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.
Last night, I came across an old photo of McSorley’s during a snowstorm. I also found a poem about McSorley’s written by e.e.cummings during a snowstorm in 1923.
Although the story of McSorley’s cats has been told many times in different iterations, I thought a snowy night in December 2020 might be the perfect time to share the story of the legendary cats of McSorley’s Old Ale House. As I write this, I can see, hanging in my office, a framed illustration of McSorley and his cats from an original Harper’s Weekly Magazine.
“My Father Wanted Me to Keep Cats”
In 1919, Bill McSorley, the second owner of the renowned McSorley’s Old Ale House at 15 East Seventh Street near Third Avenue, told a reporter from the New York Evening Telegram that cats had been a fixture at McSorley’s ever since his father, John McSorley, founded the tavern in 1854.
“My father wanted me to keep cats,” he told the reporter. “It has been his motto that ‘it costs less to feed a cat than it does to pay a plumber.’ Cats keep away rats, who gnaw through lead pipes.”
It’s been said that Bill McSorley was gruff with his customers, but he displayed plenty of kindness toward his cats. He owned as many as 18 feline barflies at once, and they reportedly had the run of the saloon (although they always took their catnaps in the back room).
I’m not sure how motivated the cats were when it came to catching rats, as Bill reportedly fed them bull livers that he ran through a sausage grinder every day. As Joseph Mitchell wrote in The New Yorker in 1940, “When it came time to feed them, he would leave the bar, no matter how brisk business was, and bang on the bottom of a tin pan; the fat cats would come loping up, like leopards, from all corners of the saloon.”
McSorley’s Cats. Harper’s Weekly Magazine, 1913. John French Sloan
In 1913, realist painter John French Sloan memorialized McSorley’s cats in a double-spread illustration he created for Harper’s Weekly Magazine (the one above, which I have hanging in my office). Fifteen years later, he captured a very similar scene in oil on canvas with his painting “McSorley’s Cats” (pictured at the beginning of this story).
One of a series of five McSorley’s paintings that Sloan created between 1912 and 1930, “McSorley’s Cats” depicts militant anarchist Hippolyte Havel, cartoonist Art Young, artist Alexander Kruse, and several other men smoking, laughing, and drinking ale at the bar. To their right, McSorley is opening an icebox as five cats huddle around him, waiting to be fed.
In “McSorley’s: John Sloan’s Visual Commentary on Male Bonding, Prohibition, and the Working Class,” Mariea Caudill Dennison writes, “The hardy camaraderie has been momentarily interrupted by Bill McSorley’s call to his cats. Although the date of the painting is secure, the image seems to suggest a re-occurring event.”
Up until a city law was passed banning all cats from bars and restaurants (the same law that forced the Algonquin Hotel to keep its resident cat, Matilda, out of the kitchen and bar area), one could always find at least one cat at McSorley’s.
Although it was their job to keep the mice and rats away, McSorley’s cats were more likely to spend their day curled up next to the bar patrons or warming themselves near the pot-bellied stove. In fact, when writer Joseph Mitchell was visiting the tavern in 1940, he noted that “a sluggish cat named Minne was sleeping beside the pot-belly stove.”
Minnie the Second
Incidentally, the most recent feline barkeep at McSorley’s was a grey tabby named Minnie the Second. In April 2011, the Department of Health barred the cat from the bar during business hours. Five years later, the same health department temporarily shut down McSorley’s for violations including…wait for it…evidence of rat activity.
Gee, maybe if they had allowed Minnie to stay on post like another Minnie the mouser of Old New York was allowed to do in the 1920s-30s, the bar would not have had a problem with vermin. It’s what they call progress, I guess.
A Brief History of McSorley’s Old Ale House
Much has been written about Terrence John McSorley, Bill McSorley, and McSorley’s Old Ale House–the “Oldest Irish tavern in New York” even has its own historian–so I’m going to focus more on the history of the land on which the tavern was reportedly constructed in 1854.
I was sitting in mcsorley’s. outside it was New York and beautifully snowing. From e.e. cummings, I Was Sitting in McSorley’s. 1923
Terrence John McSorley was born in Omagh, County Tyrone, Ireland, in 1827. He arrived in New York in 1851 on the ship The Colonist from Liverpool.
In 1854, McSorley reportedly opened a tavern he called The Old House at Home on property purchased that year by real estate developer John Wroughton Mitchell. One year later, John McSorley married Honora Henley.
Although tax records and maps note the lot at 15 East 7th Street as vacant until about 1860-61, it is surmised that Mitchell may have erected a small frame structure on the lot that was not recorded. McSorley may have leased space in this undocumented structure for his tavern until a brick building was constructed around 1861.
