What happened when there were too many horse-driven carriages in cities?

The “golden age of carriage making” when carriages drawn by horses dominated city and town life in America was actually fairly short—from the 1880s through the 1910s—but this period of time had major impacts on many aspects of daily life.

First the upside—when carriages and horses became more affordable as industrialization and mass production brought lower prices—more people could get around. While it was harder to learn to ride a horse, it was relatively easy to hitch a horse to carriage and steer. And, personal carriages and wagons meant that groups of people could travel easily together (if not always very comfortably as carriages made for a bumpy ride). Visiting the beach or relatives a few towns away became a more common way to spend free time.

But there were downsides to this particular form of progress. As the number and uses of horses increased, so to did the incidents of animal cruelty and neglect. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), inspired by the British society, was established in New York City by Henry Bergh in 1866. Bergh had been sent to Russia as a diplomat by Abraham Lincoln. While there, he saw horses being abused in the streets.

Once home, he pushed for laws that would require animals to be treated with care, and founded the ASPCA. Much of their early work focused on care of abused horses, including the invention of the first ambulance for injured horses in 1867 (two years before an ambulance for humans was first used in New York City).

Another downside to the carriage age was the pollution of city streets, rivers, and streams from manure piling up, and the attendant flies and disease. This was widely seen as a public sanitation and environmental crisis that needed a solution. As horseless carriages were being developed, this new technology was seen as part as a solution. Cities like New York were early adopters—by 1912 automobiles outnumbered horses on the streets. We know now that this shift traded one kind of pollution for another, but at the time city dwellers breathed a sign of relief that the crisis of manure had passed.

Next month, we’ll look further into what the transition to automobiles meant for towns and cities in the United States in the early 1900s.