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After a 1918 fire at the New Orleans Fair Grounds, the
City Park Race Track grandstand was moved to the Fair
Grounds (shown).
Photo from New Orleans in the Twenties
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Hey Blake,
What was the location of the New Orleans Jockey Club?
Anita
Dear Anita,
The New Orleans Jockey Club was a consortium organized by H. D. "Curley" Brown in 1904. Their goal was to make a great deal of money conducting races at the new City Park Race Track.
It began in 1903 when George Friedrichs, a real-estate developer, auctioneer, and speculator, bought Mrs. August Larrieu's dairy farm with the intention of turning it into a racetrack. The farm consisted of 180 acres of willow copses, dried-up swamp, and scrub brush. And for a mere $140 an acre, Friedrichs got the land, a house, a barn and stable located between old City Park and the Southern Railroad tracks.
"Curley" Brown, a horseman with extensive contacts, then purchased 100 acres of the Larrieu property and sold it to the newly organized New Orleans Jockey Club, of which Friedrichs was a member, and plans were afoot for the new City Park Race Track.
The track, standing on ground now occupied by Tad Gormley Stadium, Roosevelt Mall, a few baseball diamonds, and a bit of lagoon, had a large, three-story steel grandstand, a mile-long oval, a paddock, nine stable buildings, and everything else a first-class track needed.
Much hoopla accompanied the grand opening of the City Park Race Track on Feb. 11, 1905. There were two brass bands, a huge crowd, and a terrible downpour. It never occurred to anyone at the time that the rain was an omen.
Success, however, seemed assured, and the second season was so popular that the other track -- the Fair Grounds -- agreed to a plan of alternating racing days every two weeks. In fact, the situation was a bettor's dream as there was also another track on the West Bank that had Sunday racing, and the scuttlebutt had it that night racing at a fourth track was being planned.
All this gambling and potential for more was just too much for the opposition. And they had power behind them. Louisiana had just elected Jared Y. Sanders as governor, and he was squarely on the side of the anti-gambling crowd. Even in his inauguration speech on Dec. 2, 1907, Sanders severely criticized all racing as "an intolerable nuisance." And we heard the death knell ringing in the background.
Under his leadership, in the spring of 1908, the State Legislature passed the "Locke Law," an act that prohibited gambling on horse races "by the operation of betting books, French Mutual Pooling Devices, auction pools, or any device."
Of course, loud voices were raised in protest, including that of Mayor Martin Behrman. But louder voices prevailed. The newspapers defended the law, and an editorial appeared in the New Orleans Item claiming the law "would redeem New Orleans from pillage by the nation's gamblers." The paper declared, "The City Park Race Track is a sort of shirt front of local popularity behind which the foreign gamblers who own and degrade the race tracks in New Orleans have masqueraded." It further stated that the bookies would no longer be able "to enrich themselves from the pockets of the dupes."
All racetracks in Louisiana were closed as a result of the Locke Law, and the New Orleans Jockey Club went into liquidation in 1911. Friedrichs bought the land back from the Jockey Club and sold it to a real-estate company in 1912.
But in 1916, the Locke Law was repealed, and when betting was legal again "Curley" Brown showed up and bought the City Park Race Track from the real-estate company for a whopping $350,000.
Operating the Fair Grounds at the time was the Business Men's Racing Association that was unhappy with the prospect of competition. Brown was offered a $50,000 profit if he would get out of town. He agreed.
The BMRA eventually sold the long-coveted property to City Park on June 11, 1920, but not before a fire in December 1918 burned the Fair Grounds grandstand to the ground. The grandstand at the City Park Race Track was taken apart and reassembled at the Fair Grounds where it stood until December 1993, when it too went up in flames.
