Talk:Fleetwood Park Racetrack

Pre-FAC comments

 * For images to use PD-US-expired, there should be publication, not just creation, before 1928 - ensure the image descriptions include this. Also suggest adding alt text and scaling up the images.


 * Citations should be formatted consistently throughout. For example, sometimes you have New York Times and sometimes The New York Times, and sometimes this is linked and other times not.


 * Also check that prose is consistent - for example you have "167th street" but also "167th Street", or "Maud S." but also "Maude S.", or "racecourse" but also "race course", or "The Driving Club of New York" but also "New York Driving Club"


 * MOS compliance is generally enforced more strongly at FAC compared to GAN. For example, headings shouldn't start with "The", numbers under 10 are usually spelled out, and full dates should be followed by commas (unless otherwise punctuated)


 * The prose could use editing for concision in places - for example, "One of the few remaining vestiges of the track's former existence" could be rephrased as "one of the few remaining vestiges of the track"
 * "Members of the club included William K. Vanderbilt (William H's son)" - at this point you haven't introduced William H


 * Is it possible to either identify a more descriptive section title than "Miscellaneous", or otherwise reorganize the article?


 * Are any notable horses known to have raced here?


 * What is Fleetwood Park Club? Was it affiliated?


 * Missing citations for inflation calculations


 * "Also named after the president was the Grant Hotel, across what is now College Avenue from Robert Bonner's house, where jockeys often stayed" - this is hard to parse, possible to rephrase?


 * Consider moving the timeline earlier and club later


 * Ensure the article is as accessible as possible for non-local/non-expert readers. For example, include conversions for the mileages to other tracks, wikilink nitroglycerin, and explain what "illumination" means in the context of a fair


 * The Construction accidents section is confusing me. Have you repeated the same event twice?


 * Check throughout for grammar errors and typos, eg "theHarlem" or "Another horse and his keeper were injured, Total damages"


 * Is anything known about operations? For example, was there an admittance fee? Nikkimaria (talk) 02:35, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Also, not a direct change to make but something to think about: are you confident that you've completed a "thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature", and for each source included would you be able to articulate what makes it a high-quality reliable source? Nikkimaria (talk) 05:25, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @Nikkimaria thank you for the excellent suggestions. I've worked through your list and addressed most of the items.  If it's OK with you, I'd prefer to leave the Timeline and New York Driving Club sections in their current locations.  I think the section about the club tells the most interesting story, so putting it at the top seems to make more sense.  I've added ALTs to the images, but left them the same size for now. RoySmith (talk) 19:05, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @Nikkimaria I didn't get what you meant by "scaling up the images" in your original comments; I thought you meant doing some image manipulation in photoshop. I've done some more reading, and I now realize you were probably talking about the mechanism described at MOS:UPRIGHT, yes? RoySmith (talk) 16:47, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Correct. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:45, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Section break
Working through the article - feel free to revert anything that doesn't make sense but some more questions:


 * Where were those lithographs first published?
 * I'm not sure where this is going. For the first image, the LOC page says, "New York : Published by Currier & Ives, c1872" so the answer there is New York.  For the other one, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2001700222/ similarly says, "Date Created/Published: New York : Published by Currier & Ives, c1869.".  Does that answer your question, or is there something deeper you're looking for?
 * Suggest adding that to the image description. What about Going_To_The_Trot_by_Thomas_Kelly.webp? Nikkimaria (talk) 03:16, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 * You've currently got the sale of Maud S. in two different sections - is that needed?
 * In one place, I'm talking about Robert Bonner. In the other place, I'm talking about what made the horse special.  I admit this is a bit awkward, but I'm not sure how to improve it.  Suggestions would be appreciated.
 * Change the second to "Maud S. was renowned for the high price Bonner paid for her" or similar? If there's something in the source about how this price compares to other contemporary horses, that detail could be added to the latter. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:16, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 * What was the significance of Abdallah and Nelson?
 * The list here is all the horses that appeared in the Harness Racing Hall of Fame who I could find a source saying they competed at Fleetwood. Abdallah and Nelson just didn't have anything much exciting to say about them.  I dropped them.
 * What is meant by "assessments of the membership"? "Special day"?
 * The first one seems obvious to me. Clubs have members who pay money to the club to support the club's activities.  One of the mechanisms clubs use is assessments.  This is common parlance as far as I know, so I'm not sure what further explanation it needs.   I've quoted "special day" to indicate it's what the source says.  The source doesn't give any explanation of what it is, so I think that's about all I can do.
 * I've really never heard of this meaning of "assessments"; possibly it's a dialect/regional meaning? Is "dues" an equivalent term? That might be more familiar if so. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:16, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Hmmm. In my experience, dues is the amount the club sets at the beginning of the year based on a projected budget, and an assessment is a extra payment imposed during the year, required to make up for some unexpected shortfall.  That's consistent with the source's "Treasurer ... happy if he could leave his financial statement painfully balanced by an assessment on the members".  I've added the word "emergency", which I think conveys the intent. RoySmith (talk) 03:54, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 * What about just including that quote instead? Nikkimaria (talk) 04:00, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Done RoySmith (talk) 04:14, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 * From looking at the linked article it seems Metro-North Fleetwood station was built later by a different company - this might be worth clarifying here, or the mention of it omitted.
 * Metro-North is the successor company after a series of corporate mergers. So, it's really the same company.  This is all described at Fleetwood station, which is linked to: As with the rest of the Harlem Line, the merger of New York Central with Pennsylvania Railroad in 1968 transformed it into a Penn Central station, whose service was gradually merged with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and officially became part of Metro-North in 1983..  I could pull some of that up into this article, but I think it would be more distracting than useful.
 * Suggest either giving a year for the station being built, or omitting the station name. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:16, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I dropped the whole mention of the Metro North station. I thought it would be useful to give readers a point of reference, but if it's confusing, better to just leave it out. RoySmith (talk) 03:57, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Is it the New York Driving Club or The New York Driving Club?
 * The sources vary on that, as well as on whether it's the "Driving Club of New York". At this point, I think I've got everything consistent with "the New York Driving Club", except when it's at the beginning of a sentence so it gets capitalized.


