Can curiosity really kill a cat that easily if a cat has nine lives? What if curiosity almost kills a cat; how many lives does the cat still have left? The following tale about a cat that sailed from England to New York on the RMS Aquitania shows that curiosity doesn’t always kill; and perhaps, some cats have more than nine lives.
The poor kitten spent 8 days without food and water in a sealed mail sack on board the RMS Aquitania, which sailed from England to New York in December 1920. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 2, 1921
On Saturday, December 11, 1920, employees at the New York General Post Office got a big surprise while opening some mail delivered to the United States from England via the steamship RMS Aquitania. Inside one sealed mail sack was a small male kitten.
According to the press, the gray tabby kitten must have been curious and found his way into the mail sack in Manchester, England, on December 3. The bag was placed in the ship’s mail hold with 6,100 other mail sacks and forgotten for eight days.
Every day that the kitten was in the mail sack without food and water, he lost one cat life.
When the Aquitania arrived in New York that Saturday morning, all of the mail bags were loaded onto the pier. A workman noticed a slight movement in the bag and began yelling. “Help! Murder! A bomb!” All the men on the pier ran for their lives in complete panic.
After the frightened men calmed down, one of the workers approached the mail sack and loaded it onto a truck. The package was rushed to New York’s General Post Office on 8th Avenue at 33rd Street.
The Cunard liner Aquitania, built by John Brown & Company, Ltd., arrived in New York on June 5, 1914, on her maiden voyage. The ship accommodated 618 first-class, 614 second-class, and 1,998 third-class passengers, with a crew of 972. The ship was often referred to as Royal Mail Ship (RMS) Aquitania because it also carried mail.
After opening the bag, the employees watched in amazement as the kitten jumped out and staggered across the room. He made his way to a radiator, where he stood shivering and chewing on a piece of paper that he had carried from the mail sack.
The kitten was weak and pale and emaciated. Having gone eight days without food and water, the poor little thing was barely alive. There was no address and no stamps on the feline package, so the men surmised he was a stowaway who had somehow gotten into the mail sack.
In 1937, a white kitten adopted in France got to travel in first-class style about the Aquitania with his new cat mom, Miss Doreas Wood of Springfield, Massachusetts. Miss Wood told the press that the kitten, who could purr in French, was the gift of an admirer in Paris.
The employees purchased a bottle of milk and brought him into the fireroom (perhaps the boiler room) to get warm. Soon, the kitten began eating solid foods and putting on weight. The postal employees adopted the kitten, signed him up for a civil service position as a mouser on the feline police squad, and named him Kelly.
It was later discovered that the paper Kelly had been chewing was the fragment of a love letter. The “scientists” among the postal employees believed that the kitten’s life was saved by this letter. Their reasoning: it was a well-known scientific fact that love letters contain more calories than all the beefsteak and milk in the world.
The Éamon De Valera Mystery
Although many newspapers across the country picked up the story of Kelly the cat, the feline’s tale was upstaged by the story of another reported passenger on the ship’s return trip to England.
When the RMS Aquitania left New York on December 12, reports immediately began circulating that Éamon De Valera, president of the Sinn Fein Irish Republic, was among the passengers on the ship. It was surmised that De Valera was a stowaway, possibly working as a fireman or stoker or otherwise disguised.
Cunard officials quickly denied the rumors that De Valera was a passenger, but they admitted he could have been a stowaway on the ocean liner.
Those in the Irish circles believed that if he was on the ship, he would not disembark in England, where he would be immediately arrested. He would instead get off on French soil, so to speak.
So, police in Cherbourg were extra vigilant in checking the passports of all 700 passengers getting off at that port.
Harry Boland, secretary to De Valera, said rumors that the political leader was on the ship were “a joke,” and that he was still in New York and preparing to continue his speaking tour in the United States.
Boland’s statement was apparently also a joke. A week after Christmas, on December 31, Boland announced that De Valera had arrived safely back in Ireland.
Boland said it would be treason for him to disclose how his boss left the country and made it to Ireland, but he intimated that he sailed from a United States port. “Just say he went over on the Irish presidential yacht,” Boland told the press.
