June 11, 2025 • 19 mins
National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame director, Cate Masterson, discusses what the museum has to offer and the rich history behind horse racing!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kids in Darnell.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
We are live from Saratoga, one hundred and fifty seventh
running of the same Belmont, and we're here now with
somebody who knows the history of all of this racing
and she's been around it all her life, Kate Masterson
National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. And you
got your start, though in a different way, in the
horse racing industry. Just describe how you came to be
(00:22):
the director of the museum.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Sure. So, I grew up just south of Saratoga Springs
and in August it was the summer place to be.
I mean you'd be a little kid sitting in front
of the TV and these commercials would come on and
it was, you know, post time and party time, the
summer place to be, you know, a place to be
and be seen and all the action.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
And that's why you fell in love with it.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
I did the horses.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Your parents didn't want to be here, right.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Oh absolutely not no no no no.
Speaker 5 (00:49):
Made your parents go here though, and like you're not allowed,
but we're going to.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Go exactly all. I did know that, yeah, and my
dad taught me how to bet at a very young age.
But it's like dangling the candy.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
And for right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5 (01:02):
So then how do you really get in the mix
with Nyra and just all of these great people that
work around the racetrack.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
So I was in college and I actually had worked
for a state senator who had horses his granddaughter. I
taught her how to ride horses. So and so I
called them up and I'm like, no politics. You know,
you're eighteen years old and fearless. And I'm like, hey, Joe,
I want a job at the track. And he was like, well,
(01:29):
my friends have a PR firm and they get an
intern every summer. But you have to interview. And so
maure and Louie was my interview. The scariest day of
my life. And I found out a few months into
it that all of the staff referred me as like
the Senator's girl.
Speaker 5 (01:46):
Oh one, yeah, okay, cool.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
But I did trophy presentations in the winter circle, got
to know the horsemen and the jockey.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
It's cool.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
It's just it's a great atmosphere.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Yeah, describe that though. I was as soon as you
said that.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
You know, after every race they take a picture just
during the week and things like that for the Belmont
or Kentucky Derby. Did they get to keep that trophy
or do they make a replica?
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Replica total, So we call it a presentation trophy. And
the replicas have even changed over the years. So like
the iconic Preakness Trophy, there's been like six different makers.
I mean, everybody knows Tiffany's and Cardier and you know,
like Lemon and Son. There's a bunch of names that
are there. But so the trainer, the owner, and the
(02:34):
jockey all receive a trophy. But what you see on
TV is not what they're getting.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Right, Well, I got a replica World Series. I want
to go and steal the real one from Cincinnati. I
don't like having a replica, but as far as that's concerned,
Now go back to the museum. Do you have trophies
that go back one hundred and fifty seven years?
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Oh gosh, we have trophies that go back further than that.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
So I'm jealous.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
I love that because like at Cooper's Town, which is
not far from here for baseball, I love all of
that stuff. This stuff from one hundred and fifty years ago,
It's it's magnificent.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
It's so crazy you say that. So we get the
You know, we're the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame.
We were founded in nineteen fifty, so we're celebrating our
seventy fifth anniversary this year. We were founded in Saratoga Springs,
New York. A lot of horsemen and people thought during
over the years that it should have been moved to Kentucky,
but we just dug deep, kept our roots here. There
are reasons where we should be. But when we get
(03:29):
the horsemen in the museum, there's two rooms. So our
we have forty six thousand square feet. We have an
interactive movie, we have galleries. We kind of take you
back through time. So we start in colonial gallery, right
through the starting gate, go pre Civil War, post Civil War,
twentieth century. We have items and artifacts from every era.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
And I love this.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yeah, but the two rooms that like a horseman, like
you know, a sportsperson yourself. You they walking in, there's
a trophy room to the left, and then there's the
Hall of Fame way over to the right, and they say,
we want those trophies and we want to be in
the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
I love this, and.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
It's like they just get goosebumps, And I mean those
trophies are incredible.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
I mean, it's history. If they could talk, it's history
to me.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
That's the one thing I try to teaching about this
place in particular eighteen sixty three, that's when this was built.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
You don't think they.
Speaker 5 (04:22):
Were just built this place, like oh, we should build
a really big horse racing track.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
They were doing stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Up somewhere's backyard or somebody farm.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
But I don't know that stuff.
Speaker 5 (04:32):
Like when we're talking what was the battle right over
here that changed America?
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Battle saga?
Speaker 5 (04:38):
You tell me that you should have prapped me on that.