In 1864-65, the building at 15 East 7th Street was improved (either altered or demolished and replaced) to become a 5 story tenement. McSorley, his wife, and sons Peter and William (Bill) moved into the rooms upstairs over the bar. In 1888, McSorley purchased the building from Mitchell’s estate for $24,000.
This map from 1852 shows a vacant lot next to a mahogany (lumber) yard at the future 15 East 7th Street. The old frame Tompkins Market, built in 1830, is across the street (depicted in yellow). New York Public Library Digital CollectionsThis 1857-1861 map shows what was reportedly a two-story brick structure at 15 East 7th Street. The new cast-iron Tompkins Market and Armory building (pink), constructed in 1860, is also shown NYPL Digital CollectionsThe Tompkins Market, just across from McSorley’s Old Ale House (now the site of 41 Cooper Square), may have been a favorite place for McSorley’s cats to visit when they weren’t on bar duty. At the public market on the first floor, one could find the freshest meats, fish, milk, butter, vegetables, and other products. The armory and drill rooms of the Seventh Regiment of the New York State National Guard were located on the second and third floors.
The Bowery Farm
Whether McSorley opened his tavern in 1854 or later–a topic historians will no doubt discuss for as long as the bar remains standing–the site of his legendary tavern has its own interesting history. In fact, McSorley’s sits on what was probably the most famous property in Dutch-colonial Manhattan.
The land between present-day 5th to 17th Streets (give or take a street), from Fourth Avenue to the East River, was once the Dutch West India Company’s Bouwery #1, aka, the Great Bouwery, and part of Bouwery #2. These were two of 12 large farms, or bouweries, extending north of the city of New Amsterdam that were established by the West India Company. The road that connected these properties to the city was called Bowery Lane.
This old map from 1644 shows some of the bouweries of Dutch-era New Amsterdam. Bouwery #1 and Bouwery #2 were a bit farther north.
Following the arrival of the first settlers in 1624, the Board of the Dutch West India Company sent instructions for laying out the outpost. Included were directions to erect a fort, lay out streets, and build 12 bouweries for farming and grazing — five would be leased to colonists for six years at a time and seven were provided to the company directors.
The farms were laid out north of where the large wall (Wall Street) would later be erected in 1653. Six farms were placed on the west side of an old Native American footpath (Bowery Lane) and six were placed on the east side.
The bouweries ranged in size from about 50 to 200 acres. According to a directive from the board, the largest of the bouweries—80 rods by 450 rods—was to be reserved for the use of the current director of the colony. Thus, over the years, Bouwerie #1 was the home of Willem Verhulst, Peter Minuit, Wouter Van Twiller, Willem Kieft, and Petrus Stuyvesant.
The home of Peter Stuyvesant, which was destroyed in a fire in 1777.
On March 12, 1651, Stuyvesant purchased all of Bouwerie #1 and part of Bouwerie #2 from the West India Company. When the British took over in 1664, he was allowed to keep his land by agreeing to surrender. Stuyvesant spent the rest of his life on a 62-acre tract of the farm; his house stood near present-day First Avenue and 16th Street.
Petrus “Peter” Stuyvesant (1727-1805)
In the late 18th century, Peter Stuyvesant’s great-grandson, Petrus, began subdividing part of this land into building lots. He laid out the streets on his land and created Stuyvesant Street in 1787 by widening the road between the old Bouweries #1 and #2.
When Petrus died in 1805, one son, Peter Gerard Stuyvesant, inherited Petersfield, the farm north of Stuyvesant Street. Another son, Nicholas William, received the “Bowery farm” to the south of Stuyvesant Street.
Nicholas and his wife, Catherine Livingston Reade, had nine children: Peter, Nicholas William, Jr., John Reade, Gerard, Robert Reade, Joseph Reade, Catharine Ann, Helen, and Margaret Livingston Stuyvesant. The family lived in the family’s Georgian mansion on a hill overlooking the East River, near today’s 8th Street, between First and Second Avenues.
The Stuyvesant hone was constructed in 1765 for Petrus Stuyvesant and Margaret Livingston.
Nicholas William Stuyvesant died in the home on March 1, 1833. Following Catherine’s death in 1863, the family sold the estate and the home was demolished. Around 1835 the knoll upon which it stood was leveled.
It was on a tiny piece of this land that McSorley’s Old Ale House was built in 1854…or so.
