2. The Lost Sheepshead Bay Race Track
The Sheepshead Bay Race Track was a major Thoroughbred horse racing site that opened in 1880. It often competed with the Brighton Beach Race Course – home of the Brighton Derby – which opened a year prior in the back of the Brighton Beach Hotel. The Sheepshead Bay Race Track was led by figures including William Kissam Vanderbilt, who managed his family’s railroad investments, as well as the grandfather of Winston Churchill, Leonard Jerome. Prior to the race track’s opening, the area had become a hotel and restaurant destination, and by 1877, much of the area’s farmland had become residential developments. This growth was aided in part by the extension of the LIRR’s Manhattan Beach Branch.
People entered the club on Ocean Avenue between Avenues X and Y to see 1.5-mile head-to-head horse races on dirt and turf courses. With backing from August Belmont Jr., the race track held events including the Suburban Handicap, the Futurity Stakes, and the Lawrence Realization Stakes. The Coney Island Jockey Club opened the first turf course in the U.S. here in 1886, and it was believed that over 50 different stakes races were held over the years at the courses. A 1908 law that banned racetrack betting caused interest in the Sheepshead Bay Race Track to decline. Additionally, growing competition with Belmont Park further led to the demise of the famed track, which was torn down starting in 1919.