I walked around it two years ago when I came here.
I was camping and I did the Sunday morning. I
walked around like, oh my gosh, and it's just kind
of hitting me, like the course of America is like
right around here, and I'm just thinking of those people
eighteen fifty to eighteen saxy.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Three before this time was built. Do you guys go
back that far?
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Toy go even like you were saying crazy colonial?
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, colonial like that we have that.
Speaker 5 (05:05):
Like though that should that had to been like a
sand lot racist.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Maybe you should come to the museum. Ands oh, I'm
coming so actually what it is is literally like we
show the ships that brought the horses over from Europe
and how they used to lift them on. We talk
about the purses and why it was called a purse.
We talk about we have a painting. The oldest painting
in our collection is a John Wooten from nineteen twenty
from Newmarket. So just an aside, I'll tell you being
(05:31):
the director, right, we have our curators amazing. I mean,
the staff is incredible. I'm not going to claim that
I am a you know museum, you know in art
history major, but we had a water leak back in
the early twenties and I.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Was like, get the wood off the wall like.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Things like that, you know. But yeah, seventeen twenty. We
have a painting, we have one of Lexington's worseshoes. We
have awesome yea racing plate, we have a we have
a set of Queen Elizabeth silks that she sent us
in nineteen seventy and then during her jubilee she did
like this big for her one hundred third that she
did this big thing where she had one hundred jockeys
(06:10):
in her silk, so they weren't racing silk. She just
had the maid and she sent us a new set
because the set she sent us in the seventies had
a like head freight because it was real silk.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
All right.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
So Cooper'stown they only put out like thirty percent of
what they have.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
How much do you put out in the museum of
what you have?
Speaker 3 (06:27):
So that's a really good question. I mean I would say,
we say we have like thirty two thousand items in
the collection, but a lot of that is individual pictures
and paper. You know, works on paper.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
They have to be priceless. You don't want anybody touch
it up.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
So we I mean I have to say, like we
do have a vault, of course, but we want people
to see it. And we had our latest board chair.
I mean he was very much like if it's on
loan or if we it's ours, like let's.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Show it well.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
But like Cooper'stown, the bat even like Major League Hall
of famers, they can't actually touch them. They have to
be wearing special gloves so they don't get like human
oil on them and things like that. To you, and
it might not even the most expensive thing. When you
go into the museum, it's like almost every day I
gotta see this thing.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
I love Lexington Chew. I mean, honestly, it's just like
the coolest little thin plate. I mean, it just brings
you back to history. It gives you goose bumps. I mean,
we have paintings original our oil on canvas artwork where
it was before the camera. So they used to think
that horses were like rocking horses, like they'd fly with
like all four legs out in the air. So they
didn't know like how they actually until Edward Moybridge, who
(07:39):
was a photographer who took us called the Horse in
Motion where they could actually do the clips of like how.
They didn't know, so artists just painted these like horses
that were like flying.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
Really yeah yeah, I mean we do have.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
A recovered trophy that was stolen that was part of
an FBI investigation. We don't tell that story.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah, I'm telling it.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
King Masterson National Museum of Racing, Horse Racing and the
Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
This is awesome.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
You love your museum as much as anybody that goes
through the doors.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
So thank you guys for being here. I mean it's
a couple hour drive. We're open year rounds.
Speaker 5 (08:17):
Right and you're right next to there's signs that bring
you right to the place.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
You're right off the exit.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Oh absolutely, absolutely Wednesday to Sunday, ten to five in
the ten to four in the off season. So many
good restaurants, hotels, so much to do and see.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Well, the one thing I love about Saratoga it looks
like a place you would picture as horse racing's going
on there. I'm in the architecture. So the buildings, some
of them are really really old, seventeen hundreds, eighteen hundreds,
something like that. But the way they're they're painted, the
way they're decorated, like the whole town puts on a show,
an event for people who come here.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Oh absolutely. But also where you guys are sitting right now.
If you stren stairs and you look at the wrought
iron and you see the essay, that's early nineteen hundred,
that's Saratoga so unreal.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
I love all of this stuff. Now.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
I imagine like your house, even your mom and dad,
maybe your grandparents, or whoever's lived here for fifty years,
has collected memorabilia and it's stuffed in their basement. How
much stuff comes across your guys' area where it's like
it's in the state sale and like there's just hidden
treasures all over the Saratoga neighborhoods because people have been
(09:24):
coming here for years and they've just been collecting this
stuff and they never thought it was valuable or anything
because it's normal to them.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Oh my god, so much and people like bring us
stuff all the time. So a few years ago, you know,
being a five oh one c three nonprofit, you know,
fundraising is important. So we kind of have three areas
for collection. We have acquisitions into our collection, which there's
a huge committee that votes on items, like you know,
you just can't take everything. You don't have the storage space,
so it needs to have that historical reference that that
(09:52):
value and that you know, what really should be preserved.