 * When was the ordinance first instituted with the Fleetwood exception?
 * Added "1897"


 * Manure brought in $10 total or $10 per some volume sold?
 * The section begins with "The first year of profitable operations ...", which indicates that we're talking about total amounts for the year.


 * In what cases would you want to include publishers for periodicals?
 * Again, I'm not sure where this is going. Is there a specific answer you're looking for?


 * In what cases would you want to include publication locations, and how would you prefer these be formatted?
 * Same comment; I'll do it however the FA criteria say it should be done.


 * In what cases would you want to include via?
 * Again, I'll do it however it's supposed to be done. If I've done it wrong, please let me know.
 * For each of these three, there isn't a rule one way or the other; what we're looking to achieve is overall consistency. For example, footnote 1 abbreviates the state name and footnote 53 spells it out - either of these approaches would be perfectly fine, just not both at once, so pick what you like and go with it. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:16, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I've fixed the NJ -> New Jersey. I'm not seeing which other references have similar problems, but if you could point out specific cases, I'll be happy to fix them. RoySmith (talk) 04:15, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Footnotes 2, 3, 8, 11, 18, 33, 34, 37, 38, 42, 43, 46, 51, 67, 72 include via; footnotes 1, 6, 9, 17, 32, 39, 40, 47, 53, 54, 55 do not.
 * Footnotes 8, 9 include publisher; footnotes 46, 67 do not
 * Footnotes 7, 16 include both location and publisher; footnote 56 has neither
 * As above, none of these approaches are incorrect, but they are inconsistent (unless there is specific reasoning underlying these choices?). Nikkimaria (talk) 04:37, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Publisher: 46 is a newspaper called The Journal. I don't know what it would mean to provide a publisher field for this any more than you would provide a publisher field for The New York Times.  They publish themselves.  This does, however, touch on the question of "when do you provide a place of publication".  I've generally gone by the rule that if the location is obvious from the title ("The New York Times", "The Boston Herald"), you don't need an explicit location.  If it's not ("The Journal", "The Trib"), then adding the name of the city makes sense as a separate place of location field.  Which I've done here. RoySmith (talk) 15:21, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 * OK, I've taken care of all those. RoySmith (talk) 15:35, 24 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Sounds good. Not sure if SN's still working; other than that, Johnbod's also made a comment at WT:FAC that would be worth considering before launching. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:34, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @Nikkimaria I'm not sure where things stand. Should I go ahead and nominate the article now? RoySmith (talk) 23:07, 25 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Johnbod's comment was the last piece outstanding; if you're satisfied you've done what you can there, then yes, I think you should go ahead. Nikkimaria (talk) 23:43, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
 * OK, I'll do that. Thank you again for all your assistance and advice. RoySmith (talk) 00:07, 26 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Are the two Ryder references the same source?
 * Yes, that was a mistake. I've merged them into a single source.

