livery+stable

A place where horses, teams and wagons are available for hire, or where horse owners may pay to have their stock boarded, fed and cared for in various degrees, depending on the stable and/or the amount of payment, also known as a ‘boarding stable,’ a ‘livery yard’ or simply, a ‘livery.’ At once, they were considered staple local institutions and centers of vice, providing transportation, supplies of hay, grain, coal and wood, as well as a place for gambling, cockfighting and stag shows. These stables were essential to towns all across America until the introduction of the automobile in 1910 rendered them obsolete.

//“We came to the **livery stable**. The marshal wasn’t there. A man sitting in a chair tilted in the broad low door, where a dark cool breeze smelling of ammonia blew among the ranked stalls, said to look at the postoffice.”//

--TSAF (130)

//So that in the next four weeks (Jefferson was a village then: the Holston House, the courthouse, six stores, a blacksmith and **livery stable**, a saloon frequented by drovers and peddlers, three churches and perhaps thirty residences) the stranger’s name went back and forth amonth the places of business and of idleness and among the residences in steady strophe and antistrophe:// Sutpen. Sutpen. Sutpen. Sutpen.

--AA (24)