Then you have an educational collection items that you can
take out and you can let kids and you can
talk and you know, if they get hurt or damaged, okay,
it's not your collection items. And then we have things
that we donate and do silent auctions and raffles with
for fundraising, their development donations, and we've given away Prince
(10:14):
of Salvatore, you know, like like curry and ives like
original prints that we have an original that's in better
condition but the people still want us to have it,
and we're making out of fundraiser two three hundred dollars
off it.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
All right.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
So I just read this book about the Irish Mob
and the eighteen twenties and when they came to Saratoga
and like the currency around here was casino chips. Can
you talk about like the mafia and you know, going
back like the eighteen twenties to even after the Civil War.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
And just but this was like where they came to
hide and like.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
So there's a couple of things. So John Morrissey was
the founder of the Saratoga Race Cars, so he was
considered one of the gangs of New York. So he
was also a bare knuckle boxer. Our Commune Vucation and
Hall of Fame director Brian Buie wrote a book on him,
and Brian could sit here and talk for hours. So
I'm not going to claim to know, but there is
a lot of that part of the books I'm reading
there absolutely, So I mean super cool stories. I mean
(11:12):
we've been told that like Legs Diamond lived up here.
We've been told that on Union Avenue there's two of
these houses, you know, just down from the Museum where
there was a tunnel underneath for the girlfriend to pass
through at night. And you know, I mean they're speakeasy.
Speakeasies are back huge, I think, and just but they've
always been a part of the industry. So each racetrack
(11:33):
kind of has to head him speakeasy somewhere.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
Unreal, when did it go from? Was it always classy?
That's my question?
Speaker 4 (11:42):
Like was it bare.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
Knuckle boxing and like spatoons and like just I don't know.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
Rebellion and just kind of anarchy over here.
Speaker 5 (11:50):
This is kind of like a sin city or was
it always kind of classy and we're all dressing up
whenever we show up and don't dress like a Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Honestly, Saratoga's trying to hold onto that so much because
it truly was like even even in the late eighteen
hundreds early nineteen hundreds, it was like a place to
be seen.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
And yeah, we did high society, but it was all
of these lower level and morecy and all these gang
guys wanted to be high classed through making money but
the illegal way.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
But then they'd come and try to get into high
society and health.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
History and horses is what Saratoga was known for. So
people used to travel here. At one time in like
eighteen in the eighteen sixties, the Grand Union Hotel could
house like two thousand people. It was the largest hotel
in the United States at one time at one time.
It's just a crazy stories the people that used to come.
But Healing Waters. I mean had Ulysses S. Grant who
(12:45):
passed away just you know, a few months from here.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
He thought he was coming here to like find the
fountain of.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Heal and yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, horses are incredible.
We still have a stone right down actually right out
from behind tier that the carriages used to let people
off on, So that carriage stone is still there, the
step down.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
The History Museum does a great job. They have a
lot of period clothing from back then.
Speaker 5 (13:11):
The one thing I always tell people to do when
you come to Saratoga, if you want to win, you
got to drink from the fountain.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
I love it.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
Tell we tell our listeners about the fountain and what
you know of the fountain and have you ever drank.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Well, I've drank from several of the fountains. I think
we have like twelve or fifteen fountains here in Ago.
But there's one right at Saratoga Racecourse and it's called
the Big Red Springs right and believe it or not,
the housing that sits over that is a museum collection item,
like how does that happen? So it was from downtown,
it was from one of the other springs and they
brought it here, but they wanted to preserve at the
(13:48):
time the actual fountain cover itself, so it's in our collection.
It's on loan, so we do paperwork every year for
that fountain cover. But we also see hero in the
Paddock is on loan. It's one of our bronzes. And
then we actually Nira helped for us when the Belmont
Park was going under renovation. They brought the john Skeeping
(14:09):
Secretariat bronze up and it's at our Walk of Fame space.
Speaker 5 (14:12):
Here is there folklore about good luck and everything that
you know of.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Oh my God, the horse who has to be up.