Nikkimaria (talk) 22:12, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
 * RoySmith (talk) 03:01, 24 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Oops. Sorry, didn't realise your refs were already having their teeth examined :)  couple of points on broad structure. Lea

Books?
Addressing 's question an awful lot of the refs are contemporary press press reports. Aren't there any books covering the period that have stuff on it?, yes, there are some books about Bronx history which touch on the topic, but it's mostly brief coverage. I've cited several of them in the article

My process for finding sources included searches in Google, DuckDuckGo, The New York Public Library, Internet Archive, and the Library of Congress. In addition, the Criminal Court Facility Archaeological Assessment has a surprisingly useful bibliography which I used as a jumping-off point. I also made enquiries at the Bronx County Historical Society.


 * Have you tried WP:LIBRARY? Z1720 (talk) 15:55, 25 August 2023 (UTC)


 * I do use WPL when I'm looking for something specific. Not sure how it would be useful for this in general.  Oh, I forgot to mention newspapers.com, which I do access through WPL; there's a couple of cites in this article I found through that. RoySmith (talk) 16:27, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I like looking through the databases at WP:LIBRARY: you never know what random newspaper article or academic journal entry has information on a topic. Z1720 (talk) 16:33, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Heh. I did some more digging through WPL and found an article in (of all places) The Catholic Transcript.  Added a new Charter Oak Stakes section. RoySmith (talk) 17:58, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Paragraph merge?
I'm curious about why you merged the two paragraphs under Fleetwood Park Racetrack in Special:Diff/1172034534? I get the desire to avoid short choppy paragraphs, but these were two distinct topics. The first was "There was another horse track here before Fleetwood Park" and the second was "The name 'Fleetwood' has a historical tie to this area". I think preserving the logical division of topics is more important than optimizing the layout. RoySmith (talk) 21:25, 24 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Forget about it. I'm sure you're right.  SN54129  21:53, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Above the Speedway
For future reference:

Above the Speedway, American Mutoscope and Biograph Co., Frederick S. Armitage (cinematographer), 1900 B&W (silent film). "An interesting view, showing members of the New York Driving Club, and well-known horses warming up on New York's famous drive." https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0000266/

RoySmith (talk) 14:42, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Non sequitur?
"This New York ledger was a weekly story published in Manhattan established in 1855 by Robert E Bonner."

I don't understand how this sentence relates to the rest of the article, but especially the preceding paragraph which is about the streets of the Bronx. Should "ledger" be capitalized, as it is earlier in the article, or is this just an unrelated thought? Dhickey007 (talk) 19:45, 14 January 2024 (UTC)


 * @Dhickey007 Thanks for spotting that. Another editor added it, as happens a lot since this is the Featured Article Anybody Can Edit :-)  I've removed it since it wasn't useful (but you could have done that too). RoySmith (talk) 19:57, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @RoySmith thanks Roy, I just wasn't sure if I was missing some context otherwise I'd have fixed it posthaste Dhickey007 (talk) 20:01, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Pressure from real-estate developers
@Minturn Thank you for you question about what kind of pressure. The source says, "As development pressures increased in Morrisania in the late nineteenth century, spurred on by the opening of transit lines connecting this area to Manhattan, the track closed, streets were graded and paved, and the Morris family heirs sold land to developers. I guess the simple answer to your question would be "economic pressure", but I'm not sure if that fully addresses your concern. RoySmith (talk) 23:41, 15 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Yes, the pressure could be through the government (for example, denying the renewal of permits or raising taxes), socio-political yammering, or simply would-be buyers of the land dangling increasingly-high sale prices in front of the owners. Do you have any idea if there was a moralistic flavor to the pressures? Minturn (talk) 14:30, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Yeah, "would-be buyers of the land dangling increasingly-high sale prices in front of the owners" is what I would go with, lacking any reason to assume anything else. The Clay Avenue Historic District document from the NYC LPC does say (middle of page 4): "The city had tried to open streets through Fleetwood Park in the mid-1880s, but, according to Philip A. Pines, "the men of influence rose as one and their favorite haunting ground was spared."  The original source for that is Pines, Philip A. (1970). The Complete Book of Harness Racing, page 166. RoySmith (talk) 14:59, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Loam from the racetrack
@RoySmith, you may be interested to know that some of the loam from the racetrack was apparently reused in the garden of the Andrew Carnegie Mansion. I'm not 100% sure if it's even worth mentioning in this article, though, but this might indicate that soil from the racetrack might have been transported to other places in the city. – Epicgenius (talk) 00:37, 19 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Wow, awesome find, thanks! RoySmith (talk) 00:39, 19 January 2024 (UTC)