Grant Funding to Complete Carriage Museum Revitalization

With talk nowadays of gas prices, fuel efficiency, four-wheel drive, and others that come to mind when trying to determine a quality vehicle, it might be easy to forget that in the not-too-distant past, the only vehicles on the roads came at the mercy of four healthy horse legs.

Leaders with the know this all too well, and were recently pleased to announce that two separate exhibits detailing the role of horse-drawn carriages in urban life earned the museum a $286,000 grant. The exhibits are expected to be on display starting next year.

According to the museum, the grant funding, awarded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, "will complete the revitalization of the Carriage Museum."

Streets of New York and Carriages for Sport and Pleasure will take two separate paths, however, in looking at the role of the horse-drawn carriage around the turn of the 19th century.

According to a statement from the museum, "In these two galleries the story begun and developed in the earlier galleries will be brought to a conclusion. Here, visitors will learn that horse-drawn vehicles were essential to the growth of cities as centers for living and working and critical to the growth of the United States as a major economic power."

Streets of New York will include floor-to-ceiling photographs of urban streets, including one scene of an urban fire in which horse-drawn fire engines are used to quell the fire.

Carriages for Sport and Pleasure will focus on the carriage as status symbol, including the recently-purchased "Tally Ho," an imported English carriage that helped spark the carriage craze way back when.

Both exhibits will include audio narration, available for download on the museum's website.