As one newspaper noted, “The public may never know how De Valera managed to reach Ireland.” Maybe somebody should have checked all the mail sacks on the Aquitania on its return trip to England…
In June 1919, de Valera (center) met with members of the Friends of Irish Freedom at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. A native New Yorker, de Valera wanted to “tell the world the prospect for Irish freedom” and to appeal to America to stand by the Irish republic and recognize it before the world. Also pictured are Diarmuid Lynch, Justice Hendricks,, J.W. Goff, Judge Daniel Cohalan, John Devoy, and Justice Edward James Gavegan.
Following her two-day adventure, Betty posed with one of her kittens on the Lackawanna Limited train at Hoboken, NJ. New York Daily News
On January 8, 1933, Betty, chief mouser of the Lackawanna Terminal at Hoboken, NJ, hitched a train ride on the Lackawanna Limited to Dover, N.J. It was her first train trip since joining the crew at Hoboken four or five years earlier.
The story of Betty’s train adventure was covered in all the New York-New Jersey metro area newspapers and in papers as far away as California and Miami.
As the Miami Herald noted, Betty not only had a weekend adventure “the like of which few cats are privileged to experience,” she also disrupted the entire Lacakwanna Railroad system with her feline antics.
“Betty’s a different kind of cat,” station-master Henry Byrnes explained to the press. “I don’t understand her acting up like this, without warning. I guess she got a touch of that old itching foot, like most humans get sometimes.”
Betty’s Adventure on the Lacakawanna Limited
According to the story, Betty chose the Lackawanna Limited, the crack daylight train to Buffalo, for her excursion. Leaving her two kittens behind, she sauntered past gateman Al Brody and jumped on the forward truck of the fourth coach like a seasoned hobo. (The truck is the structure in which the train’s axles and wheels were attached).
Unlike Commissioner, the police cat that jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge and took a train to Utica, New York, in 1907, Betty didn’t quite make it that far.
Betty chose the Lackawwana Limited (later called the Phoebe Snow), which traveled from Hoboken to Buffalo via stops in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. She made it to the fourth stop in Dover, NJ, perched precariously on the trucks beneath the day coach.
Thirteen minutes later, the baggage men at Newark completely missed her as they loaded the train. The train then sped passed Morristown, where, at 11:07 a.m., a baggage man saw a bundle of gray fur curled up on the forward truck, a few trains behind the locomotive.
The Morristown crew telegraphed ahead to Dover to let them know that the train had a stowaway. Dover was a flag stop for the Lackawanna Limited, meaning if there were no passengers, the train would keep speeding westward. On this day, baggage man Frank Batson raised the flag and the train rolled to a stop, 37 miles from Hoboken.
After a quick search, Batson found Betty, her whiskers pushed back a bit by the high winds and her fur a bit ruffled, but otherwise as calm as can be. According to her rescuers, she looked content and ready to continue her voyage.
Betty’s composure changed when the men tried to grab her. “You wouldn’t have known her for the quiet, respectable cat she was around her home station,” the men told the press. “She put her back up, took a hold on the truck with her claws and spit, most disrespectful. Then she hopped off the train and ran away.”
Betty made it as far as the Lackawanna Station in Dover, N.J., pictured here in 1907.
When news of Betty’s escape reached station-master Henry Byrnes in Hoboken, he frantically called for help. Off-duty trainmen were notified to join in the search, as were the Dover police. All that night, the men searched the Dover yards with lanterns.
Two days later, the men found Betty in a nearby lumberyard. When the No. 6 train from Chicago came through, the train was flagged down to take a passenger. The conductor and porters jumped off, ready to assist the passenger with his or her baggage.
“Great snakes!” the conductor shouted as Betty was placed in his care. The hobo mouser returned to Hoboken in the baggage compartment.
When Betty returned back home, the men held a grand reception for her. Al Brody, the gateman who let the cat pass him on Sunday morning, said he felt very bad about failing to spot her.
Betty was the chief mouser of the Lacakwanna Terminal, aka the Hoboken Terminal, pictured here in 1907, the year the terminal was constructed for the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railroad. The site of the terminal has been used since colonial times to link Manhattan Island and points west. Colonel John C. Stevens of Revolutionary War fame started the first steam-powered ferry service from here to New York City in 1811.
“If she were a kitten with flighty ideas, you might explain it just that way,” Brody said. “But you take a cat that’s been a widow eight times, like she has, and try to figure it out, and you’ll have to sit up nights and maybe get a tower job with plenty of time for thinkin’, and still get nowhere.”
