The life of city horses is not easy.
They are beset by bicycle riders and in-line skaters, the horns and exhaust of cabs and buses and cars–and by real estate developers who would just as soon see them disappear forever.
Life remains relatively safe for the horses at the Lincoln Park Zoo’s Farm-in-the-Zoo and those stabled at the former South Shore Cultural Center, in the service of the 24-year-old mounted police unit of the Chicago Police Department.
But what of those horses stationed around the Water Tower and other ritzy city streets, the ones employed to pull the carriages that tote tourists (and romantically inclined locals) around town?
Some of these carriage-pullers are trucked in daily from stables in the suburbs, but most live in a slice of the past called the Noble Horse Equestrian Center, nestled into a one-acre plot on North Orleans Street, in the heart of an increasingly and aggressively gentrifying section of the city.
It’s a piece of property that makes real estate developers dizzy with townhouse dreams, and for the last few years there was speculation that the stable would be sold. That looked like all but a done deal last year, after the owner of the property, Coronet Insurance, went into state receivership.
Photographer Katja Heinemann heard of the impending closing of the stables and spent some days at Noble Horse capturing the images that grace these pages.
“I wanted to preserve a piece of the city’s culture that was going to vanish,” says the photographer, who arrived here seven years ago from her native Germany and who, like many Chicago natives, had never heard of Noble Horse. “It is, in its way, a garden spot, a leftover from another era.”
The wood-and-brick building was built in 1872, the year after the Great Fire, and was renovated in 1922. At that time it was one of about 20 livery stables in the city, some with more than 100 horses. The animals could be boarded or rented by the hour for riding, and city parks contained about 17 miles of well-kept bridle paths.
Riding remained a popular city activity for decades. In 1945, there was a City Council to-do when 41st Ward Ald. William J. Cowhey tried to introduce an ordinance that would ban horseback riding after midnight.
“The nights are made hideous with cries of `giddap,’ `whoa,’ `yippee’ and `hi, ho, Silver,’ ” said the alderman. “Sometimes the lawns are kicked full of holes by the horses, and that’s not all they do.”
But by the mid-1960s, urbanization had reduced the number of city stables to three. New Parkway Stables, on Clark Street near Webster Avenue, which had been in business since the 1890s and was sending out as many as 600 riders every weekend to Lincoln Park, was the last to close, in 1967.
There would be attempts in the following years to bring horses back to the city. In 1972, 42nd Ward Ald. Burton Natarus unsuccessfully lobbied to get the city to build new stables so that equestrians could return to Lincoln Park. (Ironically, two decades later, Natarus loudly complained about carriage horses “messing” the streets of his ward.)
What is now the Noble Horse stables closed in the late 1960s and stood vacant until being discovered by a fellow named Dan Sampson. He had started with a farm-based carriage business in Ottawa in 1977 and brought horses to Chicago in 1980, at the behest of then-Mayor Jane Byrne, who thought that horse-drawn carriages would be a nifty addition to ChicagoFest at Navy Pier. Sampson stabled his steeds first at the armory building on East Chicago Avenue and then, since 1984, in the current location.
The Noble Horse, now largest of a half-dozen local companies that offer city carriage rides, has licenses and boarding arrangements for more than half the 60 carriage-pulling horses. It also boards other horses and gives riding lessons.
Recently Sampson, whose stable suffered through a 1997 fire, has had good news. A Chancery Court judge, ruling on a lawsuit Sampson filed against the state–saying it had reneged on a “verbal agreement” to sell him the property–has placed the matter in arbitration.
He expects a happy end to the saga: “There are just a few minor details to be worked out, and I’ll be able to buy the property and keep the stables. It would have been a terrible loss for the city. A city horse is an amazing animal, capable of handling not only the physical chores but the mental rigors of city living.”
So look at Heinemann’s photos of city horses not as pieces of lost Chicago, but rather as majestic members of a continuing marvel.
