Yahoo Autos The Horse-Drawn City Leaves Its Relics In Plain Sight
In the grand scheme of human history, horses had a hell of a head start. They had been cluttering the streets of our cities for centuries while cars have only done so for one.
You think cars are a burdensome obstacle outside Penn Station? Imagine legions of tall, four-legged beasts, constantly whining and moving through midtown trafic, living creatures that need to be fed and bathed and and tied up and put to bed if they are to continue serving humans. Stables, troughs, hitching posts and horse stairs: an entire infrastructure once grew around the horse, one presumably far more complex than a Mobile station on the corner of 8th and Greenwich.
We've forgotten the horses, but our cities haven't. Vestiges of this lost infrastructure still pop up from time to time, in older cities, where their subtleties are now considered architectural novelties, ornaments too valuable to pave over-even if we might miss it. Over at Mental Floss, they've noted all the equestrian details that we might not notice. Did you know horses were called upon to draw streetcars? Another victim of the Big Streetcar conspiracy!
But hey, at least a car never pooped on anyone's shoes.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