The press had a lot of fun with Betty’s story. One newspaper suggested the much-married cat galivanted off to Buffalo to visit a boyfriend, who had sent her a cat-o-gram. Thinking she was an employee of the railroad and thus entitled to ride the rails for free, she put on her fur coat and boarded the train.
Another newspaper said that perhaps Betty ran away because she had been wed too many times. She was tired of caring for kittens year after year, and was in search of an adventure all on her own.
Station-master Byrnes came up with his own reason for Betty’s antics. He surmised that the cat was upset that she didn’t get her usual turkey meal on Sunday morning, because the restaurant at the Lackawanna terminal was closed. She may have decided to jump on the train in search of an open eating establishment.
Whatever her motive was, that evening the one-time hobo cat received a turkey dinner fit for a railroad magnate.
The Lackawanna Limited
The Lackawanna Limited” at Slateford Junction, Pennsylvania. As one railway employee noted, the train offered speed, comfort, safety, beautiful scenery, and excellent food. Poor Betty the cat only experienced the speed.
With its modern equipment and convenient schedules, the Lackawanna Limited was one of America’s most famous trains. It operated daily from New York and through the Pocono Mountains to Buffalo, with through trains to Cleveland and Chicago.
The Lackawanna Limited made its first run in 1899. Rail travelers were very impressed with the scenery as well as the train’s speed: On its initial run, the train made the 410-mile trip in eight hours.
In 1949, the Lackawanna began modernizing its mainline passenger diesel-powered coaches. The Lackawanna Limited was modernized and renamed the Phoebe Snow, which ran for 11 years as a DL&W train and then as an Erie Lackawanna train from 1963 until November 1966.
Sadly, the Lackawanna Limited is most remembered now for a deadly crash that took place on August 30, 1943. That day, the Lackawanna Limited No. 3 crashed into a freight train in Steuben County, New York, killing 29 of the 500 passengers aboard. A little girl named Betty Andrews, age 9, was one of the youngest of the fatalities on that day.
Lackawanna Limited train wreck, August 30, 1943. Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph
A resident of Camp Thomas Paine with pet pigs Herbert Hoover and Andy Mellon. The pigs were two of many animals that lived at the colony. They were eventually sold to a farmer to raise funds for the colony’s communal bank account. New York Daily News
The following story explores Camp Thomas Paine in Riverside Park, one of the many Depression-era Hoovervilles (aka tent cities or shanty towns) that proliferated public parks in New York City in the 1930s.
This story is more than a simple tale about two pet pigs that lived among the 125 men at Camp Thomas Paine. It is a story about a fascinating commune of WWI veterans who thought out of the box, so to speak, to survive in 52 makeshift shacks along the Hudson River from 1932 to 1934.
And it is, in part, a commentary on a sad and shameful period in our country’s history.
Some of the Camp Thomas Paine shanties that lined the river along a scenic backdrop of residences for the more affluent on Riverside Drive from 72nd to 79th Street. New York Public Library
The Resourceful Beginnings of Camp Thomas Paine
In August 1934, an auction took place at Patrick Joseph Cain’s theatrical storage warehouse at 530 West 41st Street. Described as a “red-brick mausoleum,” Cain’s warehouse was the final resting place of all Broadway shows, good and bad.
About 100 people attended the auction, in search of West Point uniforms, boxes of humming bird dress ornaments, Japanese trees made of shells, three large mechanical elephants, a mechanical cow used by W.C. Fields, a saddle that Will Rogers used on a prop horse, and photographs of famous Broadway stars. All of these items had been featured in a series of elaborate theatrical revue productions on Broadway called the Ziegfeld Follies.
Noticeably missing from the auction was the scenery once used on the stages to prop up the famous chorus girls known as the Ziegfeld Girls. According to the press, the canvas sets and lumber had all found its way to Riverside Park two years earlier, in August 1932, where it was used to construct some of the shanties and other structures for the veterans who founded Camp Thomas Paine.
Lumber and canvas sets from the elaborate Ziegfeld Follies stage sets were used to build some of the frame shanties at Camp Thomas Paine.
Using the stage lumber was one of the many ways the down-and-out men demonstrated their resourcefulness. By the time the veterans were evicted from the colony in May 1934, they had established a large garden, a mess hall with a communal kitchen and cook stove, and a rec hall with a stone fireplace. They also received a faucet for running water and street lamps from the city, and set up a savings account at the Corn Exchange Bank.
