Annual Report: Mail Coach "Lightning^ 85 — . _. coach was forced to abdicate in favor of the steam railroad, becoming again a luxury—the plaything of nostalgic sportsmen, until finally, crowded from avenue and highway by the horseless . carriage, the last coach made its final run in New York City on May 20, 1930. That coach, the "Park Drag," built by Brewster & Company of Broome Street, New York City, in 1903, is also in the collection of The New-York Historical Society, by gift of Mr. Harris Fahnestock, 1938. The Society thus has both the earliest and the latest extant operating coach of New York City. An article in The Coach-Makers' Magazine of 1855 reflects the culmination of the first of these revolutions and the beginning of the second. It reported that "No department among the industrial arts brings forth an article at the present day more common among the majority of classes in civilized communities than the Coach, the Carriage, and the Buggy. They are no longer limited to the use and comforts of the nobility of the country, or those who may be in possession of princely fortunes. No;. .. this now indispensable luxury [is placed] into the hands of the public at large. Turn in whichever direction we may, the rumbling sound of the clattering coach is first to greet our ears." But already the learned editor of this journal was observing that "the extensively applicable power of steam is the means by which the untiring steed of iron is propelled at the rapid rate of fifty miles per hour, and through the same medium the magnificent floating palaces are being moved across the bosom of the deep in grandeur.... Within a very few years a complete revolution has taken place in the system of locomotion But one should never speak ill of the bridge that has carried him safely over, and our enthusiasm for the new system of locomotion should not cause us to forget the old. A thousand interesting associations cluster around the old stage-coach system—the reliable dependence of the public for so many years." In this nostalgic mood our