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To Saratoga Springs’ venerable motto of “health, history and horses,” may we add a huge helping of harmony.
No better example than a stormy summer night in the woods at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center when the Philadelphia Philharmonic reaches a thunderous climax of Strauss’s Alpine Symphony. Montreal-born guest conductor Yannick Nezet-Seguin was at his most frenetic as French horns, strings and kettle drums conjured a mountain maelstrom safely under the 6,000-seat two-tiered amphitheatre while the real thing raged outside.
Our previous night’s visit showed off SPAC’s more tranquil touches, with more than 10,000 on its rolling lawns for An Evening with John Legend, backed by the Phillies. As the stars came out, EGOT winner Legend invited the crowd to join the chorus of All of Me, highlighting SPAC’s pin-drop acoustics.
Elizabeth Sobol, SPAC CEO, jokes the venue was almost too close to nature for the sensitive ears of musical director Eugene Ormandy when he consulted on its final design in 1966. He ordered a nearby creek dammed, convinced its waterfall distracted his Philly Orchestra. That labour created a pond chorus of croaking bullfrogs, which at Ormandy’s insistence were gently removed to another part of the park.
Starting with concerts in ‘66 by Harry Belafonte and the Grateful Dead, SPAC’s campus has drawn 500,000 annual visitors in summer, amid mineral baths and hiking trails, pumping $105 million annual business to this charming upstate New York town of 29,000.
A three-hour drive from Montreal and about six hours from the Greater Toronto Area, the town’s beginnings were Indigenous peoples who realized the healing properties of its springs through a local geo-fault line. Wounded from the American Revolution (the battle of Saratoga, 24 kilometres away, was a pivotal victory over Britain) and the Civil War came to soak in the effervescence with its high concentrations of magnesium, sodium and potassium.
Future President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited to ease his polio — the bath house named for him with full spa treatments remains on campus — while Germany paid for some post-war Holocaust victims to be sent here. Traumatized 9/11 first responders were more recent invitees.
Wishing to sustain that tradition of healing, via the arts, SPAC’s founders saw a natural slope in the 971-hectare state park was ideal for its main stage. The Philharmonic and New York City Ballet each have early summer residences, with jazz and dance festivals, and many Canadian connections stop by each year such as Nezet-Seguin.
While September ends the outdoor event season, the Spa Little Theatre is busy year-round with music and dance, culinary arts, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Sounds of the Season Christmas holiday series. The rest of the park offers tennis, swimming and a 27-hole public golf course.
The Spa City’s emphasis on relaxation, the first concept of vacations for working-class families, and relief from heat and smog of big cities shaped it as a popular getaway to this day.
On and off downtown’s wide Broadway, sample life in the grand 19th-century hotels, such as the Adelphi and Saratoga Arms, the latter Second Empire brick restored with a wrap-around porch by descendants of President Ulysses S. Grant. His portraits, campaign music sheets and White House china are displayed in the dining rooms.
The Grand Union hotel was once world’s largest with 2,000 guests who could also stay in cottages on the 2.8-hectare property and while it’s gone, the site of the United States Hotel next door survives as part of Broadway’s vibe. It went through 400 dozen eggs, 2,000 ears of corn and 220 quarts of ice cream on a typical day in 1892.
Spurred by horse racing’s early popularity — 161-year-old Saratoga is America’s oldest race track/sporting venue and temporary home to the Belmont Stakes at least until June 2025 — gambling and the Prohibition era brought an urban criminal element from New York. Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky frequented “America’s Monte Carlo” and local politicians and cops were complicit. Saratoga was so good for business it was agreed by all parties to hold off whacking any troublemakers until back in New York.
Those echoes are inside the former Canfield Casino, the three-storey sandstone edifice now featuring the region’s history museum at ground level. The posh high stakes’ gambling den is preserved above, with a haunted third floor according to the Ghost Hunters TV show. While at least one murder, that of a young woman, occurred up there, this was never a residence, so paranormal experts and mediums believe it a vortex where a playful little girl, a woman in white and other spirits feed off hundreds of personal museum artifacts.
The casino is in sprawling Congress Park, where grottos, fountains and footpaths were part of 19th-century promenades with gazebos marking the many mineral spigots. Sip, don’t swallow — you’ll enjoy the bubbles, but the metallic taste is an acquired one. The carbonation water table was almost dried out by aggressive out-of-town bottlers early last century, until the state seized nearly 1,000 hectares to preserve it.
Bare-knuckle boxing champ and rogue congressman John Morrisey, on whom the film Gangs of New York is partly based, founded modern Saratoga Race Course during the Civil War, though the sport has been here even longer. It transitioned from a straight to oval track, surviving a scarcity of mounts that were war casualties and various regulatory crackdowns. A starting bell and live bugler begin each afternoon program.
From the 50,000-seat grandstand, Saratoga became noteworthy as “graveyard of champions,” after five famous thoroughbreds — including Triple Crown winners Secretariat, Gallant Fox and American Pharoah — all lost. Man o’ War’s only defeat in 21 starts was to Upset here in the 1919 Sanford Stakes, giving sportswriters a new term and lending “dark horse” to a long line of Saratoga products and store names. Giant horseshows of red and white floral, the track’s official colours, adorn many a city storefront.
Broadway’s coffee shops are filled with punters each morning of the season from mid-July to Labour Day, studying the day’s form, while other morning risers can go to the stables to see horses train and bathed.
Before or after a day at the races, walk the neighbourhood’s charming homes with their Victorian verandas, then saddle up at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. It has both the history and hippology of these magnificent animals, as well as the story of evolution of the track, its equipment, betting rules, a colourful exhibit of silks, and an interactive guide to the Hall’s greatest horses, jockeys, owners and trainers.
Hitch a ride back to the motel generation, the Bluebird Spa City Motor Lodge, now a boutique brand in the heart of Broadway.
With a skylight now covering its restored rooms themed on art and authors, this two-floored inn had its pool filled in for a lobby/business centre and overlooks many fine dining options. Morrissey’s Bistro in the Adelphi has signature salads, personal pizzas and seafood, while at breakfast in the 19th-century setting of the Saratoga Arms we loaded up on a house specialty, cinnamon French toast.
Broadway is also teeming with patisseries, candy shops and, at night, a thriving bar district. Try for a seat at SPAC’s Caffe Lena, longest continually operating coffee shop in the U.S., a launchpad for young folkie Bob Dylan.
Full concert, theatre and dance programs are found at spac.org. An ideal place to explore town is the Saratoga Springs Heritage Area Visitor Centre on Broadway at Congress Park.
More information on planning trips to Saratoga Springs and the surrounding county are at discoversaratoga.org.
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