From the Anacostia Flats to Riverside Park
Camp Thomas Paine was founded by 75 jobless World War I veterans who had previously taken part in a large group of suffering and desperate vets called the Bonus Expeditionary Forces (BEF). The goal of the of the BEF was to get a government-promised bonus payment of $1 a day immediately, rather than wait until 1945, as the federal Bonus Act stipulated.
Led by Walter W. Walters, the veterans occupied camps and buildings in several locations in the District of Columbia from May to July 1932.
On July 28, 1932, Attorney General William Mitchell ordered the DC police to remove the veterans from government property. Although the men had an ally in Brigadier General Pelham D. Glassford–now superintendent of the DC police–they could not beat General Douglas MacArthur, Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Major George S. Patton.
Once these top military men received orders from President Herbert Hoover to shut down the camps, the Army troops advanced with tanks, bayonets, and tear gas to drive the men out and across the bridge.
The largest BEF camp was this shantytown on the Anacostia Flats, across the river from Washington’s Navy Yard. Library of Congress
The Washington Daily News called the military ambush “A pitiful spectacle” to witness “the mightiest government in the world chasing unarmed men, women, and children with Army tanks. If the Army must be called out to make war on unarmed citizens, this is no longer America.”
Having been driven from their camps in the nation’s capital, 75 men headed north to New York City to set up Camp Thomas Paine. They named the main “road” through their colony Glassford Avenue in honor of the DC police superintendent. Each shack was given a numbered address and christened with comical names such as Grand Hotel, Rain Inn, and The House That Jack Built.
The men numbered their wood and tin shacks on Glassford Avenue, named them, and spruced them up with rock gardens and patches of grass. NYPL
Commander John B. Clark
Commander John B. Clark
The chosen leader of the camp was Commander John B. Clark, who ran the commune like a military facility.
Only men with an honorable discharge were allowed, and they all had to abide by military discipline. The men took turns doing guard duty, and no liquor (not even beer), women, or children were permitted in the camp. Violators of camp rules were expelled.
For two years, as many as 125 war veterans of multiple races and nationalities lived and worked in harmony. They carried barrels of water into the camp for cooking and cleaning (until the city installed a faucet), collected driftwood from the river to burn in their fireplace, and gathered loam in wheelbarrows to create a vegetable garden where there was once only stones and cinders.
The men also built a rec hall that was paneled with partitions from a branch office of the failed Bank of United States. The hall also featured canvas sets from “A Night in Paris,” “Naughty Naughty,” “Three’s a Crowd,” and many other Broadway shows–all courtesy of Cain’s theatrical storage warehouse.
Crowds outside the Bank of United States when it failed in 1931. The bank run on the Bronx branch is said to have started the collapse of banking during the Great Depression. The men of Camp Thomas Paine used some of the lumber from one of the closed branches.
The rec hall featured a large open fireplace, where in colder months the men would sit, read, smoke, chat, and play checkers. New York Daily News
Life at Camp Thomas Paine
Although the men took pride in their independence and never begged on the streets, they weren’t too proud to accept charity. The Horn & Hardart company donated 24-hour-old baked goods to the camp every day. This allowed the men to eat pie twice a day, except on Mondays.
They also received bags of potatoes, onions, oysters, clams, and meat from community leader and activist Lewis S. Davidson, for whom the Lewis Davidson Houses in the Bronx are named. Jacob Klein, a lawyer, sent the men a $5 check every week. And their neighbor, Charles Schwab, sent the men excess produce from his farm in Pennsylvania.
An aerial view of Camp Thomas Paine along the Hudson River, 72nd to 79th Street, in 1933. New York Daily News
While food was always available, the men did not have all they needed to fully live even a semi-comfortable life. There were very few coats for the men in the winter, and men’s suits were in short supply. The camp did not provide coal and kerosene, which the men needed to keep their shacks lighted and warm, and there was no facility for the men to take showers.
Sometimes the men would find odd jobs, such as shoveling snow, polishing automobiles, or scrapping newspapers and metal. They would turn in their money to the camp communal fund, which was kept in an account at the Corn Exchange Bank (at one point the account had about $105). Monies in this fund were used to purchase milk and sugar and other needed supplies.
If any man found a steady job, he was allowed to stay at the camp for one more week; he also had to contribute a third of his pay for that week. Then he was asked to move out to make room for someone less fortunate on the waiting list.
