Following on "A gentle calm’: France’s streets once again echo to sound of working horses", some of the downsides to horses in the city.
From 99% Invisible:
In industrializing 19th-century cities like London and New York, horses played a key (and evolving) role in both transportation and pollution. By the 1860s, horsecars (horse-drawn streetcars on rails) had gained traction against more limited horse-drawn carriages.
Horsecars offered a smoother ride for passengers and required less work for horses, allowing two animals to pull a car with up to 20 people. Operating in two-horse, four-hour shifts, eight animals were needed per vehicle. Their popularity led to ever more manure littering city streets — a problem felt by cities around the world.
Manure Takes Manhattan
By the 1870s, New Yorkers were taking over 100 million horsecar trips per year and by 1880 there were at least 150,000 horses in the city. Some of these provided transportation for people while others served to move freight from trains into and around the growing metropolis. At a rate of 22 pounds per horse per day, equine manure added up to millions of pounds each day and over a 100,000 tons per year (not to mention around 10 million gallons of urine).
Per one observer at the time, the streets were “literally carpeted with a warm, brown matting . . . smelling to heaven.” So-called “crossing sweepers” would offer their services to pedestrians, clearing out paths for walking, but when it rained, the streets turned to muck. And when it was dry, wind whipped up the manure dust and choked the citizenry.
For a time, the economics of excrement as fertilizer helped keep streets clean, but as more supply stacked up the incentive to clear it started to dwindle and smelly piles began to build up in empty lots....
....MUCH MORE
