Archive for May, 2017

In 1917, the president of the Bowling Green Neighborhood Association (BGNA) came up with a plan to help control the feral cat population in Manhattan’s Lower West Side. Dr. Miner C. Hill, a pediatrician in charge of the nonprofit association’s baby clinic, believed that the stray cats were responsible for spreading diseases to the poor […]

The Bowling Green Cat Roundup “When darkness settled down last night over the territory encompassed by West Street and Broadway, Vesey Street and the Battery, and lights began to blink in the tenement quarters of Syrians, Turks, Hungarians and Russians, eerie dirges rose from pitchy backyards. There was a melancholia in the walls, a lost […]

Tim and Tige lived and played on East 48th Street near First Avenue, pictured here in 1915. This neighborhood was razed to make way for the United Nations Plaza in 1948. NYPL Digital Collections When we left Part I of this Old New York dog tale, little Tim Leahy had just been separated from his […]

Tim Leahy was only seven years old when his father died and his mother ran away and left him on his own. With no other living relatives in his homeland of Ireland, he was put on a ship and sent to live with a great aunt in New York City. Great Aunt Julia Kelley was […]