New York's First Environmental Problem
Was it the automobile? Was it lead from paint? Was it poor water conditions? Nope – it was horses!
That’s right. Horse manure and horse carcasses filled the streets of New York, Chicago, and other major cities in the US at the end of the 19th century. In the 1880s, NYC had 1,206,299 people, and about 170,000 horses for transportation. Because they were overworked and abused, the average streetcar horse had a life expectancy of only two to four years. They’d die on the street, where they were left or dumped into nearby rivers or bays.
In 1880, New York City removed 15,000 dead horses from the street. Chicago removed 9,202 horse carcasses in 1916.
Moving the 1,300 pound carcasses was no easy task – special trucks that hung low had to be made. An 1886 article in the Atlantic Monthly described Broadway as congested with “dead horses and vehicular entanglement” — and we think today’s traffic is bad.
And the manure! It’s estimated that each horse produced 15-30 pounds of manure per day. That means the 170,000 horses in New York and Brooklyn created 3-4 million pounds of manure EACH DAY. In 1894, the Times of London estimated that every street in the city would be buried 9 feet deep in horse manure by 1950. A New York editorial estimated that horse manure would rise to Manhattan’s 30 story buildings by 1930 — imagine that skyline! Also, each horse produced about a quart of urine daily. That makes about 40,000 gallons per day in NY & Brooklyn.
From horse pollution to car pollution: In 1898, the first international Urban Planning Conference was held in New York. The topic: how to deal with horse pollution. Luckily for them, the automobile was just beginning to usurp the horse’s role for transportation. Experimental motor cars had been around for quite some time, but cities had previously banned them or limited their use for reasons varying from cars frightening children and horses, to cars being “rich men’s deadly toys.” The most well known regulation was Britain’s Red Flag law which required all cars to be preceded by a man of foot carrying a red flag. That’s pretty interesting.
The horse pollution crisis in the 1890s ignited fears of pollution, traffic jams, coupled with the rising prices of hay, oats, and urban land, and ultimately led governments and urban city dwellers to embrace the automobile. By the early 1900s the horse had become unprofitable and a great environmental hazard. The car, the modern-day environmentalists’ nemesis, was, at the time, a savior. I wonder what will be ours.