L. Downing Concord Stagecoach

The Concord stagecoach is an icon of the American West, but its roots are in New England.
In 1813, Lewis Downing opened a wagon shop in Concord, N.H., to sell wagons “as cheap as can be bought.” A decade later, Downing recognized improvements to New England’s roads and an increasing interest in travel would require better coaches. He recruited J. Stephens Abbot, a 22-year-old carriage builder in Salem, Mass., to fulfill this goal.
The problem that Abbot and Downing confronted was that most passenger coaches in the early 1800s had oval bodies suspended by metal springs that bounced up and down over rough roads. While aesthetically pleasing, this oval shape had limited value for long-distance travel because it lacked space to store passengers’ luggage. Abbot and Downing opted to build their carriages with flat roofs and rounded bottoms. To overcome the bouncy ride, Abbot and Downing used strips of leather called throughbraces that cradled the entire coach body. The result was that on rough roads, their coaches only swayed side to side.
The design was also ideal for bringing tourists and their baggage the short distance from railroad depots to hotels. Some owners adapted the flat roof to add more seating. This could permit scenic tours for up to 20 passengers. The first Abbot and Downing Concord Coach was sold to an inn in Salisbury, N.H., in 1827.
Abbot and Downing became synonymous with America’s westward expansion of the 1840s-1880s. For frontier regions not yet linked by railroad, the Concord coach became a vital carrier for people, mail and goods. It was such a well-respected vehicle that stagecoach operators specifically advertised the use of Concord coaches. When John Butterfield won the overland mail contract connecting the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean in 1857, he used only Concord carriages to carry the mail.
The basic design of the Concord coach was so successful that it remained in production until 1899. Of the thousands of Concord coaches made by Abbot and Downing, fewer than 150 remain in existence around the world. l
This is one of the oldest surviving Concord coaches in the word. Lewis Downing and Sons built it in the late 1840s during an 18-year hiatus when Abbot and Downing were managing separate companies. It has a deep history in New Hamphire’s tourism industry, where it was owned by the Atlantic House and the Farragut House in Rye.
The Atlantic House was the first hotel in Rye. John Colby Philbrick opened the business in 1846 when he recognized that Rye’s oceanside location might be able to compete with other emerging resort towns like Bar Harbor, Maine, and Newport, R.I. During the next 20 years, this town of barely 1,000 year-round residents built another 10 hotels. Among them was the Farragut House, which Philbrick built next to the Atlantic House in 1864.
Philbrick acquired this deluxe stagecoach for $2,000 ($69,000 in 2019 dollars) to transport visitors and their luggage the five miles from the North Hampton train station to the hotels. When not serving as a station wagon, the stagecoach was used for sightseeing tours of the area. Without luggage, almost two dozen guests could fit inside, on the roof and perched on any flat surface. The hotel names are still faintly visible along the top of the stagecoach.
As with many hotels of the 1800s, fire was a serious risk, and both buildings burned down in April 1882. While the Atlantic House was left in ashes, a new, larger Farragut House opened in 1883 and remained in business until 1975, long outliving the days of the stagecoach.