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The Horseshoe Barn and Horseshoe Barn Annex are two exhibit buildings located at Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont. Both buildings exhibit a variety of horse-drawn vehicles, including carriages, trade wagons, stagecoaches, and sleighs.
Electra Havemeyer Webb's desire to provide a suitable setting for the carriage collection of her father-in-law, Dr. William Seward Webb, provided the inspiration for founding Shelburne Museum. She searched Vermont for a building to house these fine carriages and found a unique horseshoe-shaped dairy barn near the town of Georgia. When the owner declined to sell the barn, Electra Webb directed her staff to create a copy of the structure. Over a two-year period they located, moved, and assembled hand-hewn beams from twelve Vermont barns and stone from two gristmills to construct their own horseshoe barn on museum grounds. [1]
Completed in July 1949, the massive structure, which is 238.5 feet (72.7 m) long and 32 feet (9.8 m) wide, incorporated 745 timbers, posts, and braces, 17,000 feet (5,200 m) of plank and other boarding, and 9,000 square feet (840 m2) of slate. Carpenters specially cut new clapboards for the exterior siding with an up-and-down saw to recreate the markings found on the original building. [2]
In 1957, after the addition of 150 more vehicles to the transportation collection, the museum constructed the Horseshoe Barn Annex to exhibit key examples from the collection using a combination of old and new materials. [3]
It appears that there are very few horseshoe-shaped barns in the United States. Of the two documented horseshoe barns in Vermont, only one still stands today. The Shelburne Museum houses the only remaining horseshoe barn in Vermont; the Georgia, Vermont barn it was modeled after burned to the ground. There is still a road named Horseshoe Barn Road in St. Albans, Vermont.
Other known horseshoe-shaped barns are:
The museum's carriage collection began with the vehicles owned by Dr. William Seward Webb and his wife Lila Vanderbilt Webb. Today it has come to include 225 horse-drawn vehicles. Since many of these vehicles came straight from their respective owners, many still retain their original upholstery and decoration.
Carriages and coaches began to be widely used in Britain during the 17th century. However, real progress in carriage building was not made until the late 18th century, when Royal Mail coach service began. For the first time, many carriages were designed for comfort and speed and were made alike, using interchangeable parts. Soon carriage driving became the fashionable way to travel, although for many years the cost of vehicles restricted their use primarily to the nobility and upper classes.
The manufacture of horse-drawn vehicles advanced more quickly in 19th-century America, where vehicles quickly became available to people of every social class. By the late 19th century, American coach builders had developed light and practical vehicles that were available to the general public at low prices through mail order houses such as Sears and Roebuck. An elegant runabout made by Brewster & Co., America's finest coach builder, cost $425 in 1900; a runabout sold by Sears was $24.95.
Shelburne Museum's collection of horse-drawn vehicles includes examples of 19th and early 20th century carriages, farm and trade wagons, stagecoaches, sleighs, early firefighting equipment, and almost every other type of vehicle used in New England in the 19th century. One of the most comprehensive collections in the country, it is particularly important because most of the vehicles retain their original upholstery, lamps, and decorative finishes.
Many of the museum's finest vehicles originally belonged to Dr. William Seward Webb, father-in-law of Electra Havemeyer Webb, including a number of elegant carriages and coaches by New York's Brewster & Co. and a remarkable pair of custom-made vehicles – a caleche and a satin-trimmed Berlin – by Million et Guiet of Paris.
Rural Americans were often too busy to travel during the warm months, when farm chores kept them close to home. Winter brought more leisure time. Snow could be packed down with horse-drawn rollers to form a far smoother surface than was available on dirt roads at other times of the year. Sleighs were much easier to build and repair than wheeled vehicles; a home craftsperson without specialized training could construct and maintain them. For these reasons, the typical northern farm family owned three sleighs for every wheeled vehicle it kept.
Sleighs echoed wheeled vehicles in form. Some wheeled vehicles, like the museum's hearse, could be converted from wheels to runners as the seasons changed. The museum's sleighs range from small and simple homemade wooden cutters to elaborate, multi-passenger surreys, caleches, and victorias. The collection also includes a stage sleigh, a school bus sleigh, a butcher's delivery sleigh and a police ambulance and paddy wagon sleigh.
Multi-passenger stagecoaches and omnibuses provided public transportation for travelers within and between cities, from train stations to hotels, and on sightseeing trips. Businesses transported goods by horse, often using wagons and sleighs that advertised their wares with decorative pictures and signage. Commercial vehicles in the museum's collection include a Concord stagecoach used to transport hotel guests in the White Mountains, a butcher's wagon complete with hanging scales and meat hooks, a Maine druggist's patent medicine wagon and a Pennsylvania Conestoga wagon, used to haul produce from rural farms to city markets.
