page_title: Canfield Casino and Congress Park
section_title: Casino
hierarchical_section_title: Canfield Casino and Congress Park / Property / Casino
caption_attribution_description: English: Saratoga Club House Dining Room, see Canfield Casino and Congress Park
context_page_description: Canfield Casino and Congress Park is a 17-acre site in Saratoga Springs, New York, United States. It was the site of the former Congress Spring Bottling Plant and the former Congress Hall, a large resort hotel, which together brought Saratoga Springs international fame as a health spa and gambling site. At the peak of its popularity it was a place where the wealthy, major gamblers and stars of the entertainment world mingled. The park's artwork includes a statue by Daniel Chester French and a landscape design by Frederick Law Olmsted, among others.
  It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987 after having originally been submitted and listed as the Casino-Congress Park-Circular Street Historic District in 1972. The later listing excluded some of the property outside the park and halved the overall size of the district.
  Congress Park is currently operated by the City of Saratoga Springs as a park, bounded by Broadway, Spring Street, and Circular Street in Saratoga Springs. The Canfield Casino building, built in 1870, houses the Saratoga Springs History Museum. Gambling was ended by reformers in 1907.
context_section_description: The casino's main block is a three-story building faced in brick on an exposed basement. It is topped by a flat roof, bordered by an ornate bracketed cornice. On the south (front) facade the brick around the doorway and at the corners is laid to look like rusticated stone. A belt course divides the first two floors.
  All three stories have sandstone window trim with a different treatment — segmented pediments on the first, triangular ones on the second and rectangular on the third. A free-standing segmental pediment distinguishes the roofline on the front center as well.
  The east wing, used for gambling when the casino was constructed, is a two-story, three-by-five-bay structure with front windows one and a half stories high. It has a similar window treatment to the first story of the main block, and a more elaborate cornice, also with central segmented pediment.
  To the north is the dining room and kitchen wing, a 93-by-58-foot (28 by 18 m) steel frame brick structure. At either end are stained glass windows depicting horses in different historical periods.
  Inside, the entrance opens onto a central hall with staircase. The office and library are on the west. To the east the original dining room opens onto the gambling room. Private gambling rooms were upstairs, and living quarters on the third floor.
  The gambling room has many of its original interior details, including mirrors and statuettes. The dining room roof is of riveted arches supported on columns. Its barrel vaulting has octagonal coffers. The parquet flooring is original, and the early air conditioning system of wall vents and the open coffer windows still works.
  From 1959 until into the first decade of the 21st century Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney and Marylou Whitney, and then after the former's death, Marylou hosted a racing season opening gala at the casino which was often over the top and known for Marylou's grand entrances.
caption: Old postcard of dining room
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