regular at the Benning racetrack was Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the eldest daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt. Behind the scenes, a local African-American youth named Bill Robinson worked as a stable boy at Benning; he would grow up to be the popular entertainer and philanthropist “Bojangles” Robinson. A national reformmovement opposed to gambling would prove to be the undoing of racing in Washington, D.C. Congress enacted legislation to ban betting on horse racing within the District of