Of course all the luck's got.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
To get You don't want to run so much.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
I mean, there's so many there's that I did not know.
I mean, some people don't like there's there's so much
superstition with this word somewhere. You don't want fifty dollars bills,
you know, winter winter chicken dinner. There's so many sayings and.
Speaker 5 (14:37):
Like you know, our bills is an Italian thing I've
been learning.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
No fifty dollars bills. You don't want to gamble, You
don't want to bring any of those up to the window.
What else?
Speaker 4 (14:46):
Yeah, I got three in my pocket.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Serious, if you want to lose them, just go up
to the window.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
What if I just will they scoff at me if
I turned fifty dollars in like a Banker's another?
Speaker 3 (14:59):
A smart movie? You want to win?
Speaker 4 (15:00):
I mean.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
The other thing is Saraho was known as the great
Yard of champions. I mean literally, you know, Man of
War was defeated here in his only defeat, I mean upset,
and you know onion. I mean there's so many stories
of like horses and I mean Secretariat never won here.
Speaker 5 (15:16):
So you guys are telling me my Indianapolis colts the
reason the horseshoe is upwards like that run out?
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Okay, So I'm not a sports girl, please, But is
was jim Mercey who just passed with Indiepo's clost Do
you know the story behind him?
Speaker 4 (15:34):
No? Please?
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 4 (15:36):
So?
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Twenty twenty three fiftieth anniversary of Secretariat's triple Crown win.
He buys the saddle that Ron Turcott wrote, It's in
his collection.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Awesome, I love her say here, says my guy. All right,
people went out.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah, dang, we can't keep you all day. I know
we could.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
We could.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
N'sal Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. So I've
done shows from Yale. Yale's one of the oldest schools
in the country, you know, like I love the trophies,
I love all the antiques and stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
Are you going to bring up Handsome Dan?
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Right?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
So they have the first ever bulldogs, stuffed real dog.
They don't show it because it, you know, freaks people out.
What do you have that you can't show?
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Hoofs?
Speaker 4 (16:26):
What hoofs?
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Well, explain, like hoofs and heads is the way they
usually bury horses.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Right, We don't have quite sure on that one. We
don't have any heads.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
They very like race horses, like the most prestigious they
get a full barrier.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Oh yeah, oh absolutely.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Normal horses just get.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
The haowers and yeah. So, I mean it's pretty special,
but we have we have hooks that we don't show.
It's very common in Europe too. They've actually made owners
have made ink wells out of them, so they used
to use them, you know, and then they used to
some used to dip them in gold. I mean, they
are really really cool and we're so for seventy fifth anniversary,
(17:08):
we pulled seventy five items out of our collection and
photographed them and put them out. But you guys will
definitely because people to grow up.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Yeah, bring it, bring it.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
That's the history of this country. That's why I love it.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
Nate.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
When I went in the back, so they were like, oh, sure,
you know you're doing your show. God, you go ahead
and walk in the back there where we got a
bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
The first thing you see is the dog in glass.
I'm like, get no way.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
And then then the president of Yale was like, you
can't tell anybody that's done.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Like you're out of your mind. They're telling everybody that.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
We do show a full skeleton though live for skeleton.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Well it's like mystic they had the full whale skeleton.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Yeah, so we do have a full horse skeleton.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Secretariat stuff do we have.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
We've got a lot. I'm sure Triple Crown trophies on
display all three of them and plus the triple crowns
all four of them. Yeah, saddle.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
It's it's just such a different place because you're dealing
with all humans. You're dealing with humans and horses like
you've got jockeys, you've got trainers and got your owners,
and you have.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
The horses to display all in one.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
And the art that goes away.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
So true.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
So I mean maybe when you get a painting.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Well we're working with contemporary artists now, but that wasn't
a thing with race and for I mean a lot
of like Alfred Monny's and you know, I mean the
artists that people would know, you know, all of those
just classic artists. You know, horses, horses and dogs were huge.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
I mean, that's what the that's how the Humane Society started.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
So here's here's a history fact about you know, So
to sell your horse as a stallion, you would have
Edward Troy or a painter, a famous painter com and
paint your horse for confirmation. So they would sit, you
would somebody would hold a horse and you'd paint it,
and then they would travel with that painting to say,
breed that matri breach your mayrit of my stallion.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Wow, people bought that. How do I know You're not
just pay some random horse.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Dude right from the horse's mouth.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
That is wondergo, that is You're a wonderful Kate. Thank you, guys,
Thank you,
Kids in Darnell.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
We are live from Saratoga, one hundred and fifty seventh
running of the same Belmont, and we're here now with
somebody who knows the history of all of this racing
and she's been around it all her life, Kate Masterson
National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. And you
got your start, though in a different way, in the
horse racing industry. Just describe how you came to be
(00:22):
the director of the museum.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Sure. So, I grew up just south of Saratoga Springs
and in August it was the summer place to be.
