If you’ve been to the south end of Central Park, chances are you’ve seen the iconic carriage horses. Maybe you’ve even ridden in one on a family trip to New York, eager to partake in an activity that’s widely seen as emblematic of the city. Soon, however, you might not be able to take a carriage ride at all.
Following the collapse and death of a carriage horse in early June, and the tragic death of an eighteen-year-old tourist after falling out of a runaway carriage only weeks later, New York City citizens have renewed a long-standing battle against the iconic carriage industry.
Horses have been part of city life since the 1800s, used both as a means of transportation and for construction projects. The carriage horse tourism industry grew in the 1860s, peaking a century later in the 1970s and 80s. By then, horses were used almost exclusively for tourism, and the industry was confined to one small quadrant of Central Park, where tourists can pay a city-regulated price of $72.22 for a 20-minute ride.
Since the 1860s, animal rights activists have fought to regulate and ban carriage horse tourism, a push which regained popularity in the 2013 mayoral election cycle, and again in the 2025 one. The current movement advocates for Ryder’s Law, a legislative bill that would phase out and ban horse-drawn carriages.
The majority of New Yorkers are against the industry, with a 2025 poll finding 78% of city voters in support of Ryder’s Law. Despite this, it is still hard to imagine New York without the animals that have shaped much of its history.
Why do we still have the carriage industry at all? I did a lot of loitering around the park to find out.
Walking around, it’s clear that some drivers lean into the nostalgic image of the carriage rides to draw in customers, draped in bowler hats and suspenders. The carriages have an old-world feeling, with plumes and decorated tack designed to catch the eye of tourists. This aesthetic is entirely at odds with the athleisure-clad park patrons walking nearby.
Tourists seem drawn to the sense of romanticism: a quaint image of gliding through the park that has been popularized by films like “Barefoot in the Park” (1960), whose opening scene features Robert Redford and Jane Fonda taking a carriage ride in Central Park. This film, alongside the countless others like it, play into the romantic idea of the rides as nods to a past time of sentimentality and casual luxury.
That feeling of romance is squashed by the reality of having horses in Manhattan. At its peak in the late 19th century, the use of horses across so many industries produced 100,000 tons of manure a year that piled up in vacant lots around the city, and over 15,000 horses died per year due to improper conditions. Conditions were so poor that the Department of Sanitation was created to handle the carcasses on the streets, and an inlet in Brooklyn was named Dead Horse Bay for the bodies dumped there by the nearby horse rendering plants — a far cry from the glamour of being pulled in a cart along a scenic bend in the park.
Returning to the present: At the end of the day, standing by the mouth of the park on Central Park West and 59th St, you can follow the horses down to their stables on West 52nd Street and 11th Avenue. You can watch as they take to the streets of the city, weaving through vehicular and pedestrian traffic. It’s jarring to see the horses, dressed up in period regalia, making the same left turn down 53rd Street as the Citi Bikes and taxis (which are almost all hailed through Uber). Seeing the old world clash with the new in the bustling streets of Manhattan is worrying — for the horses’ sake, if for nothing else. “Just because something is a vestige from the past doesn’t mean that it is worth continuing into the present, especially as authenticity becomes a false seal to stamp over unsafe conditions for both animals and people alike.”
Concerns surrounding horses sharing the street with cars are not unfounded. In January, a carriage horse named Destiny bolted into oncoming traffic and collided with a taxi, a Parks Department vehicle, and four cars. Having horses on the streets is not only unsafe for humans, but also raises husbandry concerns over the treatment of the animals. If the horses are being mistreated, is that another reason to end the industry?
I wanted to see where the horses lived and how they were being treated, and so I visited Clinton Park Stables a few blocks from the park on West 52nd St. Two large entrances yawn towards the street. Here, the horses and drivers enter, the tacks get removed, and the horse is led onto a steep ramp to the stalls above. Many windows are boarded shut, and only the front-facing windows were cracked open for ventilation, though they only opened halfway. The scene was depressing — to think the horses reside here after working nine-hour days. They get a mandated 5-week vacation on a farm every year, but besides that, there isn’t much time for them to just be horses.
Talking with friends, most people agree that the horses are probably mistreated. However, walking around the park, most of them look visibly well-cared for. I saw a few who looked uncomfortable, but for the most part, their coats were shiny, and their weight looked more or less acceptable. The breeds were also correct for working animals: smaller Quarter Horses, taller Morgans, heavier Draft mixes. If the horses had been clearly emaciated, it would have been easier to write off the industry entirely. But then again, no one wants to take a ride from a visibly mistreated horse.
Following the recent death of 18-year-old Romanch Mahajan after a runaway carriage horse incident a month prior, I wanted to get some of the drivers’ perspective on their own industry.
Once he sensed that I wasn’t about to hurl animal abuse allegations at him, one driver let me stroke the velvety nose of his horse Jack while I asked whether he thinks his industry is under attack, and whether the recent growth of pedicab tours will be a replacement for the horses if they vanish. People come to the Central Park carriage rides for the horses, not for the bikers, he said. He laughed at the idea that the new bike tours would steal his business, even though they drive faster, are adorned with flashing lights and blast music. People take carriage rides for the piece of the past they feel like they’re getting.
Indeed, seeing spots of manure on the ground now feels like a rare easter egg of a past era. In a city so starved for animals, it feels nice to see a piece of history, even an imagined one, among us.
However, the horses are dying. They’re hitting cars and eating toxic invasive plants in Central Park, and holding onto a piece of the past just because it’s nostalgic isn’t ethical anymore, not when the city moves too fast to contain it. The park has outgrown its capacity to safely house these animals, and we need to see beyond our own nostalgia and put the horses first.
Just because something is a vestige from the past doesn’t mean that it is worth continuing into the present, especially as authenticity becomes a false seal to stamp over unsafe conditions for both animals and people alike. The Central Park Conservancy released a statement citing seven horse-related incidents in the park in the last 13 months, and a call to pass Ryder’s Law to end the carriage horse industry once and for all.
If the law is passed, it’ll be bittersweet to see the horses go. I grew up riding. I love seeing the animals in a city so hungry for connection. But our tolerance for antiquity is changing, and maybe it’s time for the horses to retire, too.
Arianna Kaplan ’27 is a recent transplant to Manhattan after a decade of living NYC-adjacent, and is determined to find every hidden gem of the city before she leaves. She doesn’t really like bagels or care all that much about the Knicks, but still believes that New York is the greatest city in the world.