Horseback Riding in Central Park

Horseback Riding Returns to Central Park By SEWELL CHAN horseback riding in Central ParkRiders from the Claremont Riding Academy, which closed last April, on Central Park’s bridle path. (Photo: Suzanne DeChillo/The New York TImes) In April, equestrians mourned when the owner of the Claremont Riding Academy, the last public stable in Manhattan, announced that it would close. The riding school was formed in 1927, in a tan-brick building erected in 1892. The owner, Paul Novograd, said the decision resulted from financial pressures and the diminished usefulness of Central Park’s 4.25-mile bridle path, which is often crowded with pedestrians and cyclists. As Manny Fernandez wrote in a farewell piece to the stable: The academy was the oldest continuously operated stable in New York City and, according to Mr. Novograd, the oldest in the United States, offering riding lessons and the renting and boarding of horses. It was a patch of un-Manhattan in Manhattan, definitive proof that the city indeed had it all — skyscrapers, a nearly naked cowboy in Times Square and horses you could rent for $55 an hour. Of the more than 40 or so horses left, some retired, some went to a horse center in Maryland and five were donated to Yale. As of May, three horses remained at Claremont, all part of the Parks Enforcement Patrol, an arm of the city’s Parks and Recreation Department. (They horses were to be moved to a Parks Department stable in Central Park.) With the closing of the Claremont Riding Academy, recreational riders in Central Park had nowhere to turn — until now. Under an agreement announced today by the Parks Department, the Riverdale Equestrian Center will offer horseback riding by appointment at the North Meadow Recreation Center, off of 96th Street in Central Park. But the riding will not be cheap; a guided trail ride costs $100 an hour. Pony rides will also be available. “In keeping with its 150-year equestrian tradition, we are happy to bring horseback riding back to Central Park,” the parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe, said in a statement. “Just as the first visitors to Central Park did, you can now ride a horse along the four miles of bridle paths — one of the best ways to get out and enjoy the peace and serenity of the park.” How popular the new riding program will be remains to be seen. Central Park was originally designed with a bridle path for horseback riders. On the path’s three sections –- the 1.65-mile Reservoir Loop, the 1.1-mile North Meadow Loop and the 1.5-mile Southern Spur — you are far more likely to find joggers, cyclists, dog walkers and stroller pushers than to see a recreational horse. To make an appointment, riders should contact Riverdale Equestrian Center, which is based in Van Cortlandt Park, by e-mail or by phone at (718) 548-4848. Visitors may see and pet the horses from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the weekends at the North Meadow Recreation Center hitching post. Riding will continue through Thanksgiving, and start up again in the spring.