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C H R O N O F H O R S E . C O M FA L L 2 014 61 ent of the automobile," said Steinkraus, whose involve- ment with the National spanned 40 years in a variety of capacities, including as preface author and editor of Kurth Sprague's exhaustive book, e National Horse Show: A Centennial History, 1883-1983. "e interesting thing to me was when I was young, quite a bit of that horse culture still existed in New York City," he continued. "Saddlers, carriage-makers, horse auctions—they all still existed. en, post-World War II, with the advent of the automobiles, everybody had cars—lots of cars. And all that disappeared in a couple of generations. I think there were five saddle makers in NYC in the '30s, and now there is just one [see sidebar]. "e horse culture used to be more celebrated," Steinkraus added. "e National had a real PR depart- ment, and they did a lot of promotion on Fifth Avenue, where the windows were decorated in that theme." After 106 years, the National's reign at the Garden, which called several different structures home over its history, finally came to a close. "It was all very strange—unlikely, unexpected, really—this business of holding a horse show on the fifth floor of a building put up over one of the world's biggest railway stations," Sprague wrote of the Garden's final location, over Penn Station. Eventually the effort of converting a hockey rink IRVING BROWNING/THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY/GETTY IMAGES PHOTO Two riders ring in the New Year with a quiet hack through Central Park on Jan. 1, 1930. Stables remained plentiful in the city throughout World War II, but as automobile traffic increased, saddle horses were slowly driven out.

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