Charles H. Schwab, who lived across the street from Camp Thomas Paine at 73rd-74th Streets, paid the men 50 cents an hour plus hot meals to shovel his property in winter.
The Pets of Camp Thomas Paine
One of the most unusual elements of the settlement was the corral filled with pet animals, including the two pigs and dozens of rabbits, turkeys, ducks, and chickens. (As The New York Times noted, the camp was a sanctuary for every living thing that was an outcast, miserable, or unwanted.)
These animals, for the most part, were the men’s pets. Commander Clark told a reporter, “Nothing that enters this camp alive will ever be killed.”
The pigs–Andy Mellon and Herbert Hoover–were a gift from the Veterans of Foreign Wars. At first, the men intended to eat the pigs. But the pigs were so friendly–they would follow the men around like pets dogs would do–they didn’t have the heart to kill their new companions.
Clark told one reporter, “They’re eating what’s left of our food. But they have become our pets; if we killed them the boys couldn’t eat them. If we sell them someone else will eat them.”
They eventually sold the pigs to a farmer for $5. The men later learned that either Mellon or Hoover was not properly named, as one had given birth to several piglets.
By the spring of 1933, the camp had three pet turkeys and two ducks, which swam in an old iron sink that was sunk in the ground. They also received three rabbits, which turned into 24 rabbits a few months later.
One of the bunnies was the gift of a little boy who had received the rabbit as a present for Easter. His family wouldn’t let him keep it in the house, so he brought it to the camp so the men could care for it.
Many of the men moved out in the summer because, as the Daily News noted, “summer was worse than winter in a place like that. In Winter two men can crowd into a little box and keep warm, but the Summer heat will make such crowding a torture.” NYPL
In addition to the barnyard animals, there was at least one domesticated dog and one cat that lived at Camp Thomas Paine.
According to The New York Times, a Philippine veteran named Estanasiao Labo had a fox terrier and a gray cat that had a “curious smudge” on its nose. Labo reportedly spent a lot of time sprucing up his shack for the holiday season; when a reporter came to visit, the dog was lying in front of his door and the cat was snoozing on a pile of boards. Commander Clark told the reporter, “Yes, I think the happiest man would be Labo.”
Robert Moses and the Demise of Camp Thomas Paine
New York Daily News, May 1, 1934. Eight days prior, the men burned eight of the shacks during a farewell party.
In April 1934, Parks Commissioner Robert Moses ordered Camp Thomas Paine be vacated by May 1 so that the land below the New York Central railroad tracks could be improved by the Park Department. Lewis S. Davidson attempted to have the eviction postponed, or to at least obtain other unused park space for the colony in order to keep the men together.
On April 30, the Board of Aldermen passed a resolution censoring Moses for ordering the eviction. Fusionist Alderman Lambert Fairchild charged Moses with favoring “steam-shovel” government, stating that by destroying the veteran’s colony, the commissioner “was wiping out a most interesting development that has earned the approval of a distinguished neighbor and one of the best fellows in my district, Charles M. Schwab.”
Moses scoffed at the resolution, calling it “just cheap politics.” He said, “I don’t take their action seriously. How can we progress on the West Side Improvement without removing all encroachment along the river?”
Off to Camp LaGuardiaat Greycourt
On May 1, 1934, 200 homeless men left in five buses from the Department of Welfare offices for Greycourt, New York. There, they would become farmers at a new city farm colony for unemployed men.
Eight of the men on these buses were former residents of Camp Thomas Paine, who had all expressed an interest in farm living. (Most of the veterans told the press that they did not apply for the colony, because they had once been white-collar professionals and were not cut out to be farmers.)
The main building at the Greycourt farm colony. Built by New York City in 1918, and located about 55 miles northwest of Manhattan, the site had served as a women’s prison until 1934, when it was turned over to the city’s welfare department. New York Daily News
The chosen men, all between the ages of 25 and 45, would be responsible for preparing the land for the thousands of homeless and unemployed men to follow. It was expected that 500 men would be living on the farm by the end of May 1934, but the colony could accommodate over 1,000 residents.
In 1935, the city farm colony was renamed Camp LaGuardia for New York City’s Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. It remained a shelter for the city’s homeless men for over 70 years.
In addition to over 200 acres of farmland, the colony at Greycourt had 400 pigs. Unfortunately for these pigs, they were not pets like those at Camp Thomas Paine.