I mean you'd be a little kid sitting in front
of the TV and these commercials would come on and
it was, you know, post time and party time, the
summer place to be, you know, a place to be
and be seen and all the action.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
And that's why you fell in love with it.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
I did the horses.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Your parents didn't want to be here, right.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Oh absolutely not no no no no.
Speaker 5 (00:49):
Made your parents go here though, and like you're not allowed,
but we're going to.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Go exactly all. I did know that, yeah, and my
dad taught me how to bet at a very young age.
But it's like dangling the candy.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
And for right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5 (01:02):
So then how do you really get in the mix
with Nyra and just all of these great people that
work around the racetrack.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
So I was in college and I actually had worked
for a state senator who had horses his granddaughter. I
taught her how to ride horses. So and so I
called them up and I'm like, no politics. You know,
you're eighteen years old and fearless. And I'm like, hey, Joe,
I want a job at the track. And he was like, well,
(01:29):
my friends have a PR firm and they get an
intern every summer. But you have to interview. And so
maure and Louie was my interview. The scariest day of
my life. And I found out a few months into
it that all of the staff referred me as like
the Senator's girl.
Speaker 5 (01:46):
Oh one, yeah, okay, cool.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
But I did trophy presentations in the winter circle, got
to know the horsemen and the jockey.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
It's cool.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
It's just it's a great atmosphere.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Yeah, describe that though. I was as soon as you
said that.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
You know, after every race they take a picture just
during the week and things like that for the Belmont
or Kentucky Derby. Did they get to keep that trophy
or do they make a replica?
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Replica total, So we call it a presentation trophy. And
the replicas have even changed over the years. So like
the iconic Preakness Trophy, there's been like six different makers.
I mean, everybody knows Tiffany's and Cardier and you know,
like Lemon and Son. There's a bunch of names that
are there. But so the trainer, the owner, and the
(02:34):
jockey all receive a trophy. But what you see on
TV is not what they're getting.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Right, Well, I got a replica World Series. I want
to go and steal the real one from Cincinnati. I
don't like having a replica, but as far as that's concerned,
Now go back to the museum. Do you have trophies
that go back one hundred and fifty seven years?
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Oh gosh, we have trophies that go back further than that.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
So I'm jealous.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
I love that because like at Cooper's Town, which is
not far from here for baseball, I love all of
that stuff. This stuff from one hundred and fifty years ago,
It's it's magnificent.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
It's so crazy you say that. So we get the
You know, we're the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame.
We were founded in nineteen fifty, so we're celebrating our
seventy fifth anniversary this year. We were founded in Saratoga Springs,
New York. A lot of horsemen and people thought during
over the years that it should have been moved to Kentucky,
but we just dug deep, kept our roots here. There
are reasons where we should be. But when we get
(03:29):
the horsemen in the museum, there's two rooms. So our
we have forty six thousand square feet. We have an
interactive movie, we have galleries. We kind of take you
back through time. So we start in colonial gallery, right
through the starting gate, go pre Civil War, post Civil War,
twentieth century. We have items and artifacts from every era.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
And I love this.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yeah, but the two rooms that like a horseman, like
you know, a sportsperson yourself. You they walking in, there's
a trophy room to the left, and then there's the
Hall of Fame way over to the right, and they say,
we want those trophies and we want to be in
the Hall of Fame.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
I love this, and.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
It's like they just get goosebumps, And I mean those
trophies are incredible.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
I mean, it's history. If they could talk, it's history
to me.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
That's the one thing I try to teaching about this
place in particular eighteen sixty three, that's when this was built.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
You don't think they.
Speaker 5 (04:22):
Were just built this place, like oh, we should build
a really big horse racing track.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
They were doing stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Up somewhere's backyard or somebody farm.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
But I don't know that stuff.
Speaker 5 (04:32):
Like when we're talking what was the battle right over
here that changed America?
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Battle saga?
Speaker 5 (04:38):
You tell me that you should have prapped me on that.
I walked around it two years ago when I came here.
