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Originally Posted by midnight
Washington Park's burning down has long been suspected to be arson. The property was converted to commercial afterwards.
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Not the only dubious occurrence in the colorful and often stormy history of Chicagoland racing. In
The History of Thoroughbred Racing in America (1964; New York: Bonanza Books; out of print), William HP Robertson, longtime editor of
The Thoroughbred Record, tells of a shooting war precipated by Hawthorne Park founder "Big Ed" Corrigan that resulted in the termination of a concurrently run meeting at rival Garfield Park.
Shortly after Corrigan's lease on West Side Park expired in 1891, he moved his operation to his new Hawthorne plant, which, being located in Stickney, lay outside the jurisdiction of the Chicago constabulary. The profitable Garfield enterprise, established by "poolroom" (read "bookie joint") entrepreneur Mike McDonald and a few of his politically connected confreres, had gotten underway just about the same time Corrigan opened for business at Hawthorne.
Accounts vary as to the real reasons a battalion of Chicago's finest, in 1892, raided Garfield, where bettors, bookmakers, owners, trainers, and jockeys--some still sporting silks--were herded into paddywagons and hauled off to the hoosegow. The "official" version has it that reform mayor Hempstead Washburne gave the order out of concern that the moral fiber of Chi citizenry might be frayed should they rub their big shoulders against those of reprobates populating such a den of iniquity as Garfield Park Race Track. More likely, Big Ed's money spoke louder than McDonald's, especially after he'd turned up the volume with who knows how many dead-president choristers. What's more, Corrigan's concern lay outside the city limits, hence out of reach of the long arm of the law.
If anyone needed further evidence of Big Chi racing not always having been on the up-and-up, he could skip (over another three-quarters of a century of graft) to 1970, when Marge Everett (later of Hollywood Park), who had managed Arlington and Washington Park since 1960, admitted to having bribed Illinois governor Otto Kerner to secure prime racing dates. To be fair to Marge, she did, apparently, have her attractive qualities. If
midnight is justified in his suspicions about whatever happened to Washington Park, we know that
somebody carried a torch for her.
--falconridge
