The scene at the West Side Livery Stables is just mesmerizing, I will be thinking of it for a long time. First, the horses are taken outside where they line up (some of them.) Then somebody steps out and stops traffic. Then the carriage drivers – Christina Hansen in this case – grabs a carriage and pulls it out into the street onto a walkway that ramps down and picks up speed, so the driver makes a sharp right turn on the run and the carriage slows enough on the flat roadway so that she can stop it. Not a place to stumble or have a weak back.

If I were running a New York City school I will take my classes down to the stables and watch this extraordinary meshing of live. One driver waiting for a carriage to come out told me if he did not see these horses on his daily commute into the city from New Jersey he would never see an animal other than a dog or raccoon.