12-12-2008: Community Board 7 Seeks To Downzone Neighborhood 

12-22-2008: Councilmember de Blasio Supports Stable Brooklyn Rezoning

A mustang named Benny suffered a stone bruise. Dave, a Peruvian Paso, slipped and gouged his ankle. A thoroughbred named Sham, a former show horse, now needs regular hock injections for his stiffening joints.

Ms. Levy has kept her horses at the Kensington Stables, the only stable that routinely serves Prospect Park. She has been an instructor there for the last 11 years, but she intends to move her four horses on Tuesday to a farm in the Finger Lakes region, to save them, she said, from any further injury.

“This is the hardest decision I’ve had to make,” she said.

Thousands of riders come to Kensington Stables every year, according to Ms. Levy, for riding lessons or just to see Prospect Park from horseback. Since the closing last year of the Claremont Riding Academy, near Central Park, Kensington Stables is among New York’s few remaining urban stables.

But the riding trails in Prospect Park have become the subject of a dispute between riders who use the stable and the park’s administrator, Tupper Thomas. In the meantime, said the stable’s owner, Walker Blankinship, the horses are struggling.

Some complaints about the Prospect Park trails seem to reflect the ever-present realities of urban horseback riding. Joggers and even bikers wander onto the bridle path. Dogs, which can run around off-leash during the mornings, have chased the horses, causing injuries to both horses and riders. And there will always be pavement to cross: The route from Kensington Stables, on Caton Place, to the park requires crossing Coney Island Avenue, and then busy Park Circle.

But Ms. Levy and others who ride and work at Kensington Stables say the parks department has not done enough to maintain the more than three and a half miles of historic bridle paths in the park, or a riding ring near the south end of the Long Meadow, where the stable offers lessons.

Ms. Thomas, the park’s administrator, said parts of the path had been restored by the parks department. “We restore the bridle path during any major capital project near the path,” she said. “We try to do major repairs when there is a washout.”

The most recent restoration work was done last year, in the park’s Midwood section and on a part of the path near Lookout Hill.

Ms. Thomas, who said that maintenance of the paths needed to be a collaboration between riders and the park, said it had “never been very clear” whose responsibility it was. And she blamed a lack of communication for the confusion, adding that she was confident that the path would be fixed.

At least one other park in the city has had better success maintaining its horse trails. In 2002, the bridle paths in Forest Park in Queens were restored, with new drainage systems and erosion controls, as part of a $1.7 million park improvement. Joseph Sinopoli, the owner of Forest Equine Center, said that his and another stable held regular fund-raisers or contributed their own money to maintain the paths, and organized rock-removal parties. “Instead of complaining,” Mr. Sinopoli said, “we go out and do it ourselves.”

Kensington Stables did raise $12,000 to fix the riding ring, but the work has barely begun. And Mr. Blankinship said he had repaired the trails with his tractor in the past. But fixing the recurring problems on the bridle path would require money from the park, he said: “There’s no funds unless we do it ourselves.”

The problem at Prospect Park is complicated, those involved agree. The path, especially a stretch near the Vanderbilt Street Playground, is prone to flooding and could require an expensive drainage system in any true restoration.

The problem is not new. An 1887 editorial in The New York Times could have been written by Ms. Levy and her colleagues today.

“The soil of Prospect Park is not favorable to the formation of good bridle roads through the unaided and unchecked operations of nature,” it read. “This fact does not seem to be fully understood by the current managers of the park. It is excessively rough, very soft in places, and the loose sandy soil of which it is composed is thickly mixed with small stones, on which a spirited horse may easily lose his footing or become lamed.”

Ms. Thomas said in a recent telephone interview that she was committed to making sure riding could continue in the park. There has always been a bridle path there, though its route has been altered over the years. Ms. Thomas said, “When you go on a horseback ride, there are different ways you see the park,” views that Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux intended when they designed it.

To preserve those views, riders from Kensington Stables are trying to raise more money from somewhere, anywhere, to restore the paths. Ruth Moore, a rider, wrote a letter to Shelby White, the philanthropist who donated $10 million to the park last month, urging her to earmark some of the money for the bridle paths. “We read that she used to ride in the park when she was a child,” Ms. Moore said.

On Sunday night, Ms. Levy, reached by telephone, was sitting at a bar near the stable drinking a beer with her colleagues after an emotional few days spent consoling children who have come to love her horses. Ms. Levy said that if real money was spent to make the paths better — to make them safe — she might bring her horses back.

Original article is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/02/nyregion/02stables.html

New York Times Article on the history of horseriding in the area. Special thanks to Emily for convincing and encouraging the Times to do the piece.  

