In advance of the summer coaching exhibition guest curated by Paul Miller (Rhode Island Coaches/In the Eye of Thomas Eakins & Contemporaries, opening May 16) select period images have been purchased for the Library’s image collections, with some, like the two above, to be used as part of the gallery presentation.
The 1875 founding of the Coaching Club was instigated by three New York sportsmen with strong seasonal ties to Newport; they were James Gordon Bennett, Col. William Jay and Col. DeLancey Astor Kane. Their enthusiasm for four-in-hand driving quickly caught on and the New York-Newport membership roster soon included: Isaac Bell, August Belmont and his sons Oliver H.P. and Perry, George R. Fearing, Hugo Fritsch, Theodore A. Havemeyer, C. Oliver Iselin, Pierre Lorillard, Edwin D. Morgan, Fairman Rogers, F.K. Sturgis, J.J. Van Alen and George P. Wetmore. Rogers, of “Fairholme”, challenged the Club to undertake outings more sporting than in-town parades and thus began cross country “drives” with the first, a May 7-8, 1878 excursion to Philadelphia. A number of the Newport coaching community had also long before moved abroad for extended periods and had in 1893 founded the Reunion Road Club in Paris led, again, by Bennett and Tiffany together with the Belmonts, William Jay, DeLancey A. Kane, Prescott Lawrence, Fairman Rogers, William K. Vanderbilt, George P. Wetmore and Theodore A. Havemeyer.
Two rare circa 1895 albumen print coaching photographs have recently been acquired by the Redwood for its collections. Both depict Coaching Club member Theodore A. Havemeyer (1839-1897). In the first (top), he is at the reins of his gleaming four-in-hand road coach drawn up on the drive at Havemeyer’s estate “Friedheim” (now much altered as “Sherwood”) on Bellevue Avenue. The second, depicts Havemeyer driving a brake on to the grounds of the Westchester Polo Club Field then located between Bateman and Harrison Avenues across from the Newport Country Club newly founded by Theodore Havemeyer in 1893 with H.A.C. Taylor. The skeletal carriage he drives was used originally for “breaking” or training teams of horses and was an essential open carriage for practicing four-in-hand maneuvers.
