I wonder what the proprietor of the Speedway Livery & Boarding Stables would have thought about his handsome brick building transforming from a home for pricey horses to a pricey home for people?
This four-story, Romanesque-style stable at 457 West 150th Street was no ordinary boarding place for teams of working drays.
The name of the stable gives away its focus. It was a carriage house for the elite horsemen who raced their trotters on the Harlem Speedway, a two and a half mile entertainment-focused roadway that spanned West 155th Street to Dyckman Street.
“The Harlem Speedway Stables have in their stalls a number of fast horses that are often seen on the Speedway,” noted the New-York Tribune in May 1903.
Completed in 1898, the Harlem Speedway followed the western edge of the Harlem River through stretches of Upper Manhattan not yet fully urbanized. The dirt road was closed to cyclists; crowds gathered on a pedestrian pathway to watch the trotters and the men who rode them.
The Speedway Stables were also a product of the 1890s. Like many carriage houses, the facade featured sculptures of horse heads. These two powerful equines look like they were sculpted mid-trot, with their flared nostrils and wild eyes.
The Stables were sold in 1909, per a New York Times article, and not long afterward become a motor garage.
The circa-1940 photo above displays the name the Convent Garage, for nearby Convent Avenue. The Speedway Stables faded sign is still on the side of the building.
These days, the stable is empty of horses and cars; it’s been renovated and renamed the Carriage House Lofts, a 26-unit rental building.
And why not? New York is filled with former factories and carriage houses that were redone as residences. Plus, the Harlem Speedway has long been transformed into the Harlem River Drive.
The price to come home to those angry horse heads at the front entrance? A one-bedroom is listed for more than $3K per month.
[Third image: NYC Department of Records & Information Services; fourth image: NYPL Digital Collections]