When the Horsemen Passed By

THE VOICE; When the Horsemen Passed By

YOU can smell the horses before you can see them, although if you're walking off the overpass that straddles the busy Prospect Expressway in East Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, the pungent odor of hay and manure seems out of place among the warehouses, semidetached row houses and passing cars.

Kensington Stables, at Caton Place and East Eighth Street, is the last stable remaining at an intersection that was once home to several such enterprises. In their heyday, at the beginning of the 20th century, hundreds of horses were stabled there. But the Depression and the automobile transformed horseback riding from a necessity into a hobby, one soon overtaken by other leisure activities.

No one remembers exactly when the changes started to take place -- around the 1930's or 40's, old-timers suggest. The first stable to disappear was converted into a roller-skating rink, which later became a warehouse. The second was converted into a bowling alley, which later gave way to a giant church, the Calvary Cathedral of Praise. A third stable, known as the Little Gray Barn, was torn down last year and is being replaced by condominiums.

Because stables may change their name as often as they change owners, it's hard to say how many such businesses have come and gone. Kensington Stables, too, is struggling with the challenges of maintaining an agrarian sort of business in a crowded urban setting. A recently formed group called Stable Brooklyn is trying to preserve remnants of the neighborhood's equestrian past and to resist high-rise development in the area.

Residents past and present recall long-departed landmarks like Prospect Park Stables, Harry Goldstein's and Jimmy Seelandt's. Those were places to which New Yorkers traveled from throughout the city to ride in nearby Prospect Park, places where local children would feed and exercise the horses in exchange for a dollar or, even better, a free ride.

Art Goldberg, 57, a retired subway union executive, grew up on Cortelyou Road in Kensington and now lives in Pennsylvania, in the Poconos.

''During the early days in the 1950's, all they had on television was cowboys, and I identified with the loneliness and the hard work they did. I began saving money to buy a pony when I was 5 years old. I started working at Harry Goldstein's stable in 1960 when I was 12, taking care of the horses and taking people out in the park. I was paid a dollar a day for that.

''In those days there were 150 horses down there, or more. With the bowling alley and the roller-skating rink, it was a real gathering point for hundreds of people. There was also the bridle path from Prospect Park to Coney Island, and people could ride horses down Ocean Parkway.

''The horses more and more became the center of life, and it was a real alternative to some of us who felt there really weren't too many options. It was a real ego boost and gave us something to look forward to: taking care of the horses and being in charge of something. It gave us a focus, and it helped a lot of lost kids.

''We were inner-city kids. Many came from the downtown area, and we didn't have too much opportunity to experience animals or to be around a park. So being out with the horses and being in the park was like being in another world.''

Joel Vincent, 69, a guide at Kensington Stables, grew up in Midwood, Brooklyn, and lives in Manhattan near Gramercy Park.

''I would get the trolley to the stables with my aunt and uncle from Coney Island Avenue. I would go riding maybe 10 times in a year, so it was a rare treat. They had a system of guides that would take you into the park, just as I take people in the park today.

''When people ask how did I fall in love with horses growing up in Brooklyn, that's always a puzzle for me. Maybe it's just they were more observable in the street. Because of the war and rationing, there was a lot less driving going on, and they were using horses more for doing work like pulling delivery wagons and milk wagons. And somehow or other, these big, fascinating creatures intrigued me.''

John Davenport, 74, a retired security director, grew up in Windsor Terrace and still lives there.

''The trolley used to end over here, and we used to get off and come down here to make a little bit of money. The owners would bring their horses back from the park all lathered up, and that's where I would make my tips, by walking the horse up and down the block until he got his composure back and started breathing right.

''I would come home all sweated up, and we didn't have air-conditioning in those days. My mother used to make me take my clothes off and leave them in the hall after a day down here.''

Walker Blankinship, 37, the owner of Kensington Stables since 1997, grew up in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn, and still lives there.

''For the first few years after I took over the barn, quite a few people would come in telling stories, but now they're all gone. Usually the stories were tragedies, like the one about a fire here in the late 40's. One man who used to live around here said that when they put a horse down, they would use it for anatomy classes. He remembers sitting on a dead horse right outside here eating a sandwich while they dissected the legs for a lesson.''

Muriel Bissell, 74, a homemaker, lives in the Windsor Terrace house where she grew up.

''The police stabled their horses here, and they used to line up like soldiers all in a row every morning and go down to different areas of the city. My sister used to bring the horses apples every day.

''There was a terrible fire once, and I saw the horses being shot because they were all badly burned. I was a kid, and all I remember is hearing the sound go off and the horse falling. They had to take them out on garbage trucks. It went on for days.''

George Bissell, 74, a retired banker, moved to Windsor Terrace from Flatbush in 1959, when he married Muriel Ferrari.