The Coaching Club (also known as The Coaching Club of New York, New York Coaching Club, and Coaching Club of America) was formed in New York City in 1875 to encourage four-in-hand driving in America. [1] "Requisite for membership was the ability to handle a coach and four horses with a single group of reins." [2]
Initiated by Colonels DeLancey Kane and William Jay, the club had its first official meeting at the Knickerbocker Club on Fifth Avenue on December 3, 1875. The Knickerbocker Club became its headquarters. Later some activities were moved nearer Central Park to the Metropolitan Club, nine members of which were founders of the Coaching Club.
There were regular events, dinners and annual parades through Central Park.
The annual meet of the New York Coaching Club ... was a thrilling and colorful event. About fifteen drags usually assembled at the Brunswick Hotel in Twenty-sixth Street, and drove up to and around Central Park, and back in time for dinner at the hotel. The prettiest women in town, in crisp summer gowns and leghorn hats, with bouquets of cornflowers, daisies or buttercups, flowers to match the racing colors of the host, sat atop the coaches. The men wore the Coaching Club uniforms, green coats with gray top hats, and boutonnieres. Even the horses were dressed, with flower rosettes behind their ears. —Florence Jaffray Harriman [3] : 46
Typical of their coaching meets, in 1901 twenty-six coaches gathered in Hyde Park, New York and set off for an outing. [4]
In 1917, the Coaching Club inaugurated the Coaching Club Handicap, a stakes race for 3-year-old fillies at Belmont Park. Today it is a Grade I race at Saratoga Race Course called the Coaching Club American Oaks. [5] [2]
Qualification for membership: "the ability to drive four horses with grace and skill". Driving four-in-hand requires the whip (driver) to hold the reins of all four horses in one fist. [2]
Coaching was a very expensive pursuit and membership, at first restricted to fifty then thirty people at any one time, was limited to those owners and drivers of coaches drawn by four horses that had no involvement in racing, hunting or polo. It became difficult to keep a full membership and from 1925 members were allowed those associations.
The club owned its own coach, named Pioneer, which made daily runs between Holland House and Ardsley, New York for three years, a distance of 54 miles round trip. [6] : 240
The general public could buy seats in members' coaches and be driven about by the club members. When it was pointed out the result was New York's aristocracy carried common citizens, members responded that some of the English aristocracy had driven scheduled public services for some time.
One of the original Coaching Club coaches was named Tally-Ho. Built in 1875 by Holland & Holland coachbuilders in London, it was purchased by Colonel Kane and brought to New York in 1876. It became so well known that any coach-and-four was called a tally-ho by the general public. [1] Kane's Tally-ho was donated to the Museum of the City of New York in 1933, and is now in the carriage collection at the Long Island Museum of American Art, History, and Carriages in Stony Brook, New York. [1] [7]
"This coach was the first public coach ever run in America on the English plain... the word 'Tallyho' has become a part of the American language, and is the commonly used word in America for an English coach and a coaching trip is invariably referred to in the newspapers and novels of the day as a 'tallyho party.' —Rider and Driver Journal, 1893 [7]
Tack is equipment or accessories equipped on horses and other equines in the course of their use as domesticated animals. This equipment includes such items as saddles, stirrups, bridles, halters, reins, bits, and harnesses. Equipping a horse is often referred to as tacking up, and involves putting the tack equipment on the horse. A room to store such equipment, usually near or in a stable, is a tack room.
A carriage is a two- or four-wheeled horse-drawn vehicle for passengers. Second-hand private carriages were common public transport, the equivalent of modern cars used as taxis. Carriage suspensions are by leather strapping or, on those made in recent centuries, steel springs. Two-wheeled carriages are usually owner-driven.
A hackney or hackney carriage is a carriage or car for hire. A hackney of a more expensive or high class was called a remise. A symbol of London and Britain, the black taxi is a common sight on the streets of London. The hackney carriages carry a roof sign TAXI that can be illuminated to indicate their availability for passengers.
Combined driving is an equestrian sport involving carriage driving. In this discipline, the driver sits on a vehicle drawn by a single horse, a pair or a team of four. The sport has three phases: dressage, cross-country marathon and obstacle cone driving — patterned after the mounted equestrian sport of eventing. It is one of the ten international equestrian sport horse disciplines recognized by the Fédération Équestre Internationale (FEI). Combined driving became an FEI discipline in 1970 when Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the then-president of FEI, produced the first rule book.