I was camping and I did the Sunday morning. I
walked around like, oh my gosh, and it's just kind
of hitting me, like the course of America is like
right around here, and I'm just thinking of those people
eighteen fifty to eighteen saxy.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Three before this time was built. Do you guys go
back that far?
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Toy go even like you were saying crazy colonial?
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, colonial like that we have that.
Speaker 5 (05:05):
Like though that should that had to been like a
sand lot racist.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Maybe you should come to the museum. Ands oh, I'm
coming so actually what it is is literally like we
show the ships that brought the horses over from Europe
and how they used to lift them on. We talk
about the purses and why it was called a purse.
We talk about we have a painting. The oldest painting
in our collection is a John Wooten from nineteen twenty
from Newmarket. So just an aside, I'll tell you being
(05:31):
the director, right, we have our curators amazing. I mean,
the staff is incredible. I'm not going to claim that
I am a you know museum, you know in art
history major, but we had a water leak back in
the early twenties and I.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Was like, get the wood off the wall like.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Things like that, you know. But yeah, seventeen twenty. We
have a painting, we have one of Lexington's worseshoes. We
have awesome yea racing plate, we have a we have
a set of Queen Elizabeth silks that she sent us
in nineteen seventy and then during her jubilee she did
like this big for her one hundred third that she
did this big thing where she had one hundred jockeys
(06:10):
in her silk, so they weren't racing silk. She just
had the maid and she sent us a new set
because the set she sent us in the seventies had
a like head freight because it was real silk.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
All right.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
So Cooper'stown they only put out like thirty percent of
what they have.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
How much do you put out in the museum of
what you have?
Speaker 3 (06:27):
So that's a really good question. I mean I would say,
we say we have like thirty two thousand items in
the collection, but a lot of that is individual pictures
and paper. You know, works on paper.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
They have to be priceless. You don't want anybody touch
it up.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
So we I mean I have to say, like we
do have a vault, of course, but we want people
to see it. And we had our latest board chair.
I mean he was very much like if it's on
loan or if we it's ours, like let's.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Show it well.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
But like Cooper'stown, the bat even like Major League Hall
of famers, they can't actually touch them. They have to
be wearing special gloves so they don't get like human
oil on them and things like that. To you, and
it might not even the most expensive thing. When you
go into the museum, it's like almost every day I
gotta see this thing.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
I love Lexington Chew. I mean, honestly, it's just like
the coolest little thin plate. I mean, it just brings
you back to history. It gives you goose bumps. I mean,
we have paintings original our oil on canvas artwork where
it was before the camera. So they used to think
that horses were like rocking horses, like they'd fly with
like all four legs out in the air. So they
didn't know like how they actually until Edward Moybridge, who
(07:39):
was a photographer who took us called the Horse in
Motion where they could actually do the clips of like how.
They didn't know, so artists just painted these like horses
that were like flying.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
Really yeah yeah, I mean we do have.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
A recovered trophy that was stolen that was part of
an FBI investigation. We don't tell that story.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yeah, I'm telling it.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
King Masterson National Museum of Racing, Horse Racing and the
Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
This is awesome.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
You love your museum as much as anybody that goes
through the doors.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
So thank you guys for being here. I mean it's
a couple hour drive. We're open year rounds.
Speaker 5 (08:17):
Right and you're right next to there's signs that bring
you right to the place.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
You're right off the exit.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Oh absolutely, absolutely Wednesday to Sunday, ten to five in
the ten to four in the off season. So many
good restaurants, hotels, so much to do and see.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Well, the one thing I love about Saratoga it looks
like a place you would picture as horse racing's going
on there. I'm in the architecture. So the buildings, some
of them are really really old, seventeen hundreds, eighteen hundreds,
something like that. But the way they're they're painted, the
way they're decorated, like the whole town puts on a show,
an event for people who come here.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Oh absolutely. But also where you guys are sitting right now.
If you stren stairs and you look at the wrought
iron and you see the essay, that's early nineteen hundred,
that's Saratoga so unreal.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
I love all of this stuff. Now.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
I imagine like your house, even your mom and dad,
maybe your grandparents, or whoever's lived here for fifty years,
has collected memorabilia and it's stuffed in their basement. How
much stuff comes across your guys' area where it's like
it's in the state sale and like there's just hidden
treasures all over the Saratoga neighborhoods because people have been
(09:24):
coming here for years and they've just been collecting this
stuff and they never thought it was valuable or anything
because it's normal to them.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Oh my god, so much and people like bring us
stuff all the time. So a few years ago, you know,
being a five oh one c three nonprofit, you know,
fundraising is important. So we kind of have three areas
for collection. We have acquisitions into our collection, which there's
a huge committee that votes on items, like you know,
you just can't take everything. You don't have the storage space,
so it needs to have that historical reference that that
(09:52):
value and that you know, what really should be preserved.
