Odds On Racing - Harness Racing

Odds On Racing's

Personalitiy of the Month
for April 2007

George Morton Levy

George Morton Levy was an astute business man and harness racing enthusiast whose passion for the sport prompted him to gather together band of investors, who embarked on creating a new racetrack in 1939.

Levy--a Freeport-based attorney--created Roosevelt Raceway from a modest parcel of land and built it into a track that created a boom in the sport in America in the 1950s and 1960s.

George Morton Levy

Levy's group, known as the Old Country Trotting Association wanted to see harness racing garner more attention than just at the county fair level, and used his uber-ideas to make his passion come to fruition. He patterned his racetrack at the Westbury home of the Vanderbilt Cup auto races, a track that had failed as a motor sport venue three years prior. Levy thought that by virtue of the Long Islanders long love of horse sports, coupled with a large grandstand that he had the perfect venue for a new harness racing facility. He was right.

However, Levy lacked the amount of horseflesh need to run a proper meet, and on opening day--August 26, 1940--he had only 27 horses to fill a program when 60 were needed. Fortunately, it rained hard that season and Levy was forced to keep his facility closed until Labor Day of that year, Setpember 2. The Old Country Trotting Association thus had time enough to encourage horsemen to ship in from as far away as the Midwest to race at the new plant.

Finally, however, Levy's dream came true and Roosevelt Raceway opened to an enthusiastic crowd of 4,584 patrons that wagered $40,734. During that first year 75,175 customers wagered over $1.2 million during 27 nights of racing. However, after the first three years of operating Roosevelt Raceway was nearly half a million in the red. Levy even brought patrons in from the railroad stations via horse and buggy to guarantee grandstand attendees.

"It was bleak,'' Levy said. "You couldn't get people to come out if you bought their dinners and paid their transportation. That's how bleak it was.''

In 1943, because of war-time travel restrictions, Roosevelt shared a 35-day meeting with Buffalo, Saratoga and Goshen's Good Time Park at the old Empire City thoroughbred track in Yonkers. For the first time, Roosevelt Raceway track realized a small profit. However, the start of some races was often delayed because there was no mobile gate in those days. Sometimes horses had to go postward six times before a fair start was declared.

Always an innovator, Levy answered the call on May 24, 1946, introducing the mobile starting gate at a personal cost of $63,000. It was an instant sucess, and the fans soon started coming out in droves to the races..

Roosevelt welcomed more than 1.1 million patrons in 1946 and steadily built its way toward nightly attendances of nearly 20,000 fans. The bucolic country racetrack was being stretched far beyond its capacity and, when the attendance peaked at 35,048 in August, 1953, Levy decided it was time to map out a super track.

He purchased an adjacent tract of land and sought the skills of internationally renowned architect Arthur Froehlich, who designed a palatial, $20-million five-story building that took racing from the days of wooden grandstand into the modern, metal-and-glass era. The groundbreaking was in April, 1956, the completion was on July 1, 1957, the grand opening one month later. The new facility offered trackside dining for 1,700 patrons, parking facilities for 15,000 cars, an air-conditioned grandstand, a state-of-the-art toteboard and room for up to 60,000 fans.

Horses, horsemen and fans abounded. Couples frequented the track, as did families until laws prohibiting children were enacted. Attendance and betting records were broken with regularity. Finding celebrities among the crowd was commonplace--they came out to enjoy the racing and to be seen.

"The stars knew where the cameras and reporters were, and it made for an added attraction for the fans,'' said Joe Goldstein, who worked in the Roosevelt publicity department from the mid-1950s and headed it from 1962-68. "With all the people moving to the suburbs, there was a new market for Roosevelt. We bused in fans from all over New York City and had all these transplanted people who found excitement at Roosevelt. And harness racing was king. There were no Islanders, no other professional sports, no cable TV.

"Roosevelt peaked in the mid-1960s, but probably still would be going strong if off-track betting hadn't been instituted in 1971,'' Goldstein said. "It sapped our audience and hurt our product. By the time baby boomers were of an age to go to the races, they didn't share their parents' passion for trotters.''

Roosevelt's slide continued through the 1970s and through a management change in 1984. The track closed in 1988 under a cloud of alleged illegal bond activities that hangs over the grounds to this day.

The George Morton Levy Memorial Pace is conducted annually at Yonkers Raceway for aged pacers, typically in the spring months of the harness racing season.

*To Read our previous "Personalities of the Month," go to our purple Racing News tab at the top of the Odds On Racing Home Page, and scroll down to "Behind The Scenes."*