The Coaching Club American Oaks is a race for thoroughbred three-year-old fillies and the second leg of the Triple Tiara of Thoroughbred Racing. Originally run at Belmont Park, the Grade I $500,000 stakes race was moved to Saratoga Race Course in 2010.
A horse-drawn vehicle is a piece of equipment pulled by one or more horses. These vehicles typically have two or four wheels and were used to carry passengers or a load. They were once common worldwide, but they have mostly been replaced by automobiles and other forms of self-propelled transport but are still in use today.
A Four-in-hand is any vehicle drawn by four horses driven by one person. Driving large heavy carriages and private coaches drawn by four horses was a popular sporting activity of the rich after the middle of the 19th century.
Carriage driving is a form of competitive horse driving in harness in which larger two- or four-wheeled carriages are pulled by a single horse, a pair, tandem or a four-in-hand team. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh helped to expand the sport. He started to compete in carriage driving in 1971, and the early rule book was drafted under his supervision.
Driving, when applied to horses, ponies, mules, or donkeys, is a broad term for hitching equines to a wagon, carriage, cart, sleigh, or other horse-drawn vehicle by means of a harness and working them in this way. It encompasses a wide range of activities from pleasure driving, to harness racing, to farm work, horse shows, and even international combined driving.
A horse harness is a device that connects a horse to a horse-drawn vehicle or another type of load to pull. There are two main designs of horse harness: (1) the breast collar or breaststrap, and (2) the full collar or collar-and-hames.
Jerome Park Racetrack was an American thoroughbred horse racing facility from 1866 until 1894. It was located in a part of Westchester County, New York that was annexed into the Bronx in 1874. Jerome Park Racetrack was the home of the Belmont Stakes from 1867 until 1889. Today, Jerome Park is the name of a neighborhood adjoining the Jerome Park Reservoir, Bedford Park and Norwood in the northern Bronx.
A coach is a large, closed, four-wheeled, passenger-carrying vehicle or carriage usually drawn by two or more horses controlled by a coachman, a postilion, or both. A coach has doors in its sides and a front and a back seat inside. The driver has a raised seat in front of the carriage to allow better vision. It is often called a box, box seat, or coach box. There are many of types of coaches depending on the vehicle's purpose.
The Remington Carriage Museum is located in Cardston, Alberta, Canada. Opened in 1993, and the largest of its kind in the world, the Remington Carriage Museum displays more than 240 carriages.
Pasteurized was an American Thoroughbred racehorse best known for winning the 1938 Belmont Stakes.
A driving club was a 19th century membership club for the recreational practice of carriage driving.
The Long Island Museum of American Art, History, and Carriages, known as the Long Island Museum (LIM), is a nine-acre museum located in Stony Brook, New York. The LIM serves the Long Island community by preserving and displaying its collection of art, historical artifacts, and carriages; providing educational and public programming; and collaborating with a variety of other arts and cultural organizations.
Algerine was an American Thoroughbred racehorse that won the 1876 Belmont Stakes and was the maternal grandsire of Rhoda B, the dam of the 1907 Epsom Derby winner Orby.
DeLancey Astor Kane was an American soldier and horseman who was prominent in New York Society during the Gilded Age. He was called the "father of coaching in the United States."
The Concord coach was an American horse-drawn coach, often used as stagecoaches, mailcoaches, and hotel coaches. The term was first used for the coaches built by coach-builder J. Stephen Abbot and wheelwright Lewis Downing of the Abbot-Downing Company in Concord, New Hampshire, but later to be sometimes used generically. Like their predecessors, the Concords employed a style of suspension and construction particularly suited to North America's early 19th century roads. Leather thoroughbraces suspend passengers who are in constant motion while the coach is moving. The swaying is accepted by passengers for the shock absorbing action of the leather straps and for the way the special motion eases the coach over very rough patches of roadway. This suspension, which was developed by Philip de Chiese in the 17th century, was long replaced by steel springs in England.
Fleetwood Park was a 19th-century harness racing (trotting) track in what is now the Morrisania section of the Bronx in New York, United States. The races held there were a popular form of entertainment, drawing crowds as large as 10,000 from the surrounding area. The one-mile (1.6 km) course described an unusual shape, with four turns in one direction and one in the other. For the last five years of operation, Fleetwood was part of trotting's Grand Circuit, one travel guide calling it "the most famous trotting track in the country".