Then you have an educational collection items that you can
take out and you can let kids and you can
talk and you know, if they get hurt or damaged, okay,
it's not your collection items. And then we have things
that we donate and do silent auctions and raffles with
for fundraising, their development donations, and we've given away Prince
(10:14):
of Salvatore, you know, like like curry and ives like
original prints that we have an original that's in better
condition but the people still want us to have it,
and we're making out of fundraiser two three hundred dollars
off it.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
All right.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
So I just read this book about the Irish Mob
and the eighteen twenties and when they came to Saratoga
and like the currency around here was casino chips. Can
you talk about like the mafia and you know, going
back like the eighteen twenties to even after the Civil War.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
And just but this was like where they came to
hide and like.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
So there's a couple of things. So John Morrissey was
the founder of the Saratoga Race Cars, so he was
considered one of the gangs of New York. So he
was also a bare knuckle boxer. Our Commune Vucation and
Hall of Fame director Brian Buie wrote a book on him,
and Brian could sit here and talk for hours. So
I'm not going to claim to know, but there is
a lot of that part of the books I'm reading
there absolutely, So I mean super cool stories. I mean
(11:12):
we've been told that like Legs Diamond lived up here.
We've been told that on Union Avenue there's two of
these houses, you know, just down from the Museum where
there was a tunnel underneath for the girlfriend to pass
through at night. And you know, I mean they're speakeasy.
Speakeasies are back huge, I think, and just but they've
always been a part of the industry. So each racetrack
(11:33):
kind of has to head him speakeasy somewhere.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
Unreal, when did it go from? Was it always classy?
That's my question?
Speaker 4 (11:42):
Like was it bare.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
Knuckle boxing and like spatoons and like just I don't know.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
Rebellion and just kind of anarchy over here.
Speaker 5 (11:50):
This is kind of like a sin city or was
it always kind of classy and we're all dressing up
whenever we show up and don't dress like a Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Honestly, Saratoga's trying to hold onto that so much because
it truly was like even even in the late eighteen
hundreds early nineteen hundreds, it was like a place to
be seen.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
And yeah, we did high society, but it was all
of these lower level and morecy and all these gang
guys wanted to be high classed through making money but
the illegal way.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
But then they'd come and try to get into high
society and health.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
History and horses is what Saratoga was known for. So
people used to travel here. At one time in like
eighteen in the eighteen sixties, the Grand Union Hotel could
house like two thousand people. It was the largest hotel
in the United States at one time at one time.
It's just a crazy stories the people that used to come.
But Healing Waters. I mean had Ulysses S. Grant who
(12:45):
passed away just you know, a few months from here.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
He thought he was coming here to like find the
fountain of.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Heal and yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, horses are incredible.
We still have a stone right down actually right out
from behind tier that the carriages used to let people
off on, So that carriage stone is still there, the
step down.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
The History Museum does a great job. They have a
lot of period clothing from back then.
Speaker 5 (13:11):
The one thing I always tell people to do when
you come to Saratoga, if you want to win, you
got to drink from the fountain.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
I love it.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
Tell we tell our listeners about the fountain and what
you know of the fountain and have you ever drank.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Well, I've drank from several of the fountains. I think
we have like twelve or fifteen fountains here in Ago.
But there's one right at Saratoga Racecourse and it's called
the Big Red Springs right and believe it or not,
the housing that sits over that is a museum collection item,
like how does that happen? So it was from downtown,
it was from one of the other springs and they
brought it here, but they wanted to preserve at the
(13:48):
time the actual fountain cover itself, so it's in our collection.
It's on loan, so we do paperwork every year for
that fountain cover. But we also see hero in the
Paddock is on loan. It's one of our bronzes. And
then we actually Nira helped for us when the Belmont
Park was going under renovation. They brought the john Skeeping
(14:09):
Secretariat bronze up and it's at our Walk of Fame space.
Speaker 5 (14:12):
Here is there folklore about good luck and everything that
you know of.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Oh my God, the horse who has to be up.
Of course all the luck's got.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
To get You don't want to run so much.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
I mean, there's so many there's that I did not know.