Free Holiday Zoom Event: Animal Stories That Made the Holiday Headlines in Jolly Old New York
Monday, December 21, 2020 7-8 p.m. (ET)
Horse-delivered Christmas trees, New York. Library of Congress Collections
Take a virtual sleigh ride back in time as I take you over the river and through the woods to Christmas past in jolly Old New York. Explore some of the city’s timeless holiday traditions via fun and amazing animal stories that made the headlines in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Hear about:
* The penguins and sea lions that frolicked in the Prometheus Fountain * The Christmas kittens born in the Dewey Arch on Fifth Avenue * The Bronx Zoo reindeer delivered by crane to Rockefeller Center * The animal balloons that crashed into planes at the Macy’s Parade * The holiday rush on Angora cats at Wanamaker’s Dry Goods Store * The annual yuletide event “to celebrate all good dogs, cats, and horses” * The horses that delivered America’s first public Christmas tree * And a holiday kitten shipped to Yorkville by parcel-post-delivery
Reindeer delivered by crane at Rockefeller Center
Hosted by the Greater Astoria Historical Society. This holiday Zoom Event will be jolly good fun for animal lovers and history fans alike!
To Register:
This event is hosted by the Greater Astoria Historical Society. To register, send an email to astorialic@gmail.com with the Subject Line: ANIMALS. You will receive a link to the Zoom event prior to the presentation.
I am available for virtual author events across the United States and in-person presentations in the New York City metropolitan region (including northern New Jersey and the Hudson Valley). Click here for more information.
I recently wrote about a cat named Bill who was the champion mouser of the Flatbush Post Office in Brooklyn in 1922. The following tale takes place four years later, and features a lucky cat and several unfortunate rabbits that were mailed to the Brooklyn General Post Office.
On December 12, 1926, the Brooklyn Times Union published a small article titled “Cat Arrives by Mail.” According to the article, employees of the Brooklyn General Post Office were very surprised to hear a plaintive meow coming from a small crate. Inside the crate, which had arrived via the Railway Mail Service, was a pretty little cat.
The pretty kitty was placed in a crate and shipped to the Brooklyn Post Office via the Railway Mail Service.
Apparently, the cat and crate originated in Morrisville, a village in Central New York. The feline package traveled by train on the New York, Ontario and Western Railway, and was then taken by a postal vehicle from the train station to the Brooklyn Post Office.
Upon the cat’s arrival in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Postmaster Albert B.W. Firmin (appropriate name for this story!) examined the cat and determined that she was in good health and had made the trip unharmed. He did note, however, that the cat was very sleepy, which he attributed to her strange and scary experience.
The cat originated at the Morrisville, NY, train station, pictured here in 1910. From there, she boarded a train on the New York, Ontario and Western Railway, which then terminated in Weehawken, New Jersey.
The clerks carried the crate to the miscellaneous mail section, where Superintendent McCann and his associates fed the cat and tried to make her feel at home. The intended recipients of the cat were contacted and advised to come to the post office to pick up their precious package.
Firmin told the press that animals were not allowed to be transported by mail. He said the cat should have been adopted by the Morrisville post office employees instead of being transmitted by train along a U.S. postal route.
The postmaster further explained that while the Brooklyn General Post Office had many cats of all varieties and ages on its staff to prevent the ravages of rats and mice, there were no accommodations for traveling cats in the postal service. “From the standpoint of kindness to animals,” he said, “no cat in a crate should be permitted transportation by this means.”
On July 7, 1838, Congress passed an act designating all railroads in the United States as post roads. The Long Island Rail Road Company, chartered in April, 1834, was one of the first railroads to begin carrying mail in an unofficial capacity in the 1830s. In 1864, the U.S. postal service began the Railway Mail Service to move mail across country on railcars. Mail clerks sorted mail on board the trains in specially outfitted sorting cars, like this one pictured above. The cat would have travelled in a train car similar to this one.
Incidentally, on that very same day, the post office received four rabbits intended for someone named Mr. McGann. These were not live rabbits, however. They had all been previously killed, and it was surmised that “someone had mailed them in evidence of his prowess as a hunter.”
Postmaster Firmin was very angry with this delivery, and he told the reporters that dead animals should also never be mailed. He gave orders to resort to every means to locate the owner of the rabbits before he notified the Board of Health. He also reported the matter of the cat to the U.S. postal employees in Washington so that they could take disciplinary action against this wrongdoing.
Cats in the Brooklyn General Post Office
Although the Brooklyn General Post Office had many cats on the payroll in the 1920s, there were no Brooklyn postal cats in the early 1900s, and no intention to establish to hire any at that time. (The New York General Post Office had great success with its feline police force in the early 1900s, but Brooklyn Postmaster George H. Roberts Jr. was reluctant to hire cats before Congress appropriated funds for their “maintenance.”)
The Brooklyn Post Office on Washington Street, 1920. Museum of the City of New York Collections
In April 1902, a woman from Fort Greene Place wrote a letter to Postmaster Roberts stating that she had read in the paper that the post office needed cats to control the rats who were attracted to the paste and gum used on envelopes.
She wrote, “Now, I have a beautiful Maltese cat and four kittens, 5 weeks old. They are black and one a dark Maltese. I must dispose of them. So, if you would like to adopt this dear little family, or part of it, I will send them by express, prepaid.”
