Jack was a bona fide fire dog of Old New York, but the 10-year-old Dalmatian was also called a professional tramp. That’s because in his early days, before he became a hero, Jack was not completely loyal to his official company, Ladder 9 on Elizabeth Street.
Sure, Jack stayed close to his men and the truck at every fire scene, but once the chiefs began releasing companies, he’d choose whichever one packed up and returned to quarters first. In this way, Jack visited about every firehouse in the city.
Though he didn’t have a license, Jack was never at risk walking throughout the city: dog catchers had strict orders from the Bergh Society (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) to give him free reign, and they could tell Jack from other Dalmatians because he was “much larger and fatter and also handsomer than the majority of that clan.”
Michael F. Lyons operated his popular restaurant on the Bowery from 1872 to 1905. Lyons died in November 1921 at the age of 78.
Following these visits, the tramp fire dog would return to the Ladder 9 firehouse at 209 Elizabeth Street “and slink into his home like a culprit.”
Described as a “stocky-built dog with jet black head and saddle,” Jack was not only a tramp, but he was also a big eater, sometimes eating eight times a day at Michael F. Lyons’ restaurant at 259 Bowery. Lyons’ restaurant was a popular rendezvous during the Bowery’s halcyon days, so no doubt Jack came to know many movers and shakers.
One of the most prominent patrons of the restaurant during Jack’s reign at Ladder 9 was Police Commissioner Teddy Roosevelt, who ate most his meals at Lyons’ place while he was carrying a big stick at police headquarters on Mulberry Street (his favorite dish was a slice of roast beef with vegetables, pie, and a mug of ale). Roosevelt loved animals and served as police commissioner from 1895 to 1897, so one can be sure that Jack did some hobnobbing with the future president while they were both dining at Mike Lyons’ place.
Unlike most patrons who had to pay for their meals, Jack dined at Lyons’ restaurant for free as his lifetime award for saving the life of a veteran volunteer fireman. The rescue came during a fire on December 20, 1895, at Military Hall, an old and historic meeting hall, ballroom, and lodging house at 193 Bowery.
Military Hall was an historic assembly hall dating back as early as the 1820s.
According to the New York World, Policeman Farley of the Eldridge Street police station had discovered the fire in George Groveling’s saloon at 3:15 a.m. When Ladder 9 arrived at the four-story building one minute later, Foreman Charles W. Kruger and Fireman Pat Hanberry could hear shouts coming from the lodging rooms upstairs. They broke through the front door and rushed through the saloon toward the stairs, but the thick black smoke drove them back.
As the janitor of Military Hall and another man came hurrying down the steps, Jack began howling. He headed up the stairs and into a large dance hall. There he found James Hogan—also known as the Bowery Wonder (because everyone wondered what the disabled man did for a living)—asleep on a bench.
Here’s what Hogan, a Civil War veteran and veteran fire laddie, told a reporter about the fire and his rescue:
Right on top of me, snarling and growling, was a big fat dog, rolling me over and over. The room was pitch dark and full of smoke, and I thought I was done for and on the other side of eternity. Just then a flame shot up a few yards away, and it was only then that I was able to take in the situation.
The house was afire, and the dog had been trying his level best to make me understand it. I jumped to my feet, but for the life of me I wouldn’t have known which way to run if it hadn’t been for the pup. He’s a corker, he is. He just took my sleeve between his teeth and began pulling me in the direction of the flames.
I made up my mind that the pup was sent by Providence, and so I followed him right clean through the blaze and the smoke, and he led me safe and sound to the street.”
Ladder 9 was stationed in the circa 1883 firehouse at 209 Elizabeth Street until it relocated to 42 Great Jones Street in 1948. NYC Department of Records tax photos, 1940
After Jack and Hogan reached the ground floor, the firemen hustled Hogan outside and poured a tub of ale over him to cool him off. When a reporter sought to interview the dog, the men told him to go to Lyons’ restaurant, where he’d find the dog in the kitchen eating “a luxurious dinner.”
Although Jack declined to talk about his good deed, the men of Ladder 9 were more than willing to praise him, believing that the dog was the reincarnation of a dead fire vamp. Lyons rewarded Jack for his lifesaving heroics by giving his employees a standing order to feed the dog at no charge.
From that day on, Jack cut back on his tramping ways so he could stay close to the Bowery and his favorite firehouse and restaurant.
When this photo was taken in 1951, 209 Elizabeth Street was home to Police Emergency Squad 2. Note the old frame buildings to the right–they would have been there in Jack’s days. Museum of the City of New York Collections
Four years after saving Hogan, on August 17, 1899, Jack met his sudden death at Elizabeth and Prince Streets. One of the new horses attached to the four-ton ladder truck accidentally kicked Jack, sending him rolling on the street. Before he could get up, the wheels of the truck ran over his neck, killing him instantly.
Foreman Green had no choice but to pull his lifeless body onto the truck and continue to the fire. The men told the grieving visitors that they would have his body stuffed and placed in the Ladder 9 firehouse.
Bum in June 1914, after winning a lifesaving medal at the annual Workhorse Parade.