Vehicles were also essential to firefighters, who needed to transport water and equipment quickly. A variety of early firefighting vehicles are represented in the museum's collection. The horse was a latecomer to firefighting, not pressed widely into service until the 1870s. To save precious time, horses were kept in the firehouse. Their stalls had break-away chains and, at the sound of the alarm, the horses raced to their places in front of the waiting equipment. Their collars and harnesses were suspended from the ceiling, poised like spiders in a web, ready to drop at a touch.
The steam-driven pumper, the hose wagon, and the hook-and-ladder truck became the three major horse-drawn firefighting vehicles. However, it was the steamer, usually driven with horses harnessed two or three abreast, that provided the most spectacular sight as it flew down the street with smoke pouring from the funnel of its boiler, building up a head of steam to run the pumps.
A carriage is a private four-wheeled vehicle for people and is most commonly horse-drawn. Second-hand private carriages were common public transport, the equivalent of modern cars used as taxis. Carriage suspensions are by leather strapping and, on those made in recent centuries, steel springs. Two-wheeled carriages are informal and usually owner-driven.
A horse-drawn vehicle is a mechanized piece of equipment pulled by one horse or by a team of horses. These vehicles typically had two or four wheels and were used to carry passengers and/or a load. They were once common worldwide, but they have mostly been replaced by automobiles and other forms of self-propelled transport.
Shelburne Museum is a museum of art, design, and Americana located in Shelburne, Vermont, United States. Over 150,000 works are exhibited in 39 exhibition buildings, 25 of which are historic and were relocated to the museum grounds. It is located on 45 acres (18 ha) near Lake Champlain.
Electra Havemeyer Webb was a collector of American antiques and founder of the Shelburne Museum.
William Seward Webb was a businessman, and inspector general of the Vermont militia with the rank of colonel. He was a founder and former president of the Sons of the American Revolution.
Larz Anderson Auto Museum is located in the Anderson Carriage House on the grounds of Larz Anderson Park in Brookline, Massachusetts and is the oldest collection of motorcars in the United States.
The steamboat Ticonderoga is one of two remaining side-paddle-wheel passenger steamers with a vertical beam engine of the type that provided freight and passenger service on America's bays, lakes and rivers from the early 19th to the mid-20th centuries. Commissioned by the Champlain Transportation Company, Ticonderoga was built in 1906 at the Shelburne Shipyard in Shelburne, Vermont on Lake Champlain.
A coach is a large closed four-wheeled passenger-carrying vehicle or carriage usually drawn by two or more horses usually controlled by a coachman, a postilion, or occasionally both. A coach has doors in its sides and a front and a back seat inside. The driver has a seat in front raised up high to give good vision. It is often called a box, box seat or coach box. The word coach came into use in the 15th century and spread across Europe. There are a number of types of coaches depending on how the vehicle is to be used. In India it is called a Rath or रथ. Special breeds of horses, such as the now-extinct Yorkshire Coach Horse, were developed to pull the heavy coaches.
The Colchester Reef Light in Vermont was a lighthouse off Colchester Point in Lake Champlain. It was moved to the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont, in 1956.
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.
The Electra Havemeyer Webb Memorial Building is an exhibit building located at the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, in the U.S. state of Vermont. It was built as a memorial to the museum's founder, Electra Havemeyer Webb, and her husband, James Watson Webb II. It is home to the museum's European Paintings Collection. The collection is shown in six period rooms relocated from Electra and J. Watson Webb's 1930s New York City apartment at 740 Park Avenue.
The Beach Gallery and Beach Lodge are two exhibit buildings at the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont, United States. They are both made from logs and are designed to resemble an Adirondack hunting camp. The Beach Lodge exhibits a large selection of hunting trophies (taxidermy), while the Beach Gallery exhibits art depicting the North American wilderness; this includes work by Carl Rungius, Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait, and Sydney Laurence.
The General Store, constructed in 1840 in Shelburne, Vermont, originally operated as the village post office. Its front-gable orientation, accentuated with a multi-paned, triangular pedimental window, reflects the popular Greek Revival style.
The Round Barn serves as a gallery space for special exhibitions at Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont.
The Shaker Shed is an exhibit building at Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont. It exhibits the museum's collection of hand-tools and household equipment.
The Stagecoach Inn is an exhibit building located at Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to animal-powered transport:
James Watson Webb II was an American polo champion and insurance executive. He was a grandson of William Henry Vanderbilt and James Watson Webb.
Eliza Osgood Vanderbilt Webb was an American heiress.
The Shelburne Village Historic District encompasses the central portion of the main village of Shelburne, Vermont. Centered on the junction of United States Route 7 with Harbor and Falls Roads, the district's architecture traces the town's history from the 18th to early 20th century. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)Coordinates: 44°22′40.68″N73°13′51.56″W / 44.3779667°N 73.2309889°W