Horsing Around and Riding in Style

A match in Newport in the late 1880s.

HORSING AROUND

Learn how Newport’s favorite tailgate spot has its roots in the first polo club in America.

Anyone who spends time on Aquidneck Island in the summer knows that Newport Polo — with its legendary tailgates, quick-witted announcer and lavish Portsmouth grounds — is the place to see and be seen. But did you know that the local polo club traces its roots back 140 years to the first polo club in the United States?

It all started in 1876, when New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett Jr. (the same Bennett who founded the Newport Casino) invited a group of high-society sportsmen for a polo demonstration at his estate. By the end of the night, a railcar of horses had arrived for the match, and the newfound polo devotees were hooked.

The group founded the Westchester Polo Club and based their playing season in Newport, where most had summer residences. The club originally played at Morton Park on Coggeshall
Avenue, later establishing formal polo grounds off Ocean Drive.

Early tailgaters at a polo match in Newport. Photo courtesy of Newport Polo and the National Museum of Polo and Hall of Fame archive

“It was very much part of the social and sporting scene during the Gilded Age,” says Agnes Keating, general manager of Newport Polo. “Eventually, the game started to catch on in other cities along the Eastern Seaboard. The Westchester Polo Club was the first and became a founding member of the United States Polo Association.”

The club lasted for several generations, but the world wars and intervening Depression eventually took their toll. Like many of the island’s traditions, polo relied on a high-earning upper class whose influence began to wane with the introduction of the personal income tax. The club ceased to be active after 1929.

Fast forward to 1992, when a Boston real estate developer named Dan Keating — future Newport Polo president and Agnes’ husband — resurrected the club using the original Westchester Polo Club name. For its polo grounds, the club adopted Glen Farm, a historic homestead with its own Gilded Age roots. In 1882, New York businessman Henry Taylor began purchasing Colonial parcels and combined them into a 700-acre farm, including a manor house and grounds designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. Today, the farm hosts the Newport International Polo Series as well as other equestrian and sporting activities on land formally owned by the town of Portsmouth.

“We’re really proud to be able to carry on that legacy,” Agnes Keating says.

RIDING IN STYLE

Today’s coaching traditions offer a glimpse into a popular Gilded Age pastime.

Coaching during the Gilded Age was a popular leisure activity for those who could afford it. Families would gather in their horse-drawn coaches and ride down Bellevue Avenue, indulging in a pastime that was already becoming obsolete.

Alfred G. Vanderbilt and company in a horse-drawn coach. Photo courtesy of the Newport Historical Society.

“In that period, the railroads were coming into prominence and taking the place of the coach,” explains Walter Eayrs, a Burrillville resident and member of the Coaching Club, which traces its roots to the 1870s. “Putting together a coaching party was a wonderful way to get together members of your family but also your friends.”

Today, the tradition lives on in A Weekend of Coaching, hosted every three years by the Preservation Society of Newport County. Next slated to take place in 2025, the event gathers coaching enthusiasts from around the world, bringing a touch of old-world nostalgia as riders parade about the leafy boulevards of Newport in period carriages. For the coach drivers — called “whips” — and their guests, the weekend includes elaborate social events, and members of the public are invited to a Saturday morning exhibition on the lawn at the Elms.

“There are very few ways to make history come alive,” says Eayrs, who has participated in the event since the 1990s. “Something about those coaches going down Bellevue and driving along Ocean Drive, it’s a really magical experience.”