Archive for the ‘Cat Stories’ Category

From 1900 to 1908, the Dyker Meadow Golf Club had a mascot cat named Lillian Russell who was an expert fishing cat.

Part I of a 2-Part Cat Tale Fishing at Dyker Meadows In 1821, Peter Cortelyou wrote a letter to William J. Lott concerning some local fishing practices that he thought could jeopardize the Cortelyou family fishery. The fishery was located on the Narrows at the foot of present-day Battery Avenue, adjacent to Dyker Meadows and […]

“Go up Tenth Avenue and in various cross streets running down to the river are some of the worst blocks in the city; and there are blocks corresponding with them along the East River. The names of some of these places are significant: ‘Battle Row,’ and ‘Hell’s Kitchen,’ and ‘Sebastopol.’” — James W. Shepp and […]

Most of the cat-women stories of Old New York were of two genres: outlandish tales of the proverbial “crazy cat lady” who had a dozen or more cats in her house or newsy stories about women who bred cats on a professional basis to sell to wealthy Victorian ladies or to show at the various […]

A tenement house in New York is any building or part thereof which is occupied as the residence of three families or more living independently of each other and doing their own cooking in the premises. It includes apartment houses, flat houses and all other houses of similar character.” –John J. Murphy, Commissioner of the […]