I mean, some people don't like there's there's so much
superstition with this word somewhere. You don't want fifty dollars bills,
you know, winter winter chicken dinner. There's so many sayings and.
Speaker 5 (14:37):
Like you know, our bills is an Italian thing I've
been learning.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
No fifty dollars bills. You don't want to gamble, You
don't want to bring any of those up to the window.
What else?
Speaker 4 (14:46):
Yeah, I got three in my pocket.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Serious, if you want to lose them, just go up
to the window.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
What if I just will they scoff at me if
I turned fifty dollars in like a Banker's another?
Speaker 3 (14:59):
A smart movie? You want to win?
Speaker 4 (15:00):
I mean.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
The other thing is Saraho was known as the great
Yard of champions. I mean literally, you know, Man of
War was defeated here in his only defeat, I mean upset,
and you know onion. I mean there's so many stories
of like horses and I mean Secretariat never won here.
Speaker 5 (15:16):
So you guys are telling me my Indianapolis colts the
reason the horseshoe is upwards like that run out?
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Okay, So I'm not a sports girl, please, But is
was jim Mercey who just passed with Indiepo's clost Do
you know the story behind him?
Speaker 4 (15:34):
No? Please?
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Are you kidding me?
Speaker 4 (15:36):
So?
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Twenty twenty three fiftieth anniversary of Secretariat's triple Crown win.
He buys the saddle that Ron Turcott wrote, It's in
his collection.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Awesome, I love her say here, says my guy. All right,
people went out.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah, dang, we can't keep you all day. I know
we could.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
We could.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
N'sal Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. So I've
done shows from Yale. Yale's one of the oldest schools
in the country, you know, like I love the trophies,
I love all the antiques and stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
Are you going to bring up Handsome Dan?
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Right?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
So they have the first ever bulldogs, stuffed real dog.
They don't show it because it, you know, freaks people out.
What do you have that you can't show?
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Hoofs?
Speaker 4 (16:26):
What hoofs?
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Well, explain, like hoofs and heads is the way they
usually bury horses.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Right, We don't have quite sure on that one. We
don't have any heads.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
They very like race horses, like the most prestigious they
get a full barrier.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Oh yeah, oh absolutely.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Normal horses just get.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
The haowers and yeah. So, I mean it's pretty special,
but we have we have hooks that we don't show.
It's very common in Europe too. They've actually made owners
have made ink wells out of them, so they used
to use them, you know, and then they used to
some used to dip them in gold. I mean, they
are really really cool and we're so for seventy fifth anniversary,
(17:08):
we pulled seventy five items out of our collection and
photographed them and put them out. But you guys will
definitely because people to grow up.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Yeah, bring it, bring it.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
That's the history of this country. That's why I love it.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
Nate.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
When I went in the back, so they were like, oh, sure,
you know you're doing your show. God, you go ahead
and walk in the back there where we got a
bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
The first thing you see is the dog in glass.
I'm like, get no way.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
And then then the president of Yale was like, you
can't tell anybody that's done.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Like you're out of your mind. They're telling everybody that.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
We do show a full skeleton though live for skeleton.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Well it's like mystic they had the full whale skeleton.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Yeah, so we do have a full horse skeleton.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Secretariat stuff do we have.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
We've got a lot. I'm sure Triple Crown trophies on
display all three of them and plus the triple crowns
all four of them. Yeah, saddle.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
It's it's just such a different place because you're dealing
with all humans. You're dealing with humans and horses like
you've got jockeys, you've got trainers and got your owners,
and you have.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
The horses to display all in one.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
And the art that goes away.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
So true.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
So I mean maybe when you get a painting.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Well we're working with contemporary artists now, but that wasn't
a thing with race and for I mean a lot
of like Alfred Monny's and you know, I mean the
artists that people would know, you know, all of those
just classic artists. You know, horses, horses and dogs were huge.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
I mean, that's what the that's how the Humane Society started.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
So here's here's a history fact about you know, So
to sell your horse as a stallion, you would have
Edward Troy or a painter, a famous painter com and
paint your horse for confirmation. So they would sit, you
would somebody would hold a horse and you'd paint it,
and then they would travel with that painting to say,
breed that matri breach your mayrit of my stallion.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Wow, people bought that. How do I know You're not
just pay some random horse.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Dude right from the horse's mouth.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
That is wondergo, that is You're a wonderful Kate. Thank you, guys,
Thank you,
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