Dry Monopole by Half a Length

New York City, 1886

Dry Monopole, a small, athletic horse named after a renowned brand of Champagne, is remembered for winning the first stakes race run on turf in the United States. The historic event, fittingly called the Green Grass Stakes, was the sixth and final race at the Sheepshead Bay Race Track on June 10, 1886. Having rained the day before, the new turf track looked like “a great band of soft green velvet.”1 Going off at 6-1 odds, the three-year-old thoroughbred went wire to wire in the field of ten, winning the one-and-an-eighth-mile race in 1:57. In the parlance of future generations of racing fans, Dry Monopole was the “class of the grass.”

The track at Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn was considered the best race course in the country. Established by the Coney Island Jockey Club, whose members included wealthy businessmen from New York such as August Belmont, Jr., Pierre Lorillard IV, and William Kissam Vanderbilt, the track upgraded its facilities in 1886. Among the changes was the new one-mile turf course, replacing the steeplechase course inside the existing main dirt track that was still used for most races.2 In fact, racing on grass was slow to catch on. The New York Times went so far as to deem the whole thing a failure, noting that “training horses on a dirt track and running them on turf could not have been expected to succeed…”3

The new turf course opened with little notice or fanfare during the first day of the racing season at an event called the "spring meeting." As shown below, there is no mention of it on the clubhouse menu which offers a relatively good selection of Champagnes for such a modest bill of fare. (Ironically, Dry Monopole was not among those listed.) This menu hints at something that can be seen more clearly on another menu from a gathering of horse fanciers ten days earlier—the horsey set of high society seems to have been extremely fond of Champagne during the Victorian era.

The small menu card below, from the Brunswick Hotel on May 31, offers an astonishingly large selection of thirty-seven Champagnes and other sparkling wines. The aristocratic Brunswick, located on Fifth Avenue and 26th Street, diagonally opposite Delmonico’s, was a favorite watering hole for gourmets and horse enthusiasts. The hotel even served as the headquarters of the New York Coaching Club, an organization known for elevating “four-in-hand” carriage riding to an art form, a technique requiring the carriage drivers, called “whips,” to hold the reins of all four horses in one fist. The menu was prepared for Memorial Day, a holiday that was faithfully observed by this post-war generation. The national observance, originally called Decoration Day in 1866 to commemorate soldiers who died during the Civil War, was called by both names by 1886. President Cleveland came to New York that year to participate in the day-long activities which included grand parades in Brooklyn and Manhattan. This menu is distinguished by a drawing of a sporting woman. Presumably a quick sketch of one of the hotel’s well-tailored patrons who was in town for the occasion, it captures the spirit and style of the upper classes who appreciated the bubbly combination of freshness, delicacy, and raciness that defines a fine Champagne.

Notes
1. New York Times, 11 June 1886.
2. Brooklyn Eagle, 9 June 1886.
3. New York Times, 28 June 1886.