The Equine Legacy in Greenwich Village and the East Village

Dogs have been known as ‘man’s best friend’ for ages. However, no animal has probably done more for, and been more intertwined with, human development than the horse. In realms of farming, warfare, and transportation, the horse has played a critical role in shaping the world we live in today, especially New York and our neighborhoods. Beyond watching the Kentucky Derby on TV or seeing the occasional police officer riding a horse in the city, we may no longer think much about horses. They’re more curiosities, and sightings in an urban environment an aberration.

But if you take a moment, there are both subtle and more obvious indicators all around us that speak to the enduring equine legacy our neighborhoods. Even as you wander among the quaint streets lined with historic homes, it is still difficult to imagine that it was all once farmland. These farms need the horsepower to plow their fields and carry their goods to market. Those very same quaint streets that you admire today are among the few reminders that these farms ever existed. While New York is rightly proud of its grid street system, several of our ‘crooked’ streets clash with those so-called straight streets. A prime example of this is Stuyvesant Street in the East Village.

Stuyvesant Street is the only street in Manhattan that runs true west to east, which makes it appear crooked against New York’s grid-planned streets. All that remains of Stuyvesant Street is located between Second and Third Avenues, though it originally went from today’s Fourth Avenue to First Avenue near 16th Street. Originally laid out in 1787 by Petrus Stuyvesant, great-grandson of New Netherland’s director-general Peter Stuyvesant, as part of a network of streets that connected different parts of the vast Stuyvesant family estate that once covered the East Village. Similar family farming estates owned by Sir Peter Warren, Anthony Bleecker, and Henry Brevoort stretched from the East River to the Hudson. The hard work of these farms was done by enslaved persons and horses.

As farm animals, horses supported the work of human survival. However, they have also been used in humanity’s more destructive endeavors as creatures of war as well. From cavalry to pulling heavy artillery pieces, horses have been used extensively in warfare as recently as the Second World War. Thankfully, our neighborhoods have not directly experienced the ravages of war since the Revolutionary War. Our neighborhood’s most famous park did have links to the military well into the nineteenth century, when Washington Square Park was known as the Washington Military Parade Ground.

The Seventh Regiment of the National Guard paraded around Washington Square to mark Evacuation Day or to celebrate George Washington’s birthday. Horses would nearly always be on display as well. As the 1837 book Glance at New York by Asa Greene stated, “The chief military parade ground is Washington Square, in front of that fine Gothic structure, the University of New York. There the militia of this great city display their skill in arms. There the volunteer companies exhibit their fine uniforms, their full equipments, and their knowledge in the art of pacific war.”

As New York grew into a great metropolis the horse would be used for industrial and mass transit. Sprinkled through the neighborhoods are hints at a time when well over 100,000 horses and 4,500 stables kept the city in motion.

In November 1832, the Bowery saw the first city horse-drawn streetcar. Run by the New York and Harlem Railroad, it took commuters from the Lower East Side up to Union Square. The streetcar was seen as a major improvement from the horse-drawn omnibus, as running the cars on rails reduced the friction, so fewer horses could carry bigger loads. At this time, as horses became ever more indispensable to mass transit, they remained a critical component of individual families as well.

From Washington Mews, once a row of carriage houses serving the grand homes along Fifth Avenue, to the former Van Tassell & Kearney Horse Auction Mart at 128 East 13th Street, numerous remnants of New York’s equine infrastructure can still be found in our neighborhoods. Several nineteenth homes also have a mysterious second entrances next to their front doors. These horse walk doors were entrances to a passageway that led to a carriage house or stable behind the family home.

So, take a walk along a crooked street, enjoy the beauty of Washington Square Park, and keep your eyes peeled for architectural tidbits that hint at a time when New York, and humanity, couldn’t have accomplished as much as it did without the power of the incredible creature that is the horse.