[drivingpairs] Long Island Museum of American Art, History and Carriages




Forwarded for Jerry Trapani:



"The Carriage Museum at the Long Island Museum of American Art, History & 
Carriages

Nation's Premier Horse-Drawn Carriage Collection 

 

 

SYNOPSIS

 

As many of our visitors know, the Long Island Museum owns the largest and 
finest collection of horse-drawn vehicles and related transportation artifacts 
in the country.  Like many museums displaying transportation artifacts, our 
original installation of carriages emphasized design and function.  In our 
continuing efforts to enhance the visitor experience and uncover the rich, 
interpretive potential of the collection, the museum has worked to emphasize 
social and cultural history. The focus has shifted to the people who made and 
used the vehicles, and the methods in which carriages, travel and 
transportation shaped our culture and our nation.

 

The Incomparable "Grace Darling"

 

Visitors to the Carriage Museum are welcomed with a view of the largest and 
most artistically painted carriage in the collection, the "Grace Darling," an 
excursion omnibus named for a young woman who rescued nine shipwreck victims 
off the coast of England in 1838.  This exquisite carriage held more than 
twenty people in an interior that boasts unique, individually rendered 
paintings of the American landscape by 19th century New Hampshire painter John 
Burgum.   In future plans for the interpretation of this awesome vehicle - how 
it worked, who used it - the museum will install strategically placed miniature 
telescopes with accompanying explanatory text, focused on key areas of the 
vehicle.

 

 "Going Places"

 

In phase one of the Carriage Museum renovation, we unveiled "Going Places," a  
gallery introducing horse-drawn transportation through nine iconic carriages 
representing work and play in 19th century America.  A time line and video, 
courtesy of the History Channel, place the "carriage story" into a broader 
context of American history, and a colorful interactive map of Long Island 
represents the changing transportation networks in which horse-drawn vehicles 
played so important a role.  Human interest stories complement the vehicles by 
introducing the people associated with each, including owners, drivers and 
craftsmen.

 



A 19th Century Carriage Exposition

 

As visitors make their way up the ramp and around Grace Darling, they will 
enter our newest gallery, the Carriage Exposition.  Replete with velvet 
curtains and brass wall sconces, this gallery finds its inspiration in 
photographs of the Transportation Building at the 1893 World's Columbian 
Exposition in Chicago, the epitome of a 19th century carriage show.  Dominating 
the center of the space is an imposing "Well Dressed Horse," a mannequin 
modeling a funeral caparison, an elaborate top-of-head-to-knee covering in 
heavy black wool ornamented with finely worked fringe and topped with black 
ostrich feathers.  Rivaling the stallion for pride of place is a nickel, 
silver, and glass ornamented firefighting carriage, a parade hose wagon by the 
Rumsey Manufacturing Company of Seneca Falls, New York, brightly burnished to 
be the star of any Fourth of July celebration.  Visitor-activated audio 
elements provide period accounts of the personal experiences of those who 
bought and used these magnificent vehicles.

 

 

Making Carriages: From Hometown Shop to Factory

 

Entering the last gallery in this phase of reinterpretation, the visitor is 
flanked by dramatically contrasting displays that demonstrate the wide range of 
American carriage-making concerns, hundreds of which were in operation by the 
end of the 1800s.

 

On one side is a re-creation of the Graves Brothers carriage shop from the 
village of Williamsburg, Massachusetts, with its original contents - including 
hand tools, machinery, unassembled carriage components, shop records and even 
walls with 19th century graffiti.  Pulleys and belts move overhead, sawdust, 
shavings and metal pieces litter the floor and the sounds of working machinery 
echo throughout.  A video places the shop into its small-town context with an 
explanation of its workings by the oldest surviving member of the Graves family.

 

The Studebaker Brothers carriage works was a very different place, as depicted 
in giant photo blowups showing workers at their machines in the huge spaces of 
the South Bend, Indiana factory.  A display of five Studebaker carriages from 
the Long Island Museum collection accompanies the photos, illustrating the 
continuum of manufacture, culminating in a 1902 Studebaker Victoria Phaeton 
automobile, on long-term loan from the Studebaker National Museum, representing 
the gradual shift to combustion engines that would eventually make horse-drawn 
vehicles obsolete. 

 

The museum graciously thanks New York State Senator John Flannigan, the 
National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Museum and Library 
Services and the Early American Industries Association for their generous 
support in our efforts to continue the tradition of offering the largest and 
finest collection of carriages and horse-drawn vehicles in the United States." 




Helen 
Whitesboro, Texas
home of El Hasa Sport Ponies
   (the Little Lions of the desert)
www.drivingpairs.com 
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