{"id":174672,"date":"2026-08-04T11:07:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T15:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=174672"},"modified":"2026-08-04T11:07:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T15:07:07","slug":"last-days-at-the-aqueduct-new-yorks-rundown-racetrack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2026\/08\/04\/last-days-at-the-aqueduct-new-yorks-rundown-racetrack\/","title":{"rendered":"Last Days at the Aqueduct: New York\u2019s Rundown Racetrack"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Courtesy of Max Callimanopulos.<\/p><\/div>\n

The first one thousand fans through the gates of the Aqueduct Racetrack on the last Sunday of June received a commemorative vial of track dirt. I arrived too late to claim mine, but I spotted several as I walked out to the grandstand. A few old men clutched them tightly while watching the races. Others used them as paperweights to keep their stacks of betting slips from blowing away. \u201cMagic charm,\u201d said a man in a Vietnam War Veteran hat, flashing his little jar at me. After 132 years, the Aqueduct Racetrack was closing. Some lucky people would leave with a bit of it in their pockets.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That Sunday, the track was more crowded than I\u2019d ever seen it. The grandstand was jammed. The apron\u2014the bit of asphalt that fronts the track\u2014was overflowing with spectators. The line for concessions snaked through the betting hall. A steel drum band, playing bright, mournful music, greeted the throng filtering through the front doors. This must be the most people the Aqueduct had hosted in months, I said to an elfin woman eating a hot dog. She corrected me: This is the most people to have come here in <\/span>years<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I\u2019d first started visiting the track this past spring, the place felt forgotten and in gentle decay. The upper levels of the grandstand were a pigeon roost; the clientele was aging. I was the youngest man there\u2014and the regulars were almost exclusively male\u2014by twenty years. Still, something about the place suited me. I\u2019d abruptly quit the Peace Corps and found myself back in the city with no job and not much in my bank account. The Aqueduct was free to enter and easy to get to. Inside, I felt myself in good company. Nobody here was at work; nobody asked me why I wasn\u2019t either. I could take a seat in the sun and watch the horses stream by.<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\n

During its heyday in the midsixties, the Aqueduct was the world\u2019s largest racetrack. Renovations in 1959 added a total capacity for eighty thousand patrons, sixty-two bars and buffets, and even a twenty-five-bed hospital. On weekends, an express train\u2014the \u201cAqueduct Special\u201d\u2014shuttled racegoers between Times Square and the track.<\/span> In 1981, the Equestris restaurant opened in a bid to attract high rollers to the racetrack. The <\/span>Times<\/span><\/i>, covering the opening, noted the restaurant\u2019s twelve hundred trackside seats, \u201clounges with red-velour couches,\u201d and its dress code: no jeans, \u201cdesigner or otherwise.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019d taken the stairs up to the Equestris once\u2014the escalator had been out of order. The red velour was long gone, ripped off the couches, and the seats had been arranged in orderly lines across the restaurant floor, ready to be moved out. The bar was crowded with moldering cardboard boxes and upturned plastic tables. A row of defunct ATMs was pushed against the back wall. Chunks of drywall lay scattered across the carpeting. Sitting outside, a sunspotted old man described crowds of forty thousand that used to flood the track every weekend.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe all used to dress for this,\u201d he said. \u201cSuit and tie and we used to wear hats\u2014everyone in a hat. We called them fedoras back then. You probably never heard of a fedora.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I told him I had heard of a fedora.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEverything changes,\u201d he croaked at me. \u201cYou\u2019ll see. Everything changes.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Fedoras had since been abandoned in favor of ball caps; those crowds of forty thousand had thinned to a few hundred. The Aqueduct was closing because the New York Racing Association (NYRA) had decided to consolidate downstate racing at Belmont Park, just over the city limits in Nassau County. The Resorts World New York City casino\u2014which opened on the Aqueduct\u2019s grounds in 2011\u2014would remain standing next door. NYRA was spending $455 million on a sleek, glass-enclosed grandstand at Belmont and another $100 million on rebuilding its tracks. When the revamped racetrack opens in September, an article in <\/span>BloodHorse<\/span><\/i> promises, \u201cthe racing world will be introduced to a new, more modern era of racing in New York.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The irony here is that the Aqueduct itself was once the upscale replacement for a scruffier track. The renovations carried out in 1959 were meant to supplant the Jamaica Racetrack, a few miles east, whose archetypal fan, William H. P. Robertson wrote in <\/span>The History of Thoroughbred Racing in America<\/span><\/i>, was \u201cintensely loyal\u201d and \u201ca breed unto himself: a raucous, aggressive creature, notorious for the audibility of his observations.\u201d Robertson, writing in 1964, went on to observe that while the freshly reopened Aqueduct had \u201cnot been without its detractors,\u201d the new track\u2014a \u201cgleaming monster,\u201d as he put it\u2014might someday \u201cacquire a sentimental following of its own.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\n

The track\u2019s sentimental following was out in full force on Sunday. A tall man named Carl told me, in a lilting accent I couldn\u2019t quite place, that he would miss the Aqueduct\u2019s \u201catmosphere.\u201d \u201cWe come here, we yell and curse at the horses, the jockey, the owners. But we don\u2019t mean none of it.\u201d A few minutes later, when a chestnut filly named Fairy Godmother came in sixth, I watched a mild-looking white guy lean over the paddock railing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHey Dylan, fuck you!\u201d The jockey didn\u2019t look up.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSon of a bitch just made me lose fifty dollars,\u201d he said, looking around at us sheepishly.<\/span><\/p>\n

