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photocollection.alonsorobisco.es
1. Albums
3. Blog: 3239 posts
6. Links
7. Sitemap
8. Books
9. Contact
THE VENTURE
In the Wikipedia we can read the definition of a coach: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coach_(carriage)
“A coach was originally a large, usually closed, four-wheeled carriage with two or more horses harnessed as a team, controlled by a coachman and/or one or more postilions.”
The coach Venture still exists nowadays. It is kept safe in The Breakers mansion in Newport inside the stables.
The Breakers. Breakers Stable And Carriage House http://www.newportmansions.org/
This mansion was built by the famous architect Richard Morris Hunt, and was one of the biggest possessions of Vanderbilt's family.
The Venture was built in 1903 and restored lately as we can read in Charles Jeffers Moore work:
TREATMENT OF AN EARLY 20TH CENTURY ROAD COACH:
ALFRED G. VANDERBILT’S “VENTURE”
INTRODUCTION
The Venture is a coach, or, as the original bill of sale has it, a “heavy park drag - made road style”l, built for Alfred G. Vanderbilt by the Brewster Company of New York in 1903. Perhaps originally intended for social use, the Venture was repainted and put into service as a passenger coach in the New York City area and then in England between London and Brighton. It is a large vehicle, weighing approximately 2812 pounds, and is black with cream colored doors and quarter panels, and maroon or claret bottom edge and undercarriage.
The coach has been in the Breakers’ Stable for many years as the flagship of the Preservation Society of Newport County’s carriage collection.
The importance of the carriage is twofold. First, it is a direct link to the life of Alfred G.
Vanderbilt, a very famous driver in his day, a man whose celebrity in that regard continued until his tragic death aboard the Lusitania in 1915. The Society has numerous accounts, passenger lists, and photos ofVanderbilt driving the Venture.
This element alone was reason enough for the Society to expend especial
energy upon its preservation and such restoration as it required.
Secondly, the Venture is one of only a handful of road coaches of this type in what might be considered to be period condition2, and it is critical to preserve these few remaining documents of an important era in our transportation history.
Vanderbilt gave an ambulances, a coach, to the Red Cross to help people hurt in coaches crashes in London. This ambulance was called Venture in honor to his original Venture.
In the early 1900s the eminent American coachman Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt presented a horse-drawn horse ambulance to Our Dumb Friends League, which was the former name for The Blue Cross. Blue Cross horse ambulances provided a vital emergency service, attending to the numerous horses injured on the streets of London in road accidents. (It was not until the 1920s that the first motorised horse ambulances were introduced). The ambulance was named ‘Venture’ after one of Vanderbilt’s own coaches driven by him on the 55-mile journey from London to Brighton.
In the Wikipedia we can read the following about Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Gwynne_Vanderbilt
Hobbies
Vanderbilt was a sportsman, and he particularly enjoyed fox hunting and coaching. In the late 19th Century he and a number of other millionaires, such as James Hazen Hyde practiced the old English coaching techniques of the early 19th Century. Meeting near Holland House in New York City, the coaching group would take their vehicle for a one, two, or more day trip along chosen routes through several states, going to prearranged inns and hotels along the routes. Vanderbilt would frequently drive the coach, in perfectly apparelled suit as a coachman or groom. He also enjoyed fox hunting, and in the spring of 1915 was headed for England to purchase hunting dogs and horses.