Shut down in 2007 under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and purchased by Orange County for $8.2 million, the old Camp LaGuardia remains vacant. Several bidders have taken interest in the property; a team of prospective buyers recently bid $1.2 million, with plans to create a hotel, housing for artisans and athletes, and a sports dome on the 258-acre property.
For now, I will think of the veterans of Camp Thomas Paine and their pet pigs whenever I pass by the remnants of Camp LaGuardia while walking with my mom on the nearby Orange County Heritage Trail.
Aerial view of the former Camp LaGuardia adjacent to the Heritage Rail Trail.
The Federal Hall replica, designed by architect Joseph H. Freedlander, in Bryant Park. The plaster was tooled to look like stone, and the front was painted with ground marble. Humans did not take much interest in it, but it made a great winter home for some stray cats and a flock of pigeons. Museum of the City of New York.
In 1932, the George Washington Bicentennial Planning Committee partnered with Sears, Roebuck and Company to construct a wood and plaster replica of Pierre Charles L’Enfants’s Federal Hall at Bryant Park. The structure was erected to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Washington’s birthday, and to honor his inaugural speech made at Federal Hall on Wall Street on April 30, 1789.
New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses hoped that the replica would attract more people to Bryant Park. The park had been neglected and partly destroyed over the years, due to the construction of the Sixth Avenue Elevated rail in 1878 and later, the digging of the IRT tunnel in 1922. By the early 1930s, the park had become a haven for homeless humans and was considered a disreputable eyesore.
Bryant Park in 1925. MCNY collections
Bryant Park in 1926, showing the park’s grassy terraces and the New York Public Library.
The Federal Hall replica opened to the public on April 30, 1932. Unfortunately, the building did not achieve its lofty goals.
According to the Daily News, few people chose to pay the 25-cent admission fee to view the interior of the building. On some days, there would be only three or four paying customers who could afford such a price. With 33 paid employees required to perform for attendees, there was no way the commission could ever repay the $80,000 it owed Sears when it was only bringing in 75 cents or a dollar a day.
The 95- by 59- by 48-foot tall Federal Hall replica was constructed behind the New York Public Library and next to the park’s terrace. Museum of the City of New York
In order to raise much-needed funds, the city’s park department allowed the commission to hold several events at the building, including vaudeville acts and opera performances, courtesy of the Puccini Grand Opera Company. Those efforts were also huge flops with the public.
In August 1932, 50 members of Company A, 16th Infantry, tried to take over the site by setting up tents and talking about military and aerial warfare to anyone who would stop to listen. The city park department saw this as an invasion and ordered the police to kick out the military men.
A reporter for the Daily News questioned, “Having let Federal Hall and hot dog stands into Bryant Park, why should the Park Department complain if the Army, the Navy, the Knights of Columbus and the Ku Klux Klan want to follow along and hold reunions and barbecues there, too?”
A few dozen people line up to see Federal Hall in Bryant Park. New York Public Library collections
To add insult to injury for New Yorkers, more than three quarters of Bryant Park was fenced in and cut off to the pubic, unless people wanted to pay a quarter to get in. (The commission told the city the replica would take up only two percent of the park’s total area, and there was never a mention of an admittance fee when it was proposed.)
It was originally thought the structure would come down when the bicentennial celebration ended on November 26, and that the park would be restored to its former state. But a week before the celebrations came to the end, the special commission had still not decided whether to tear the building down or let it remain standing to serve as a free employment agency for women or a central relief station.
Grover A. Whalen
Former New York City Police Commissioner Grover A. Whalen, who chaired the bicentennial commission, explained that several welfare agencies were interested in the structure due to its central location. (This was the era of the Great Depression; there was a great need for services and lodging, with many of the city’s poor living in the Hooverville at Central Park.)
However, Whalen said he could not imagine the Federal Hall being used as a soup kitchen for the needy. He also promised that it would never be used as a lodging place for the homeless (human, that is; the promise apparently did not apply to the Bryant Park cats!).
On November 15, Whalen told the press the commission would make its decision within ten days. He also said he was talking with Mrs. William Randolph Hearst about potential philanthropic uses for the patriotic building.
Ten weeks later, the Federal Hall replica was still standing, with no plans in place for charitable causes.
“Forlorn and friendless,” as the Daily News described it at the end of November, Federal Hall was pretty much deserted save for a few alley cats and a flock of pigeons that took up their abode in it.
