Object Details
- Description
- A color print of granstands of race track decorated with banners and flags. The horses begin the race driven hard by jockeys. The jockeys wear white breeches, red, green, yellow, and pink jackets. The judges and owners stand in octagonal stands with striped awning.
- Jerome Park Racetrack opened on September 25, 1866 in Fordham, Westchester County, New York, which now forms part of the Bronx. The American Jockey Club operated this facility on what was once the Bathgate estate. It was owned by Leonard W. Jerome, who helped found the Jockey Club, and August Belmont, Sr. The course was known as “The Bluff” and hosted the first Belmont Stakes in honor of its owner and President of the Jockey Club in 1867. It ran there until 1890 until it was moved to the Morris Park Racetrack. Visits to Jerome Park were integral to New York City social life. In 1894, Jerome Park was scheduled to be turned into a reservoir for the city because the popularity of racing had begun to decline and “bookmaking” was introduced, lowering the class of the facility to the chagrin of the American Jockey Club, which later banned the activity. The prohibition of betting was the final factor in the downfall of Jerome Park.
- Heinrich or Henry Schile’s was a lithographer and publisher in New York in the 1870’s, listed on Division Street. Though his works often were German in source or character, and often bore titles in foreign languages, it was for the convenience of immigrants and invariably and outrageously were crude in conception, composition, and drawing; yet, Schile’s prints are undoubtedly American in spirit. Schile vividly represented the melting pot mentality of the US. Schile played to his audiences’ desires for history of the new country they had immigrated to; from personifications of America, to the races in Saratoga. Schile’s patrons were mostly immigrants and he created specific works from them, from German inspired to Jewish religious prints. His most frequent and popular works were his gaudy sentimentals which were to the New York tenements what the Kellogg sentimentals were to the white New Englanders.
- Schile’s works were often large in quantity and were often on heavy black paper; though the paper often ranged from the thinnest to the very thickest. Notable to Peter’s was that the coloring was very crude in many of the prints.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
- maker
- Schile, Henry
- date made
- ca 1870
- Credit Line
- Harry T. Peters "America on Stone" Lithography Collection
- Physical Description
- ink (overall material)
- paper (overall material)
- Measurements
- image: 18 1/2 in x 25 3/8 in; 46.99 cm x 64.4525 cm
- Object Name
- lithograph
- Object Type
- Lithograph
