The Big A is in its last days.
There used to be a racetrack here. That is what people will soon be saying about the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. Aqueduct Racetrack opened on September 27th, 1894. It was owned by the Queens County Jockey Club, and named for its location. The racetrack sat on a property in South Ozone Park, on a conduit belonging to the Brooklyn Water Works where water was delivered to New York City from the Hempstead Plain. In 1894, Brooklyn was a separate city. Queens was part of Nassau County. New York City was Manhattan and pieces of the Bronx then.
Aqueduct was just another racetrack in the New York City area when it opened. It competed with three Brooklyn tracks, the Brighton Beach, the Gravesend Racetrack and the Sheepshead Bay Race Track and the Morris Park Racecourse in the Bronx. The Morris Park track opened in 1889 and replaced Jerome Park as the Bronx’s only track after the city claimed the Jerome Park land for a reservoir. Jerome Park was opened in 1866 and closed in 1894. Jerome Park hosted the Belmont Stakes, the oldest Thoroughbred racing’s Triple Crown race, from 1867 until 1889. The Belmont moved to Morris Park and stayed there until the opening of Belmont Park in Elmont, across the Queens border in 1906. The 1895 race was almost not held because of new laws that banned bookmaking in New York. The race was eventually rescheduled for November 2nd, 1895. The Belmont Stakes race was held at Aqueduct Racetrack from 1963 to 1967, while the track at Belmont was restored and the grandstand was renovated.
The second leg of Thoroughbred Horse Racing’s Triple Crown took place in New York in the 19th and 20th century. In 1890, the race was run at the Morris Park in Westchester County, New York before that land was seized by New York City, land that became the Bronx.
The race was held at the Gravesend Race Track on Coney Island, in the city of Brooklyn then starting in 1898 the boro of Brooklyn in New York, from 1894 until 1908.
So what happened to all the New York Thoroughbred tracks? When Aqueduct closes sometime in the late summer of fall of 2026, they will be remembered only in history books. In 1904, following a decline in attendance, Morris Park closed. The Brooklyn tracks, Gravesend, Sheepshead Bay, Brighton Beach shut down because of the New York statewide prohibition of gambling in 1910. Jamaica Race Course, also called the Jamaica Racetrack, lasted from 1903 through 1959. Aqueduct was the last New York City racetrack standing. It was renovated in 1959.
Horse racing was once a big deal in the United States. industry that has been in a massive decline for decades. There are some races that still attract attention, the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont along with the Breeders’ Cup but it is no longer 1950 when Baseball, Boxing and Horse Racing dominated the American sports landscape. Horse racing had a big following but that quickly faded after the 1950s as states began lotteries and betting was made easy.
In the 1960s, there was a limited but growing form of legalized betting around, with state lotteries, off track betting and the availability of all forms of gambling in stores along with casinos sprouting up around the country gamblers’ have choices. A portion of the horse racing industry has been saved by casino gambling at tracks. That is not going to change anytime soon. Racetracks were in some instances saved by the introduction of a casino on the property. That is what happened to Aqueduct in 2011 but that was not enough to save the old track.
In 2024, New York State decided to prop up a failing industry, horse racing, by throwing $455 million into the renovation of the Belmont Park Racetrack on the New York City-Nassau County border. There was a consolidation of the New York Racing Association and it was decided that races would be run at Belmont Park and Saratoga. Once the renovations at Belmont Park were done, the Big A or Aqueduct would close.
The racing will be gone but gambling will continue as New York State awarded Resorts World, the operator of the present racino, the right to operate a full blown casino complete with tables. There will be entertainment there and the Big A was part of a routine by the comic Robert Klein more than a half century ago. Klein did a bit imitating track announcer Fred Capossella’s race calls. The bit is on Klein’s 1974 album Mind Over Matter.
Belmont across the Queens line will have Thoroughbred racing featuring a grandstand of 7,500 permanent seats. In its heyday, Aqueduct had 75,000 seats and crowds of 50,000 people were common. But those days are gone and soon the Big A will be a distant memory to people who like going to the track.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
The Big A is racing to the finish line.
