Richard Canfield (1855–1914) rose out of poverty in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to become the leading gambling entrepreneur in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. He was the leading casino owner in New York City, and in 1902 he purchased and rebuilt the Saratoga Club House in Saratoga, New York, bringing it back to the elegance it had displayed when it was the private preserve of Jack Morrisey. As an operator, Canfield never gambled; instead, he enjoyed the finer things of life – wine, art, top fashion clothing, and carriages. He gambled in his youth, and although the activity helped him economically and gave him a social standing, it also earned him a short stay in prison as a result of operating a poker joint in Providence, Rhode Island.
Canfield was a student of many things, and when he decided that casino gambling would be a business pursuit, he decided to study gambling in its finest settings. He actually took a year to travel to Europe and examine the many elegant gambling halls of England and the continent. He was able to utilize his new knowledge when he moved the venue of his operations to New York City. New York was friendlier than Providence, as the police seemed to make their system of noninterference more regularized and reliable.
In New York, Canfield determined that the best gambling money to be made would be money spent by wealthy players, not money spent by immigrants in dives. He offered games to the upper classes, and was able to woo this clientele with his fine tastes and intellectual banter. Canfield was self-educated and extremely well read, could converse with the most renowned scholars of the day, and certainly was a welcomed host by the best business minds. He gathered partners, and they financed the most exclusive rooms in New York City for gambling. After a decade of operations, however, reformers Charles Parkhurst and Anthony Comstock pressured the city to close down Canfield’s casinos.
Rather than resist the police action of 1901 and 1902, Canfield shifted his sights to Saratoga. There he acquired a stable of the finest racehorses, and he stood above all the local casino operators by running the finest casino – the Saratoga Club House. A main feature of his house was the cuisine: the best offered in the United States. He discovered the value of loss leaders. Each summer he would lose $70,000 on food operations, much of it going for “comps” to high rollers, but he more than made up for the losses at his tables.
The Saratoga Club House remained in operation as a gambling hall par excellence for only five more years, as the reform movement reached into northern New York in 1907. This time Richard Canfield did not fight history. Rather, he retreated to a life as a Wall Street investor and a collector of fine art works. He was a friend of James Whistler, and the famous artist did Canfield’s portrait. Canfield’s collection of Whistler and other well-known artists was often displayed in major museums. A man of distinction and fine taste, he died in 1914 in a rather mundane manner, after falling on the steps leading to the New York subway.
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