Washington Winter Show 2013

52 from Rock Creek on the west to the U.S. Capitol and north out to the Eckington estate, near the junction of today’s Florida and New York avenues, N.E. An article in Turf, Field and Farm in 1886 described the hunt’s season commencing in November and ending in April with meetings in Washington, Prince Georges and Fairfax counties. The Civil War stalled interest in organized equestrian sports generally. But after the war, Washington society underwent a radical transformation, as more geographically diverse Americans who had made their fortunes in the West and North transformed Washington into one of the nation’s major social centers. In the Gilded Age these wealthy out-of- towners wished to find respectability for their new wealth— from manufacturing, mining, railroads, and meatpacking— and embraced the English equestrian sports of foxhunting, Thoroughbred racing and coaching. In 1885, Samuel S. Howland, an avid equestrian sportsman, who had married Fredica Belmont, the only daughter of financier August Belmont, organized the Dumblane Hunt at historic Dumblane Hall (ca. 1820) in the Tenleytown section of Northwest D.C. The hunt often met under the magnificent oak tree that stills stands on the Wiley T. Buchanan estate on Nebraska Avenue near American University’s Tenleytown campus (where the original Dumblane Hall is still used as an administrative office building). In 1892, the Dumblane Hunt merged with the new Chevy Chase Hunt, which would become the predecessor of the Chevy Chase Club on Connecticut Avenue at Bradley Lane. The Chevy Chase Hunt came into its golden years during Clarence Moore’s tenure as master of the hounds from 1899 to 1912. Moore, a meatpacking heir from Chicago and consummate horseman, was known to own more fine horses (at times as This page is sponsored by Carroll Chapin, Marjorie Hulgrave, Terrell McDermid Horse racing at Benning Race Course, ca. 1907. Library of Congress Potomac Hunt Spring Race, 2012. Photo by Robert F. Keller. many as 90 hunters) and carriages than any other person in Washington, and he maintained a pack of 240 English hounds on his estate in Chevy Chase. The territory of the Chevy Chase Hunt included not only Montgomery County, but also adjoining counties in Maryland and Virginia, and meets were held twice a week during the season—one for live fox and one for drag (with the hounds chasing a scent trail laid down in advance), and there were as many as 20 different meet venues. Moore died with the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, and with the loss of his support and leadership, the Chevy Chase Hunt slowly wound down and disbanded in 1916. Foxhunting resumed for a time in the 1920s, north through Rock Creek Park from the Washington Riding and Hunt Club, a large riding academy and stables at 22nd and P streets, N.W. (razed for a gas station in 1936). Suburban development into traditional hunting territory required a move further out. In 1931, the Master of Foxhounds Association recognized the new Potomac Hunt Club, a successor to the Chevy Chase Hunt, located at Charlie Carrico’s Bradley Farm, near the intersection of River Road and Bradley Boulevard. The Potomac Hunt moved three more times over the years landing at its present home near Barnesville, Maryland in 1980. With the founding of the Washington International Horse Show in 1958, the District of Columbia became one of the three major venues for urban shows in America, featuring world-class hunters and open jumpers from the around the world. (The major U.S. shows are in New York City, at Madison Square Garden, and in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.) The Washington show, started at the D.C. Armory along the Anacostia River, moved in 1975 to the now-demolished Capital Centre in Largo, Md., and then to the Verizon Center, where the horses are stabled on closed urban side streets. Chevy Chase Hunt historic photo.