A black-and-white cat perches atop the little-used admission booth for Federal Hall at Bryant Park.
The Felines of Federal Hall
By the end of 1932, what the New York press called an “$80,000 white elephant” was partially boarded up and occupied by only a family of stray cats, who “frisked in and out of holes in its crumbling walls.”
The felines had no difficulty making their way in and out of the structure. Thanks to a December snowstorm, the structure had taken on the appearance of an old Roman ruin, with numerous gaps in the plaster.
Vandals had also lifted off pieces of the Hall to keep as souvenirs (much like they did with the Dewey Arch on Fifth Avenue three decades earlier, which resulted in a cozy plaster home for a mother cat to give birth to her kittens).
Inside the Federal Hall replica. This looks like a very nice home for a family of New York City stray cats. Museum of the City of New York
In the rear of the ruined structure, which was once a beautiful, grass-carpeted “beauty spot of mid-Manhattan,” were piles of rotting lumber and debris. The cats turned the chaotic mess into their own special playground.
In September 1932, the Daily News poked at fun of Federal Hall with the caption, “Hurrah! The Federal Hall replica in Bryant Hall has a customer (arrow.) He’s walking along a barren waste that was dotted only by empty benches at 5 p.m.” Daily News, September 23, 1932
In this photo, you can see the fenced-in Federal Hall. The benches on the other side of the fence are filled with members of a local gang called Sons of Rest (these young men thrived on leisure interrupted by thievery and trips to jail), but they are facing away from the building. Daily News, September 23, 1932
Parks Commissioner Walter R. Herrick (1877-1953)
On December 31, 1932, Parks Commissioner Walter Richmond Herrick told the Washington Bicentennial Commission to take immediate steps to remove the flimsy structure from Bryant Park. But by January 2, the first workday of the new year, no steps had been taken to demolish the cats’ home.
Colonel Leopold Phillipp, executive chairman of the commission, promised again that it would be torn down in February. (According to the Daily News, Phillipp wasn’t an advocate for the building’s removal; as he told the press, “We think it is a shame to destroy this beautiful building, which, after all, is in a park that was just a hangout for bums before we took it over.”)
Fortunately for the cats and pigeons, the building remained standing for a few more months, providing them with shelter through the winter.
A policeman stationed to watch over the remains of Federal Hall. New York Daily News
Finally, on March 30, 1933, the city made an official announcement that Federal Hall was coming down. Demolition began in April; by June, all that remained of the structure were the eight steel girders that supported the roof of the building.
A view of the Federal Hall demolition from the New York Public Library. April 1933. NYPL
Bryant Park undergoing reconstruction following the removal of Federal Hall. The estimated cost to rebuild the park was $125,000 — not including the costs to demolish Federal Hall. NYPL
Mary Kane and the Bryant Park Cats
Federal Hall being demolished in April 1933. NYPL
I do not know what happened to the cats living in Federal Hall after it was torn down. However, I do know that the stray cats of Bryant Park had a benefactor named Mary Kane.
According to an article published in the Daily News in 1934, Mary Kane was a poor woman who attended to a blind man who operated a late-night newsstand at Bryant Park.
Every day at 4 a.m., Mary would guide the man to an uptown trolley at Third Avenue and 42nd Street. Even in the winter, Mary would often be barefoot and wearing the thinnest of coats.
According to the paper, Mary often lugged a package along while she led the man to his trolley. Inside that package was a stray cat from Bryant Park.
After she saw that the blind man was safely aboard his uptown trolley, she would take another car south to 23rd Street. Then she would carry the stray cat to the ASPCA dispensary on 24th Street and Avenue A.
Mary Kane took the Bryant Park stray cats to this facility on Avenue A and 24th Street.
Sometimes Mary used a cardboard box to carry the cats. Other times, she used a knitted sack made for carrying oranges or other fruit.
Once at the shelter, that cats would be well provided and cared for. If it looked like the cat would make a suitable pet, or if it showed signs of having once been someone’s pet, every effort was made to find it a home.
Mary never received any fame or fortune for saving these cats. Like many women, she felt sorry for the cats, especially those that got all the bad breaks in life.
As the reporter noted, several times a week, for about six or seven years, “Mary Kane, a poor young thing whom the big town has overlooked, has captured a stray cat and taken it to the SPCA.”