Amid the crowds, there was no shortage of old timers happy to tell you about the first time they came here, about the great races they had seen (Secretariat\u2019s record-setting mile in the 1973 Gotham Stakes; Cigar\u2019s seven-length win in \u201994), about their dads who brought them (a lot about dads, I found). But the diehards I talked to\u2014the fans stalking around with marked-up copies of the <\/span>Daily Racing Program<\/span><\/i> stuffed into their cargo shorts\u2014seemed to accept the Aqueduct\u2019s closure with admirable equanimity. \u201cRight after this I\u2019m going to Saratoga for the summer,\u201d a man named Lou told me. \u201cI go where the horses go.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Others were less mobile. \u201cDon\u2019t care about the betting,\u201d said Chuck, a soft-spoken Trini man. \u201cI\u2019m just here to watch. When it closes, I just stay home. Make the miss happy.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Mike, in his eighties, had given up on the sport entirely. \u201cI\u2019m not going to Belmont when this place is finished. I\u2019m done. I mean, I don\u2019t even look at the races anymore. I just pick a number,\u201d he said, sounding exhausted.<\/span><\/p>\n

So why did anyone still bother coming? Betting was a crapshoot and the Aqueduct was rotting. It seemed in worse repair every weekend I visited. Big flakes of paint dangled off the girders and puddles of green mold adorned the bathroom sinks. But when I first saw the horses coming down the homestretch, I thought they were the most beautiful thing I\u2019d seen in months.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On that final Sunday, the crowd roared for them after every race. The thoroughbreds stood on the track, their chests covered in a greenish lather of dust and sweat, stamping and tossing their manes as they were hosed down. The water gave their coats a sheen, as if they had been lacquered. \u201cThey\u2019re just the most lovely animal,\u201d a ninety-one-year-old man gushed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nine races were scheduled that day, and by the ninth, just before six in the evening, everyone was tipsy and restive. \u201cThis will be the last race run at the Aqueduct, folks, the very last race,\u201d the announcer said. A cheer went up. The horses and their jockeys trotted out. But instead of lining up at the gate, they passed it and formed a ring on the track. For a few minutes they walked round and round, nose to tail, as if in a private ceremony. The crowd was quiet. Then one by one they peeled away and found their places on the starting line.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A velvety brown gelding named Assume Nothing won the last race, just ahead of Tizmarkus and Sara\u2019s Shaman. After the horses had been hosed down and led back to the stables, a crowd rushed to the chain-link fence at the bottom of the apron. They\u2019d brought their own plastic cups or Ziploc bags; they passed them to the trainers and jockeys on the other side who returned them full of track dirt. \u201cIt was a good run,\u201d the announcer kept saying. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t the flashiest track, but if you knew the Big A, you loved it.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He bid us goodnight and signed off. \u201cLove You \u2018Till the End\u201d by The Pogues sounded out scratchily over the loudspeakers. A man holding a cardboard sign that read \u201cOne More Day! Give Me a Chance To Win It Back!\u201d leaned it against the paddock railing and joined the slow stream of people leaving the track.<\/span><\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/p>\n

I followed the crowds out of the Aqueduct and into the parking lot, where I paused for a moment, unsure of where to go. I turned right and made for the walkway that led to the casino. The first floor was roped off. Please excuse our appearance, a sign read, we are in the process of adding 1300 new slot machines!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On the second floor, the machines were crammed together, forming narrow alleyways and sudden cul-de-sacs. I wandered through, watching the gamblers hammer away at spin buttons. The casino clicked and flashed, pulsing with light and noise.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I found a door that led outside onto a terrace. The terrace was long and austere, decorated with a trash can and a plastic sofa. A couple gamblers were pacing grimly, taking quick puffs at their cigarettes. I asked the man nearest me if he had one I could bum. He scowled and handed me a Seneca. \u201cThey\u2019re making me lose a lot of money in there tonight,\u201d he complained, jabbing a thumb back at the casino.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I\u2019m sorry to hear that,\u201d I told him. \u201cDid you catch the last race at the Aqueduct?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d he said, turning to frown at the track. \u201cThat shit is too much luck.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I thanked him and walked over to the railing. The terrace had a good view of the Aqueduct. From here, you could look down into the paddock or see the far turn, where the horses had come charging into the homestretch only a half hour before. <\/span>I knew I wouldn\u2019t come back here again\u2014not to the casino, not to the track. I\u2019d started a job; those weightless days in April when I\u2019d sit here for a few hours in a happy trance were behind me.<\/span><\/p>\n

By now, the track had almost cleared out. The horses were gone, along with the jockeys and trainers. The crowds had vanished. The jumbotron was dark. Two stable hands were still down in the paddock, mucking out the stalls, and a lone custodian was left on the apron, chasing beer cans across the asphalt.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Max Callimanopulos is a writer, whose recent work has appeared in the <\/em>TLS, <\/em>N+1, the <\/em>London Review of Books, and the <\/em>Red Hook Star-Revue.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cEveryone in a hat\u2014we called them fedoras back then. You probably never heard of a fedora.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[931],"tags":[68679,67827,379,698,9238,14276],"class_list":["post-174672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-sports","tag-dispatch","tag-featured","tag-gambling","tag-horse-racing","tag-secretariat","tag-the-aqueduct-racetrack"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLast Days at the Aqueduct: New York\u2019s Rundown Racetrack by Max Callimanopulos<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"August 4, 2026 \u2013 \u201cEveryone in a hat\u2014we called them fedoras back then. 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