One New Yorker who was especially touched by the death of Jack was Jefferson Seligman, a New York banker whose wealthy family took great interest in the fire department. He was so affected by the firemen’s loss that he presented a new Dalmatian to Ladder 9. The firemen named their new dog Swipes and immediately began training him in the art of four-legged firefighting.
About 10 years after Jack’s reign, another dog named Bum ran with Ladder 9. Bum was actually a police dog attached to the 12th Precinct on Mulberry Street, but he loved nothing more than responding to the big fires with Ladder 9 and Engine 13.
Like Jack, Bum was a lifesaving dog. You can read his full story by clicking here.
“A Corner in Cats” Was Filmed at the Gaumont Company Studios in Flushing, Queens
Could this tabby who played the role of Cash the cat be a stray cat from Flushing, Queens, or a cat from the Bideawee Home? There’s a good chance it is!
When Edwin Middleton, director of the Gaumont Company studio’s comedic moving picture “A Corner in Cats” needed dozens of feline extras for the film, he turned to the streets of Flushing and the Bideawee home for animals in Manhattan. He had already hired every professional “movie cat” available at the rate of five cents a day (perhaps he rented these cats from Miss Elizabeth Kingston, who ran a cattery called “Kingston Kattery” in Richmond Hill from which she rented trained cats to film studios).
But the director was still about 100 cats short.
Although vaudeville dancer and silent comic film actress Cissy Fitzgerald received top billing, the real stars of “A Corner in Cats” were, well, the cats. Without adequate felines, the film would have been a flop.
In the film, two enterprising crooks (played by Fitzgerald and comedic actor Bud Ross) go to a town called Boomopolis, where they rent a large public hall. There, they place a sign stating they will pay 50 cents for cats. Then, they order 600 rats to be delivered to the town.
The townsfolk become so desperate to rid the city of rats that they agree to pay the crooked couple $15 for “choice mousers” and $10 for “ordinary cats.” Even those who sold a cat for 50 cents are willing to pay the exorbitant prices to buy them back. As the couple is leaving Boomopolis with their earnings, they pick up a stray cat that they adopt and name him Cash.
The “movie cats” of the early twentieth century were ordinary cats that had a knack for performing with minimal or no theatrical training. The famous Pepper the cat of Keystone Studios, pictured here, appeared in her first film in 1913.
In order to meet their demand for movie cats, Middleton and the other studio managers placed notices in Flushing advising the public that the studio was in need of all kinds of kitties and was willing to pay and care for them during film production. After the moving picture was made, the Gaumont Company studio would return the cats to their rightful owners.
No surprise, as soon as the neighborhood children learned that the studio was prepared to pay for cats, a large procession of boys carrying all kinds of stray felines made its way to the Gaumont Company studio on Congress Avenue (today’s 137th Street) in Flushing, Queens.
Even with the influx of Flushing street tabbies, Edwin Middleton still needed about 45 more cats for the picture. So, he telephoned Mrs. Harry Ulysses Kibbe (nee Flora D’Auby Jenkins), founder and president of the Bideawee home at 410 East 38th Street in Manhattan. Mrs. Kibbe offered to supply the cats to the studio at no charge, provided the cats were returned to her in the same good condition.
Philadelphia Evening Ledger, October 18, 1915
And so “forty-five cats, black, white, yellow, gray, slim and fat, old and young, left their happy home at Bideawee…and went out in a big automobile to the Gaumont studio.”
I cannot begin to imagine the scene on the set with more than 100 stray and shelter cats–my house is chaotic with only three domestic cats. So one can only hope they all returned home in good condition with no bites and scratches, and every whisker still in place.
This concludes the cat story, but if you’re interested in New York City history, please read on. The location of this sweet cat tale has ties to secret tunnels in College Point that may have once served as a stop on the Underground Railroad.
The Gaumont Studios at Flushing and College Park
Leon Gaumont
The Gaumont Company established its American studio for processing moving picture films in Flushing, Queens, in 1909. That was the year French inventor Leon Gaumont applied for his first patent for what was called a Gaumont machine.
In April 1909, the Gaumont Company purchased 14 lots on the west side of Congress Avenue (137th Street), north of Park Place (today’s Latimer Place, named for inventor Lewis Latimer). The company erected a rudimentary summer studio with frontage on Park Place (a winter studio was established in Florida).
In 1915, the Gaumont Company purchased several additional large tracts bounded by Linden Avenue (Linden Place), Myrtle Avenue (32nd Ave), Congress Avenue, and Park Place. With the goal of creating the largest moving picture plant in the East, they tore down all the old buildings, including an open-air stage and staff houses, and replaced them with several new buildings.
The new facilities, which included an all-year studio on Linden Avenue (where several companies could work at the same time under glass and artificial light), allowed Gaumont to produce frequent releases of five-reel features known as Mutual Masterpieces.
The blue arrow marks the location of the Gaumont Studio on this 1908 map. The empty lot on the east side of Congress Avenue is now Leavitts Park. NYPL Digital Collections
Now, here’s where the historical part of this story gets interesting.
According to a one-paragraph article published in The Billboard on May 23, 1914, the Gaumont Company acquired a 10-acre plot between Flushing and College Point, in an area called Stratton Bluffs, where they erected a large stage for outside work. There was a 24-room mansion on the property, which the company used as a background in the moving pictures and also for dressing rooms, offices, etc.
Perhaps it was here that “A Corner in Cats” was filmed, but I can’t prove that. However, the nondescript mansion intrigued me, so I did some digging and came up with some fascinating historical information about Stratton Bluffs and the mansion itself.
The story begins with the Lawrence family, who, along with the Parsons, Willets, and Bownes, were Flushing’s most prominent settlers during the Colonial period. These settlers, who were religious dissenters from New England, were granted a patent from New Netherland Director William Kieft for the town of Flushing in 1645.
The Lawrences served the American cause during the Revolutionary War, so when the British captured New York City in 1776, the troops destroyed much of their property. Following the Revolutionary War, the Lawrences began selling off their land to pay off their debts. The Strattons were the first family to begin purchasing this land.
This 1658 map of western Long Island shows the towns of Huntington (far left), Hempstead, Flushing (bottom center), and Jamaica (center). New York Historical Society.
One of Flushing’s first settlers and patentees was Captain William Lawrence, a ship captain who received about 900 acres of land from the 17,000 acres previously owned by the natives (the Matinecock Tribe) in 1645. He settled on a piece of land called Tew’s Neck, which he renamed Lawrence’s Neck. Tew’s Neck encompassed all of today’s College Point.
According to the New-York Historical Society, William Lawrence owned one indentured servant–an English boy named Bishop–and 10 African slaves who had likely arrived in Flushing through trade with the West Indies. Lawrence was not the only slave owner in Flushing: a 1698 Flushing census notes that there were 113 enslaved Africans in a town of only 530 Europeans.
Fast-forward 100 years to about 1787, when Eliphalet Stratton and his wife Mary Valentine moved from their home in Huntington, Long Island, to Lawrence’s Neck. There, they purchased the the Lawrence farm from Abraham Lawrence. The farm was thereafter called Strattonport. (A large part of the farm was laid out into village lots and incorporated as College Point sometime around 1857.)
This map surveyed in 1841 shows the former lands owned by Abraham Lawrence. This section of Lawrence Street was renamed College Point Boulevard in 1969. Brooklyn Public Library.
Eliphalet and Mary lived in the home pictured below, which they built on Stratton Bluffs in 1792 near present-day College Point Boulevard and Graham Court.
The Eliphalet Stratton house on 13th Street (College Point Blvd), 1924. This site is currently occupied by the Crystal Church of New York. Queens Public Library.
An older view of the Eliphalet Stratton homestead. From: A Book of Strattons, 1908.
The Strattons had eight children, including a son name Platt, who inherited the entire estate when Eliphalet passed in 1831. Platt, a shipping magnate, and his wife, Elizabeth Hewlett Jones, had four children. Their daughter Elizabeth married a wealthy English ship master named Captain John Graham.
The mansion that the Gaumont Company purchased to make moving pictures was in fact the old Captain Graham mansion.
The blue arrow marks the Graham mansion on Stratton Bluffs on this 1908 map. The Stratton home was across the way, on the east side of 13th Street (College Point Blvd). NYPL Digital Collection
1891 map of Stratton Bluffs, showing building lots and private roads. On this map, the mansion and barn appear to be closer to the main road than in the later map above. Columbia University Libraries.
According to news reports and a 1989 architectural/historical report prepared for the Landmarks Preservation Commission, Captain Graham came to America in 1832 and built the mansion sometime around 1861. The mansion was located on 14 acres of land bounded by present-day 26th Avenue and Graham Court between 121st Street and College Point Boulevard. The estate also included 15 acres of land under water.
Graham reportedly established a farm on his land. According to the 1870 enumeration, he had four horses, two milk cows, four pigs, and four other cattle on his property.
The mansion of Captain John Graham, which was occupied by the Gaumont Company in 1914. Poppenhusen Institute Collections.
One of the features of the estate was a series of brick vaulted caves and tunnels that led from the house to the waterfront. It is reported that there may have been a fireplace in the mansion’s basement which swung open to reveal a manhole leading to these tunnels.
Graham was now a farmer, so perhaps he used the caves for storing produce before shipping it out. Or maybe the tunnels served as a vast wine and spirits cellar.
Interestingly, one rumor suggests the tunnels were used by smugglers to avoid British taxes during the Revolutionary War. If that were true, the tunnels would have pre-existed the mansion by about 90 years.
Other rumors accused Graham of participating in the slave trade; however, according to an article published in the Brooklyn Times Union in 1927, Graham did not trade slaves but rather helped them escape to Canada. This article and other reports suggest that the tunnels may have been a stop on the Underground Railroad. The theory was never proven, but it’s quite feasible given the timeline.
Whatever the tunnels’ intended purpose, local boys reportedly used them as a shortcut to get to the beach on Flushing Bay.
Workers cutting through streets discovered the tunnels of the old Graham mansion in 1927. This view is probably looking from Flushing Bay across 26th Street. Note the dog at left. One theory is that the tunnels served as a stop on the Underground Railroad.
Captain Graham resided at the mansion for about twenty years until his death on March 30, 1882. Manhattan banker Bernard J. Burk lived in the home next, followed by Dr. Paul Kyle, who used the mansion as a boarding school for boys called the Fuerst Institute after his first institute burned to the ground in 1891.
In 1901, the mansion became a private sanitarium, Knickerbocker Hall, operated by Drs. Sylvester and Smith. Seven years later, a Manhattan and Philadelphia realty syndicate purchased the property from Elizabeth J. Graham for $100,000. Plans included a high-class residential park with a wharf and casino. These plans obviously never came to fruition, because in 1914 the Gaumont Company was using the mansion for its moving pictures.
The four gate posts and iron fence were all that remained of the Graham mansion in 1927. Brooklyn Standard Union, May 29, 1927.
Sometime around 1917 the mansion was razed. Then in 1927, an auction took place to sell the property, which had been cut up into about 150 building lots.
The auction block was set up on the flagstones that once formed the doorsteps of the mansion. In addition to these flagstones, the four gate posts that marked the entrance to the estate, as well as a hand-wrought iron gate, were still standing. The old barn was also still standing, albeit its roof had been lost in a fire.
It was while men were laying out the building sites and cutting through streets that the old secret tunnels were discovered. If I lived in one the houses now on the site, I’d start digging…
Aerial view of the former site of the Graham mansion in College Point.
Jim of Engine 33, pre-1885. New York Public Library Digital Collections
Under the 19th-century rules of the Fire Department of New York (FDNY), when horses were no longer fit for the hard service of pulling engines, hose reels, or ladder trucks, the department would sell them at auction to any huckster that needed an old horse to pull his cart or do his dirty work. But no such fate was to come to Jim—at least not if Chief Hugh Bonner or Engine 33 Captain William H. Nash had any say in the matter.
Jim was a large (1,500 pounds) strawberry roan of thoroughbred pedigree, born in Kentucky and thought to be related to Norman, the famous racehorse of American financier August Belmont Jr.
Officially known as registered horse No. 60, Jim began his FDNY career with Engine 33 on Great Jones Street on January 14, 1879, when he was about seven years old. He remained on active and reserve duty for nearly nineteen years until November 4, 1897. For eleven of those years, Jim and his mate drew a heavy first-class engine—the type that in later years was drawn by three horses. Jim was always the off-side horse, meaning he took the right side of the engine.
During his long FDNY tenure, Jim wore out several mates that could not keep up with him. Should the nigh (left) horse loaf around, Jim would turn toward him—even while in full gallop—and nip at the other’s neck to admonish him for goofing off on the job.
One of the few horses that worked well with Jim was another strawberry roan named Jack. Sadly, Jack died while responding to an alarm in May 1881 when the team collided with the Engine 13 tender. A pole plunged twelve inches into the horse’s body, fatally wounding him.
Jim and probably Jack, Engine 33, pre-1885. NYPL Digital Collections
The company replaced this fallen horse with horse No. 350, whom they also named Jack. Jim and his new partner pulled the engine, and a horse named Jerry drew the tender. The men called them “the three Jays.”
Jim and Jack achieved fame and publicity on October 26, 1883, when they took first prize in the hitch-up drill at the inaugural National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden. The pair beat the competition by hitching into a swinging harness in just under two seconds.
During the show, high-society ladies stroked Jim’s arched neck and millionaires pointed to his muscular flanks and powerful legs while commenting on his massive proportions. Following the event, Engine 33 became a popular place for visitors who had read about the horses and wanted to reward them with sugar cubes.
Sometimes Jim would perform some of his tricks for the visitors, such as “shaking hands,” bowing for candy, and kneeling in a prayer position.
National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden II, 1913. Library of Congress Collections.
Jerry was also a massive horse at 1,700 pounds. The coal-black horse began his FDNY career with Ladder 7 (Truck 7) in 1876, when he was four years old. He transferred to Engine 33 in 1881, where he earned recognition for his “pluck, strength and ambition.”
One of his greatest feats was pulling the tender on the first night of the Great Blizzard of 1888. On that night, he pulled the tender for one and a half miles, keeping up with the two-horse engine and passing four-horse tenders stuck in the snow.
At times during the storm, Jerry pulled the tender through drifts that were higher than his head. When the engine got so far ahead that it was out of his view, he grew frantic and strained every muscle to catch up with Jim and Jack.
Jerry began his career with Hook and Ladder (Truck) 7 in 1876. This photo was taken around 1910. Library of Congress Collections
In December 1889, Engine 33 was called out to a small fire at the New York Hotel. There was no urging required from Driver William E. Wise as Jerry pulled the 7,200-pound tender with 10 men aboard down Great Jones Street and up Broadway.
But as Jerry reached Fourth Street, Fire Patrol 2 came racing down that street, whereupon the two large pieces of apparatus collided. The iron tip of the patrol wagon’s pole plunged six inches into Jerry’s chest.
The driver for the patrol wagon backed up his team to extract the pole from Jerry, who continued to the fire as the blood streamed from the hole. The tender was the first to reach the fire; Jerry was immediately unhitched and led to the department’s horse hospital at 199 Chrystie Street, where veterinary surgeon Joseph Sheehy dressed the horse in large bandages. Jerry was expected to recover following a two-month respite.
Engine 33 at Broadway and Astor Place in 1905. Museum of the City of New York York
The final fates of Jerry and Jack are not known, but Jim continued his storied career with Engine 33 for several more years, under the care of Driver Charley Specht. Although Jim retired from active duty in 1891, he remained on reserve duty with the dual company’s second section engine until 1897. Calls for the second section were relatively rare, so Jim reportedly acquired a taste for beer and chewing tobacco during this slow period of his career.
Jim’s last day of duty was on November 3, 1897, when he helped pull the engine down to Chambers Street. The horse alongside him was a spare horse known to loaf, and Jim–who was nearly blind at this point–began biting the horse’s neck while galloping in style down the street.
New York World, November 20, 1897
Following this last run, Captain Nash sent Jim to the horse hospital. There, he grew restive and depressed from being away from the action and the sound of the fire gong. When he refused to take his feed, the captain sent Driver Specht to the hospital two or three times a day. Jim would always welcome Specht and eat whatever he placed before him.
In a letter that Captain Nash penned to the Fire Board to request that Jim be allowed to retire with dignity, he wrote extensively of Jim’s intelligence. All the officers and members connected with the company, as well as many distinguished guests who visited the quarters, had expressed the belief that no other horse showed more intelligence than Jim.
At the sound of the gong, Nash wrote, Jim would bound from his stall at full speed and slide along the floor as much as eight feet before stopping directly under his harness. Whenever the men turned him loose on the street for exercise, he would immediately return to his proper place under the harness should the gong sound. He never missed a day of work, and even when showered with broken glass or other falling objects, or deluged with water from a broken hose, he kept on working undisturbed.
Many newspapers across the United States wrote about Jim’s retirement.
“There was never a horse connected with this department who performed so much hard service as faithfully as poor old Jim, to say nothing of the pleasure he gave the many visitors at these quarters by his actions, which showed almost human intelligence,” he concluded.
Chief Bonner also wrote a letter to the board, stating that he fully endorsed the captain’s letter while reiterating the opinion that Jim was one of the most intelligent horses in the department.
“I appeal to the board on behalf of this faithful animal that he be retained in the service of the department and assigned to some company where the duties will be light, and that the Superintendent of Horses be directed to not include in his sale registered No. 60, which is the number assigned to this faithful animal.”
James Rockwell Sheffield pensioned Jim.
Engineer Hugh Burns, who had been in his position since 1869, did not write a letter about Jim, but he did wax sentimental about the beloved horse at the board’s meeting on November 19, 1897. With “an affection for the horse as deep and great as the friendship which exists between man and man,” Burns bragged about all the tricks Jim could do, noting the horse was “like a little child at school” when he was a youngster.
According to Hughes, Jim could turn the faucet on when he wanted water and pull the alarm gong before the attendant could reach it (before the days of electricity, when the gong was rung by hand). He could also distinguish between the men he worked with that he liked and those he disliked.
The letters and speeches worked. The fate that met almost all of New York’s four-legged firefighters was not to be his. Instead of the auction block, Fire Board President James Rockwell Sheffield ordered that Jim be saved from the milk or grocery wagon.
As the horse was old enough to retire on a pension, Sheffield sent Jim to a firehouse in the Bronx (reportedly Engine 52 on Riverdale Avenue), where he would spend his remaining days in green pastures and his nights in the comfort of the quiet firehouse.
Jim spent his final years with Engine 52 at 4550 Riverdale Avenue, organized in August 1884.
“He will feel strange up there in the country, so far from his old engine-house,” Nash told a reporter from the New York World. “You know, an old horse like that, when he finds himself put away, is like an old man retired from business. He potters around for a while and then breaks down altogether, because he has nothing to keep him interested in life.”
Nash said he was sure the horse would receive good care, but he felt certain Jim’s heart would eventually break if he could not answer any more fire alarms.
As of 1902, Jim was the only FDNY fire horse to receive a pension. According to the New York Sun, he lived at the Bronx firehouse for the rest of his life, nibbling the grass along the country lanes and doing tricks for the firemen.
One day the men found Jim in a heap near the firehouse, stricken with paralysis. An officer from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) humanely dispatched the old horse to put him out of his physical and mental misery. He would have been about 30 years old.
When Mrs. Harry Ulysses Kibbe and several other visionary society women organized the Bideawee home for animals in 1903, the women relied on paid subscriptions from generous New Yorkers to achieve their mission to care for friendless animals.
In its first year, the organization owned eight acres in Yonkers, but the women did not yet have a real home in the city for sheltering cats and dogs. One of their first fundraisers was a Christmas tea at the Hotel Savoy on Fifth Avenue, where raffle tickets raised $1,000 toward a permanent shelter.
By December 1905, Bideawee had a new city home in a former two-story brick stable at 145 West 38th Street, for which they paid $1,800 a year. That Christmas, the 20 dogs, 3 cats, and 1 tiny kitten living there were treated to turkey and chicken donated by the Waldorf-Astoria. The dogs also received bones and dog biscuits and shiny collars, while the cats found milk and catnip and brilliant ribbons in their stockings.
Over the years, the Christmas feast for animals became a tradition at the Bideawee home. Neighborhood children who had shown kindness during the year by bringing stray cats and dogs to the home were also invited to partake in the festivities.
In 1921, Bideawee had been in its permanent home at 410 East 38th Street for about 10 years. That year, a little boy named Johnny Anderson invited a new stray cat to the Christmas celebration.
Clutching a squirming, scrawny, angry little kitten, Johnny pushed open the door and handed the friendless cat to Mrs. Kibbe. “Take it,” he said. “I found it in the street and I wanted it to have a Merry Christmas, so I brought it to your party.”
Mrs. Harry Ulysses Kibbe (nee Flora D’Auby Jenkins), from the Bideawee archives.
Johnny’s face was scratched and his hands were bloody, but he was determined to bring the kitten to the holiday feast.
Johnny was a small patron of the charity organization, and he brought every stray animal he found wandering the streets to the Bideawee home. The women would either keep the strays at the home, place them with deserving families in the city, or send them to their farm in Wantagh, Long Island.
In addition to the kitten, Johnny also brought his dog, Flora, to the party. Mrs. Kibbe had given the dog to Johnny to thank him for all his kindness to homeless and friendless animals.
One of the resident star dogs of Bideawee during this time was Taxi, the “dog policeman” of New York. Taxi would go out on the streets looking specifically for stray dogs.
Taxi carries a stray dog to the Bideawee home. Brooklyn Standard Union, January 16, 1921.
Taxi would step up on a box and ring the doorbell to announce his arrival with a new canine guest.
Finding a pet that had wandered far from its home and mother, Taxi would pick it up by the nape of the neck and carry it straight to the Bideawee home. There, he would step up on a box set up just for him and ring the doorbell.
Another star dog was Army, described as a “fat, black, good-natured army pet.” Army had served with the Army Expeditionary Forces in France, and he walked with “an honorable limp” due to a bullet-shattered front leg. He lived at the home, having arrived there in 1919.
On December 26, 1921, Johnny’s stray kitten and the other animal guests enjoyed a Christmas dinner of chopped meat, salmon, biscuits, and warm milk. Then they all settled down, cozy, fed, and warm, for a long winter’s nap.
The Quest for a Permanent Bideawee Home
Bideawee is the Scottish term for “stay a while.” Although Mrs. Kibbe and the other founders chose this name to evoke compassion, love, and warmth for animals in need of shelter, it was also an appropriate name for the organization during its first eight years, when the women were forced to move from home to home in their quest for a permanent “no kill” shelter.
In 1911, Bideawee moved three times. The third move was the charm.
The quest began in 1903, the year Bideawee placed more than 400 dogs and 75 cats in good forever homes. Their own home at this time was a temporary place in a five-story building at 118 West 43rd Street.
One of the women’s biggest opponents at this time was the ASPCA, which insisted that unwanted animals be turned over to the society to be put to death. This opposition often made it difficult for the ladies to win over supporters of their cause and raise enough funds. But they were persistent.
Following a few years in their next home on West 38th Street, the ladies move to 36 Lexington Avenue, where they stayed until March 1910. The prior year, the Board of Health had ordered the women to remove all the dogs from Lexington Avenue (they were sent to a 10-acre farm in River Vale, New Jersey); the building was also too small to accommodate the cats.
In March 1910, Bideawee purchased from Thomas Lownden a long-term lease on a two-story and attic frame house and stables at 244 East 65th Street. The 100-year-old, 13-room house had once been a mansion, but was now surrounded by an express office, blacksmith shop, and coal yard; the Third Avenue Elevated Railroad power house was across the street.
In March 1910, Bideawee moved into this former frame mansion at 244 East 65th Street. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 21, 1910.
Mrs. Kibbe said the environment was ideal, as there were no close neighbors to complain about the barking dogs and howling cats. As the New York Times noted, “Even the strongest-lunged tomcat or the most obstreperous wolfhound will be able to make as much noise as it likes without a protest in any direction.”
Surrounded by a power plant, coal yards, and office buildings, the frame house and stables were in an ideal location for the Bideawee home. 1907 map, NYPL Digital Collections.
In addition to the large house, which Mrs. Kibbe said would be able accommodate twice as many animals as the building on Lexington Avenue, there was a large stable in the rear yard, which would provide shelter for the larger dogs. Mr. Lownden, a coal dealer and amateur dog fancier, had also gone the extra mile to erect a new fence around the front yard so the animals could go outdoors for exercise.
Inside the home, Mr. Lownden repaired some of the rooms to make the animals as comfortable as possible. New wire cages were installed and an outdoor wooden staircase was built from the upper floor to the yard for the dogs.
The nearby Rockefeller Institute on East 66th Street paid children for stray animals. NYPL Digital Collections
Ironically, only one block away from the new Bideawee home, at the foot of East 66th Street, was the Rockefeller Institute, which used animals for experiments in vivisection. The institute paid children 25 cents a head for stray dogs and half that much for stray cats.
When asked if Bideawee planned on competing with the institute by paying children more money for stray animals, Mrs. Kibbe told a New York Times reporter that there were no such plans to compete.
However, she said, Bideawee did plan on establishing clubs in which the neighborhood boys would be given lessons on how to be kind to animals. Buttons and medals would be awarded to those children who helped save the animals rather than sell them for cruel experiments.
By November 1910, the women were in trouble again. Although they had paid off their mortgage on their farm in River Vale, they were still short $5,000 needed for other expenses. Their workhorse, Dandy, who did a lot of work on the farm, had also taken ill. Then their automobile ambulance was run down by an ash cart and wrecked.
The situation became even more dire when the women learned that they had to vacate their new home on April 10, 1911. Mrs. Kibbe told a reporter that they thought they had secured a 30-year lease for the property. However, Mr. Lownden had to release his property rights to an express company that wanted to put another express office on the site.
In 1940, when this tax photo was taken, 244 East 65th was occupied by the Tuxedo Park Garage. NYC Department of Records.
Although an adjacent home was available, the Board of Health would not allow Bideawee to move into that building because it was within 100 feet of a tenement building.
At the time that the women received this bad news, they were housing 250 dogs and cats and one horse named Diamond.
“We have tried in vain so far to find a new city home for the animals,” Mrs. Kibbe told a New-York Tribune reporter on April 3. “Everyone objects to them being near private houses and tenements.”
On April 8, two days before they had to leave, Bideawee secured a temporary lease from real estate tycoon Felix Isman in a building at Broadway and 47th Street. About 100 dogs were sent to the New Jersey farm, and a receiving station was put in place on East 65th Street so the society could continue receiving animals from the boys in that neighborhood.
Finally, in October 1911, the women found the perfect “furever” home where there were no neighbors to complain of barking dogs and yowling cats. The two-story building at 410 East 38th Street, which had once been the site of stables for the Kips Bay Malt Company, was surrounded by the Edison Power Company, Kips Bay Brewing Company, razor factory, and coal yard.
The Bideawee home at 410 East 38th Street is circled on this 1911 map. NYPL Digital Collections
410 East 38th Street in 1940 (I love that the photographer’s assistant was trying to duck from view.) Two stories were added to the building in 1954. NYC Department of Records tax photos, 1940.
Bideawee leased the large building and property from the estate of Mary Jones, a descendant of brewer David Jones, who had purchased the former brewery property for $80,000 in 1872.
The two-year lease included an option to buy, which Bideawee exercised, resulting in a $50,000 mortgage. The final pay-out of $8,000 was due January 1, 1922, just one week after little Johnny Anderson brought a stray kitten to the Christmas party.
The Bideawee home in 2022.
If you enjoyed this Christmas animal tale of Old New York, you may like reading about Paddy Reilly, the Irish terrier host of New York’s annual Christmas party.
Thomas Gilmartin of Richmond Hill and his Seeing Eye Dog, Rascal
For many years, my husband and I volunteered with Puppies Behind Bars, helping to socialize puppies in training to become bomb detection dogs or companion dogs for those in the military suffering from PTSD. We could take these dogs almost everywhere and travel with them on all forms of public transportation. So, I was surprised to find out that service dogs, such as Seeing Eye dogs, were once banned from the NYC subways.
Below is the true story of Robert J. Losch and his dog, Sally, who fought to overturn the ban on Seeing Eye dogs in the subways. I discovered their story after finding the photo at left of Thomas F. Gilmartin, Jr. and his dog, Rascal.
Whenever I come across a great vintage photo like this one, I can’t resist doing some research to find out who the people and animals were. Where and when did they live? What was their story? It was while researching Thomas and Rascal that I discovered Robert and Sally and their crusade to give dogs access to the subways.
Thomas and Rascal Gilmartin
On December 5, 1940, Rascal Gilmartin, a four-legged graduate of The Seeing Eye guide dog school in Morristown, NJ, celebrated his fifth birthday. That day, a reporter from the Daily News visited the Gilmartin home at 89-17 118th Street (aka Church Street) in Richmond Hill, Queens, to meet Rascal and his human master.
For three years, Rascal had been helping Thomas attend classes at Queens College. Not only did he lead Thomas on the bus and trolley, but he also escorted him to all his classes on campus.
Thomas, a graduate of P.S. 90 and Richmond Hill High School, was studying to earn a B.S. in social service work. “I think that’s a good job for the blind, helping handicapped people,” he told the reporter. He thought Rascal would also be eligible for a diploma when he graduated in June 1941 because the dog had attended as many classes as he had.
I’ve got 100 percent confidence in him,” Thomas said about Rascal. “He’s never failed me. He practically knows my school program. When I go into a building, he knows which classroom to go to and always takes me to my seat.”
Thomas and Rascal in their home at 89-17 118th Street in Richmond Hill.
According to Thomas, Rascal remained quiet all day, and he oftentimes fell asleep during boring lectures or had the nerve to snore under the professor’s nose. The only the only time he made any noise was during assemblies, when he would bark whenever the students clapped.
Thomas, the son of Thomas and Emma Gilmartin, had been blind in one eye since early childhood. He lost sight in his other eye when he was teenager. For seven years, he could do very little without the help of others and he could only travel by himself within a three-block radius of his home.
The 25-year-old college junior told the news reporter he originally wanted to attend Brooklyn College after he graduated from high school, but he could not handle the transportation. So he had to wait a few years until he was paired with Rascal at The Seeing Eye.
Thomas had learned about The Seeing Eye on a radio broadcast. He and Rascal bonded instantly and just “clicked” from the moment Rascal walked into the reception room. “We had no trouble getting on together from the start,” he said. After a month of training he was able to bring Rascal home.
