At 20 pounds, Tom was less than half the weight of Dan, the 48-pound fire cat of Engine 40, but 20 pounds was enough to earn him some press in the Brooklyn Standard Union. In fact, the news reporter suggested that Tom, the feline patron on Gage & Tollner, was the rival of Jiggs, the overweight Dalmatian of Engine 205 who weighed in at 120 pounds.
Unlike Jiggs, who was more than willing to dine at many downtown Brooklyn restaurants (although Joe’s at 326-334 Fulton Street was his favorite), Tom was “a one-restaurant cat,” according to Seth Bradford Dewey, the president and general manager of Gage & Tollner. He would not frequent any other eating establishments, and he’d only eat breaded scallops at the restaurant’s oyster bar.
Tom and his brother cat were born in the famous restaurant in 1917, when Gage & Tollner was on the ground floor of the circa 1875 Craft building at 372-374 Fulton Street. No one knows what happened to his mother and brother, but Tom “apparently recognized his proper sphere in life” and stayed on at Gage & Taylor, where he dined on scallops alongside great icons like Mae West and Jimmy Durante.
According to Dewey, Tom occasionally did some work to earn his keep, or at least what he considered work. His job was to sit in the cars of various patrons and keep watch while they were dining at night.
Sometimes a patron would try to drive off while Tom was still at his valet job. Tom would yowl so loudly that people on the street thought someone was kidnapping a human baby.
“He’s a cat of regular habits, all right,” Dewey said. “He’s always around at closing time. He sleeps here. Although once and a while he wanders off.”
One night, when Dewey returned to work on Monday after the weekend off, the head waiter said that Tom had disappeared. Just at that moment, Tom strolled in, climbed up on the oyster bar, and drank all the ice water he could hold.
Asked how Tom had taken to Prohibition, Dewey told the reporter he would not reveal the cat’s opinion on this matter.
In April 1924, a birthday party took place at Gage & Tollner to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Seth Dewey’s ownership of the establishment. According to Brooklyn Life, “Even Tom, the famous twenty-pound cat who watches the cars belonging to patrons…took part in the gala celebration.”
A Brief History of the Craft Building
The popular Gage & Tollner oyster bar and chophouse dates back to 1879, when Charles M. Gage opened an oyster house at 302 Fulton Street. Two years later, Gage partnered with Eugene Tollner, a cigar salesman and one of Gage’s regular customers. In 1892, the partners moved their restaurant uptown into the circa 1875 Craft building at 372-374 Fulton Street, which is where Tom the cat lived and dined.
The Craft building was just east of Red Hook Lane, an old trail used by the Canarsee natives that provided the only access from the heights of Brooklyn (Brooklyn Heights) to Red Hook. It was also a major transportation road for the Continental Army and the British during the American Revolution.
Old records show that in 1818, the Fulton Street property was sold as part of the Teunis I. Johnson farm to Brooklyn Mayor Samuel Smith (the old Smith mansion was at 16 Smith Street). The nine-acre parcel commanded a beautiful view of the Wallabout Bay and featured mature asparagus beds, English cherry trees, two houses, a barn, and a store.
Smith constructed the four-story building at 372-374 Fulton Street and leased the store and basement to John Craft, who ran a tailoring business in the 1870s. After Smith died in 1872, Craft purchased the building and lot from the Smith estate at an auction on February 27, 1873. When Craft died in 1898 at the age of 78, the land was deeded to his widow, and when she died in 1913, the property was willed to Miss Ida A. Craft and her niece.
Charles Gage passed away in 1919 and Eugene Tollner died in 1935. I do not know how long Tom the cat lived, but I’m sure he lived a long, happy, scallop-filled life.
