The Horseback Dinner
—Chrissie

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            For the millionaire aristocracy of Gilded Age New York, horses were both a means of transportation and an expensive hobby that demonstrated their wealth. One of the most infamous such displays, which just happens to combine horses with the era’s love of opulent dinners, is the Horseback Dinner hosted by Cornelius Kingsley Garrison Billings on 28 March 1903.

            Mr. Billings had recently retired from the presidency of the People’s Gas, Light, and Coke Company of Chicago and moved with his millions to New York City. There, he took up the elite hobbies of the era, including spending time at the Harlem River Speedway, an exclusive piece of roadway where the elite could ride and race horses and carriages without fear of being interrupted by other traffic. So enamored of the Speedway was Mr. Billings that he purchased 25 acres nearby on which he had a massive stable built. The structure included not only thirty horse stalls (each with a bronze nameplate for its occupant), a blacksmith, electrical lights with a generator to keep them going, steam-fed heating, and hot water on tap in the two suites of rooms for the family and their guests. It measured a little over 25,000 square feet. The structure was completed in early 1903 and Billings arranged a dinner there to celebrate with a group of his equestrian friends. As the plans became public and the guest list necessarily expanded, he decided to move it out of his stables to a nearby restaurant, Louis Sherry’s, whom he had already contracted as a caterer for the original dinner.

            Over the course of three days, the second-floor ballroom was transformed into a stable yard. A grassy lawn with flowers was laid over the floor, with a horseshoe-shaped “table” around which the guests would sit on their horses while eating dinner on specially designed trays connected to the pommel of the saddle. Each guest’s place at the table was identified with an engraved gold name card and the evening’s menu was provided engraved on a sterling silver horseshoe which was also a souvenir. It was a unique experience for the horses as well as the diners, they had first (and probably only) ride in an elevator in order to get them to the second floor.

            A lavish twelve-course meal was served. It included trout, guinea hen, lamb, and peaches flambé, all accompanied by champagne kept iced in a saddlebag and equipped with a rubber hose for drinking. For each horse and diner there was a waiter for the food service and a liveried groom to make sure the horse stayed calm and didn’t spill either food or rider. At the end of the meal, the horses also got to eat: a tray of fine oats was provided for each while the men enjoyed brandy and cigars.

            In all, the meal cost $50,000 ($1.7 million in 2022 dollars). While not the most expensive nor most opulent dinner of the era, it was unquestionably a unique one. The Gilded Age was coming to a close as the gap between the richest and poorest grew untenable. One commentator at the time said that it “reinforced people’s belief that New York socialites went to bed in full evening dress after brushing their teeth in champagne.”