With Rascal at his side, Thomas said he felt as independent as any sighted person. “Blindness, I consider, is an affliction that was once mine, but is no more.”
To illustrate how well he and Rascal bonded, Thomas told the reporter about the time he was walking with his dog when he heard one woman say to another, “Isn’t he a nice man to lead that blind dog.”
Seeing Eye Dogs Gain Access to the Subway
Robert Losch of Whitestone and his dog, Sally, led the charge to allow Seeing Eye dogs on the New York City subway.
To travel from his home in Richmond Hill to Queens College in Flushing, Thomas took a bus and trolley. He also relied on the bus to get into Manhattan, which could take him two hours. Thomas could not use the subway, because service dogs were banned.
Robert J. Losch, a 40-year-old mechanical engineer who lost his sight during an auto accident in 1934, was not aware that service dogs were banned from the subways. For almost a year, Robert and his miniature German shepherd, whom he acquired from The Seeing Eye in 1939, had often traveled by subway without any objections. Then one day in February 1941, a guard stopped Robert and Sally as they were entering the 63rd Drive station in Rego Park.
“I didn’t know I was breaking an ordinance,” Robert told a reporter from the Daily News. “No one ever stopped me.”
Robert explained that Sally loved riding on the subways. She always lead him to the door once the train stopped on the platform and she never left his side, sitting on the floor next to him without making a sound. “With Sally I was safer than even a sighted person in the subway.”
Robert, who lived with his wife and 10-year-old son at 21-18 147th Street in Whitestone, Queens, was a member of the Whitestone South Community Association. When the members found out that Robert and Sally had been booted from the subway, they offered to drive him to the City Council office in Manhattan and help him get permission for Seeing Eye dogs to use the subway.
Robert and Sally leave their Whitestone home.
After demonstrating how indispensable Sally was to him, Robert told the council members and Acting Mayor Newbold Morris that he was not fighting for only himself. “I think there are about a dozen blind people living in the metropolitan area using Seeing Eye dogs to get around,” he said. “A change in the ordinance that forbids dogs in the subways would benefit them all.”
Two months after Robert and Sally were stopped from entering the subway, New York Governor Herbert H. Lehman signed a bill (an amendment to the Railroad Law) permitting Seeing Eye dogs on the subways and other transportation systems. On April 29, 1941, Philip E. Pfeifer, general superintendent of the subway system, issued an order stating that the dogs were permitted to ride the subways provided they were muzzled and accompanied by a blind person carrying a certificate from The Seeing Eye.
As soon as the law passed, Robert and Sally took a trip from Flushing to Manhattan, where Robert shopped for materials to make some leather handicrafts. “I put a nickel in the turnstile and went through just like everybody else,” Robert said, adding he had just as much a right to use the subways as anyone else.
Several other sight-impaired men also looked forward to using the subway with their Seeing Eye dogs. In addition to Thomas Gilmartin, who was excited about using the subway to and from school, Joseph Caronia, a Brooklyn musician who had traveled all over the country with his dog, was also looking forward to using the subways with his dog, Kion.
“It should have been done years ago,” said Lewis Smith, a well-known figure in Brooklyn Heights, where he often walked with his Labrador retriever, another graduate of The Seeing Eye. “It’s been a hardship not to be able to travel in the subway.”
One year after Robert convinced New York lawmakers to allow Seeing Eye dogs in the subway, he shattered an old hospital rule by getting permission to keep Sally by his side at Bellevue Hospital. The Daily News reported that Sally, now 5 years old, would make dog history by becoming the first dog ever permitted in the hospital wards.
Robert Losch with Sally at Bellevue Hospital in June 1942.
According to the story, Robert suffered an attack of appendicitis on June 8, 1942. After he went to the hospital, Sally remained near Robert’s empty bed all day long and refused to eat. She began losing weight.
Robert’s wife, Madeline, took Sally to the hospital and explained the situation. As soon as the orderlies saw how intelligent Sally was, they dismissed the rules forbidding dogs. Sally gained all her weight back and then some–by the time Robert was released from the hospital, her harness was snugger than before.
“Now I hope that someday I will be called for jury duty and they’ll let Sally sit with me in the jury box,” Robert said from his hospital bed.
Robert, who had retired to Florida in 1967, passed away in May 1973 at the age of 71.
Thomas, according to the census reports, married Eleanor Habas in 1943 and was working as a supervisory trainer at the New York Association for the Blind (aka The Lighthouse) in 1950. By 1965, he was administrator of home teaching and coordinator of the Training Division of The Lighthouse and by 1971, he was the director of The Lighthouse Queens Center on Woodhaven Boulevard.
Thomas died in October 2010 at the age of 94.
Robert Losch with Sally at his side in Bellevue Hospital.
Today, under the Americans with Disabilities Act, a person with a disability may be accompanied by a service dog in most public places, including courthouses. As for riding the subways, they are of course permitted (thanks in part to Robert and Sally), but there are a few subway rules for both service and emotional support animals.
If you enjoyed this story, you may also want to read about Pinky Panky Poo, the tiny dog who paved the way for the Plaza Hotel’s open door policy for small pets.
