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NEW YORK — Nine-year-old Cole Lawson giggled as Rotelli, the chestnut gelding he was riding, broke into a gentle trot around the dirt floor of the Claremont Riding Academy on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
Cole is autistic and takes weekly therapeutic riding classes for disabled children and adults at the riding school. Or he did: Claremont's owner, Paul Novograd, announced Sunday that the stable would close after 115 years.
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Asked to respond to riders angered by the short notice that the stable was closing, Novograd said, "I'm sorry I couldn't give more notice. The decision was not mine."
He would not elaborate.
Novograd said he was working to find jobs for Claremont's 30 employees. He said the 45 horses would be sold to other stables or donated to the equestrian society at Yale University, where his two sons play polo.
The New York Therapeutic Riding Center, which Cole takes part in, is looking for a new venue after offering classes at Claremont for the past 10 years.
Anne Landsman, who stopped by to reminisce, said her 11-year-old daughter learned to ride at Claremont when she was 7. She said she'll miss the stable and she'll miss seeing horses when she jogs around the Central Park reservoir.
"For me to run and not see those horses is a loss of some kind of idyll," she said. "There's nothing like a horse to take your mind off everything."
Manhattan Stable Closing After 115 Years | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
Cole is autistic and takes weekly therapeutic riding classes for disabled children and adults at the riding school. Or he did: Claremont's owner, Paul Novograd, announced Sunday that the stable would close after 115 years.
..........
Asked to respond to riders angered by the short notice that the stable was closing, Novograd said, "I'm sorry I couldn't give more notice. The decision was not mine."
He would not elaborate.
Novograd said he was working to find jobs for Claremont's 30 employees. He said the 45 horses would be sold to other stables or donated to the equestrian society at Yale University, where his two sons play polo.
The New York Therapeutic Riding Center, which Cole takes part in, is looking for a new venue after offering classes at Claremont for the past 10 years.
Anne Landsman, who stopped by to reminisce, said her 11-year-old daughter learned to ride at Claremont when she was 7. She said she'll miss the stable and she'll miss seeing horses when she jogs around the Central Park reservoir.
"For me to run and not see those horses is a loss of some kind of idyll," she said. "There's nothing like a horse to take your mind off everything."
Manhattan Stable Closing After 115 Years | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle