POTW: Horses in Brooklyn

[Horseshoeing and Jobbing Shop, New Lots Road, Brooklyn, N.Y.], circa 1900, v1974.32.293; Eugene L. Armbruster photographs and scrapbooks, 1974.032; Brooklyn Historical Society

This week, we have yet another pastoral image of Brooklyn circa 1900, complete with a dirt road, a picket fence and a well in the yard beside the wooden clapboard house. It is not news that many of the outer neighborhoods in Brooklyn were rural and even agricultural in the late-19^th and into the 20^th century. What piqued my interest in this image was the “Horse Shoeing and Jobbing” sign.

 

If somebody asked me to list typical jobs for people living in the city, my last response would be “horseshoer,” but, apparently, this was a common profession for Brooklynites in the period when this photograph was taken. Horses were an integral part of city life in the 19^th century. Horses were used for public transportation in the city beginning in the 1820s. In addition to their use in private and public transportation, horses were used for deliveries, fire-response, and they even helped construct the early subway system.  Horses were essential to life in the city, and blacksmiths and horseshoers were in high demand – for a while. By the nineteen-teens, automobiles outnumbered horses on city streets. The last horse-drawn fire carriage traveled through the city in 1922 (Brooklyn Historical Society has an image of this last run between Pierrepont Street and Borough Hall). Within twenty years of when the photograph above was captured, horseshoeing would have been more or less obsolete as a profession in Brooklyn. This image of Wortman’s Horse Shoeing and Jobbing Shop is more interesting than it first appears because it shows a glimpse of a part of Brooklyn life that was about to change dramatically.

 

Interested in seeing more photos from BHS’s collection? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images. Interested in seeing even more historic Brooklyn images? Visit our new website here.  To search BHS’s entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections visit BHS’s Othmer Library Wed-Sat, 1:00-5:00 p.m.

 

Author: Halley Choiniere