Minnie of the RMS Cedric with her three kittens on December 26, 1922
On this day in 1922, Minnie, the ship cat of the RMS Cedric, was honored for saving 36 lives (herself and her three kittens). The rescue took place during a severe storm in the Atlantic Ocean that disrupted Atlantic shipping and damaged or completely destroyed numerous steamships heading toward New York.
According to the Daily News, Minnie had presented her sailor friends with a litter of kittens two days before the RMS Cedric left Liverpool. During the storm, Seaman Blackburn took the kittens for a bath (I have no idea why he would do this).
Minnie thought he had carried the kittens up to the deck, so she went up the hatchway in search of them. A giant wave rushed over the ship, catching Minnie in the flood of water. She was almost swept overboard, but she was able to sink her claws into a rope ladder and hold on for dear life.
Built in Belfast, Ireland, the RMS Cedric launched on August 21, 1902. Its maiden voyage was February 11, 1903. Its last voyage was September 5, 1931. The ship could accommodate 365 first-class, 160 second-class, and 2,350 third-class passengers.
When Blackburn heard that Minnie was on deck, he went up to get her. As he was reaching down to grab her, another wave broke over the ship, and man and mother cat came perilously close to being tossed into the sea.
Luckily, the two were able to make it safely back down below decks. The ship arrived at Pier 59 (Chelsea Piers) a few days late, but there were no reported deaths or injuries, human or feline.
Numerous Ships Lost or Delayed
New York Daily News, December 27, 1922
The SS Cedric of the White Star line, known as a storm fighter, suffered less damage than many other ships during what was called one of the most severe storms in many years. The twin-screw steamships Celtic, New Columbia, Zeeland, Carmania, and United States all bore battle signs when they berthed in New York the day after Christmas. On all of the ships, lifeboats had been swept away, railings were smashed, and decks were wiped clean of anything that hadn’t been lashed down tightly.
The RMS Cedric was in the best condition, but the white salt lines high up on her stacks showed that the ship had gone through a horrendous gale. According to the sailors, at times the wind velocity was measured at 100 miles per hour in what appeared to be a succession of storms. Captain G.R. Metcalfe told the press it was the worst storm he had ever experienced in his twenty years at sea.
Passengers on the ships also reported a fearful voyage; those who were able and courageous enough to watch “the boiling sea” through the storm ports declared it “the most magnificent spectacle they had ever seen, with towering waves, flung spray and foaming water coursing over the decks.”
The Famous Big Four
The famous Big Four of the White Star Line were the Adriatic, Baltic, Cedric, and Celtic.
The famous Big Four of the White Star Line were the largest steamers sailing regularly between New York and Liverpool, calling at Queenstown both eastbound and westbound. The Adriatic and the Baltic were each 725 feet long; the Cedric and the Celtic were 700 feet in length. All four ships were launched before White Star introduced the Titanic and the Olympic.
From a White Star Line brochure dated April 16, 1909:
TRAVELERS who frequently cross the Atlantic nearly always acquire a preference for a specific ship, admiring it, perhaps, for many good qualities, such as steadiness in all weathers, reliable comfort, splendid cuisine, pleasant officials and efficient staff, or any of a dozen other equally good reasons.
Everyone of the White Star Line’s famous Big Four—the favorite mammoth steamers ADRIATIC, BALTIC, CEDRIC and CELTIC—can boast of hosts of such passengers who choose these vessels for journey after journey, knowing that upon them—in any class—will be found precisely the satisfactory service and the perfection of courtesy they have so thoroughly enjoyed before.
They are of robust and sturdy build, with graceful, stately lines, and if there is one comment about them heard more often than another, it is that these vessels are ‘so very steady.'”
Chelsea Piers served as a passenger ship terminal in the early 1900s for several passenger lines, including the White Star Line. In this 1911 photo, the RMS Olympic is arriving in New York. Today the piers are used by the Chelsea Piers Sports & Entertainment Complex.
Incidentally, on April 15, 1912, while in seclusion in the doctor’s cabin on Carpathia, Bruce Ismay reportedly sent a wireless message to the White Star Line’s New York office, requesting the RMS Cedric be held until Carpathia’s arrival. That way, the Cedric could transport Titanic’s surviving officers and crew back to England.
However, Cedric departed from Pier 59 at noon on April 18, almost ten hours before Carpathia docked with the survivors.
