Y E S T E RY E A R S
Leading the way Townsend kickstarts international arena competition
John R. Townsend was a big supporter of arena polo. He died on Sept. 29, 1923 at 62, just months after the first Townsend Cup was played.
John R. Townsend was an established social figure in New York City and consummate horseman. He served as a director of the National Horse Show Association, vice chair of Meadow Brook Polo Club and Master of Foxhounds in England and Ireland, and premier hunts in Goshen, New York, and The Plains, Virginia. His eclectic equestrian interests were broad, however, it was promoting indoor polo at the
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national and international level that he left a unique and lasting mark. Well-known for his exploits in the hunt field, Townsend, and his friend, E.H. Harriman, founded New York’s Orange County Hunt Club where he became Master of Foxhounds in 1900. He became president of the hunt club in 1918, with polo player W. Averill Harriman as vice president. Townsend made the Virginia Piedmont his second home and maintained a farm in The Plains. According to author Vicky Moon in her book “The Middleburg Mystique,” the name for Virginia’s famous Orange County Hunt came from Townsend and Harriman who brought their New York friends to The Plains where Harriman would bring his private pullman rail cars and park on the tracks. As one of the country’s leading foxhunters, portraits of him by nationally famous artists, such as Lynwood Palmer and Richard Newton, have left a lasting legacy in equine art. An all-around horseman, in 1913, Townsend won a driving competition with horses Muskateer and Belle Gratton, making headlines in the N.Y. Times sport’s section. When World War I broke out, Townsend supervised a cavalry division of 300 horsemen, trained in Central Park as an adjunct posse and was committed as part of the Home Defense League of the New York Police Department. Trophies donated by Townsend recognized everything from the highest-quality Foxhounds with custom silverplate to providing unique trophies for hunters and institutionalizing one of his Challenge Cups at the National Horse Show. Moreover, he was an innovator and leader in what today we call crossmarketing. As early as 1897, the high-society magazine “Outing” described an equestrian event promoted and judged by him: “… a potpourri, made up of a glittering array of richly-caparisoned horses, snatches of four-in-hand, tandem and country-club meets, with a little trotting, steeple-chasing, cavalry-parading and polo-playing thrown in to give zest to the collation and render it palatable.” A supporter of arena polo, he was considered a
