Lost Bluegrass by Ronnie Dreistadt

Author:Ronnie Dreistadt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Equine tombstones on the Coldstream Research campus. Photo by author.

Today’s view from McGrathiana. Photo by author.

Coldstream Research campus, formerly McGrathiana Farm. Photo by author.

6

HAMBURG PLACE

When you type in the words “Hamburg Place, Lexington, Kentucky” on an Internet search engine, the first page or so will list what Hamburg Place is today—an area filled with an array of shopping opportunities. Bookstores, department stores, office supply stores, shoe stores, restaurants, theaters and portrait studios are choices offered to shoppers. Several hotels dot the property, as does an office park containing a variety of smaller businesses: a store specializing in olive oils, a jeweler advertising interest in buying gold, a store dedicated to Halloween costumes and several doctors’ offices. There is even a small business college.

Not only can one shop at Hamburg Place, but one can live there as well. Residential developments, consisting of single-family town homes and condominiums, are also part of the current Hamburg Place landscape. Included in this area are a swimming pool and a cabana recreation area. In short, just about anything you want to do or buy, you can do at Hamburg Place; it has “every conceivable amenity,”51 as one advertisement proclaims. But you won’t see many horses.

You will, however, see allusions to its namesake’s former glory. Names such as Old Rosebud, Sir Barton, Plaudit, Alysheba, Pink Pigeon, Star Shoot, Paul Jones and Grey Lag are now either street or office complex names in and around today’s version of Hamburg Place. Today, many shoppers and visitors probably wonder where these interesting, and sometimes bizarre, names come from. These were the names of horses that, a century ago, made Hamburg Place one of the greatest thoroughbred breeding operations in the world.

The list of Hamburg Place accomplishments in racing is jarring. From 1918 to 1927, ten consecutive years, Hamburg Place was the leading breeding farm in America. Fourteen thoroughbred champions were bred here. Five Kentucky Derby winners and five Belmont Stakes winners, including Sir Barton, the first American Triple Crown winner, came from Hamburg Place. It was the farm where John Madden, founder of Hamburg Place, became known in racing circles as the “Master of the Turf.”

John Edward Madden was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1856 to Irish immigrants Patrick and Catherine Madden. His father died when John was only three years old, leaving behind his widow and three children—a four-year-old daughter, John and a seven-month-old son. Virtually every account of Madden’s early life focuses attention on his athleticism. Nearly six feet tall and solidly built, Madden took pride in his athletic exploits, an aspect of his personality that lasted his entire life. As a teenager, he excelled at baseball, running, broad jumping and boxing. He exercised daily as an adult and built his own gymnasium on the grounds of Hamburg Place. Madden’s biographer, Kent Hollingsworth, relayed that at the age of sixty, Madden swam the thirty-yard length of his spring-fed pond every day, rain or shine, no matter the season. He did not smoke and only rarely drank alcohol.52

As

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