Roberts was a kindhearted man who did not want to hurt the woman’s feelings by rejecting her offer. As the Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted, “Some clerk will have to decide the cat question for the administration, as the Postmaster doesn’t feel competent to do so.”
If you enjoyed this story, you may also enjoy reading the Christmas kitten mailed to Yorkville in 1906. If you are a history buff, following is a condensed history of the Brooklyn Post Office.
A Brief History of the Brooklyn Post Office
During the colonial era, the early settlers of Long Island (of which the village of Brooklyn was the main settlement) had two ways of getting their mail: they could either pick up their mail directly from the captains arriving on ships from Europe, or they could rely on friends and travelers to bring their letters to them directly or via a relay system.
The rear of the City Tavern/State House, which was located on Coenties Slip on the corner of Pearl Street and Coenties Alley. Coenties Slip was filled in with landfill in 1835 and is now the site of the New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial Plaza.
Coffee houses served as the first unofficial post offices, where unclaimed mail coming off the ships would be placed on open racks and picked up by travelers on their way to Long Island, New Jersey, or Westchester County.
In 1642, William Keift, Governor of New Amsterdam, built a stone structure at Coenties Slip and Pearl Street. The five-story building was first called Stadt Herberg or City Tavern; later it would become the Stadt Huys or State House, New Amsterdam’s first city hall.
The City Tavern served as a community center and an inn for travelers. It was also here that letters for the settlers of Brooklyn, Gowanus, Bergen, Wallabout, and other areas of Long Island were placed on racks for hand delivery.
If a traveler saw a letter addressed to someone he knew, or someone he was visiting on Long Island, he would take the letter off the rack. Oftentimes a letter would be passed through several travelers’ hands on its journey from New Amsterdam to Long Island. There were no bridges; travelers to Long Island had to take a ferry service (basically a row boat) first operated by Cornelis Dircksen.
This tavern/coffee house system continued until 1686, when all mail brought in by ships had to go through the British custom house.
The front of the City Tavern/State House, with the public stocks at right.
In 1764, the first postal route, known as the circuit, was established on Long Island. Mail was carried twice a month by horse and rider along the north shore of the island, returning along the south shore. Some villagers were rather resourceful: In the town of Quogue, in Suffolk County, a tree served as the “post office” for the residents, who would leave and pick up mail in a hole carved into the tree.
In Brooklyn, some sort of postal services began in July 1803, when a man named P. Buffet was appointed postmaster of Brooklyn. Very little information has been published about this man or where the post office was located, but it was most likely near Fulton and Front Streets.
In 1806, a shopkeeper named Joel C. Bunce was appointed postmaster for the village of Brooklyn. He and his partner, Thomas W. Birdsall, had a general store near the East River ferry on the corner of Old Ferry Street (Fulton Street) and Front Street. Sometime around 1815, this store was designated an official post office.
Following Bunce’s death in 1819, Birdsall took over the postmaster job until 1822. He was succeeded by George L. Birch, Thomas Kirk, and then Erastus Worthington, a writer for the Long Island Star who was appointed in 1826.
Joel Bunce handed out bottles of brandy and sacks of sugar in addition to collecting and sorting the mail for Brooklyn residents.
Brooklyn Post Office Headquarters
In its early years, Brooklyn’s post office occupied numerous shops leased by the Federal government. As an article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted in April 1867, “Since our respected ‘Uncle Sam’ stubbornly and foolishly refuses to provide himself with an establishment of his own in Brooklyn he must be content to share the fate of humbler mortals, and move whenever he choses to indulge in the luxury of disgracing with his landlord.”
Under Postmaster Worthington, the post office was located in his stationery and book store at Fulton and Hicks Streets. Under Birch, it was located at 97 Fulton Street. Around 1829, another stationer and bookseller named Adrian Hegeman took over as postmaster and moved the post office to his shop across the street, where it remained for the next 12 years.
George Hall was the City of Brooklyn’s first mayor and its postmaster in the 1840s.
When Postmaster George Hall (who was also Brooklyn’s first mayor) took over in 1841, the post office was moved to a small room on Hicks Street across from Doughty Street. Hall soon secured funding to build a grand new structure on Cranberry Street, between Fulton and Henry Streets. In addition to Hall, there was one clerk—Mr. Joseph M. Simmonson—and one single letter carrier named Benjamin Richardson, who, accompanied by his dog, made two deliveries a day between Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Henry C. Conkling was appointed postmaster in 1845. Once again, the post office moved, this time to 147 Fulton Street, between High and Nassau Streets. This building was destroyed in a large fire on September 9, 1848, that started in George Drew’s upholstery and furniture store on Fulton Street and destroyed seven blocks of wooden buildings; postal services were temporarily moved to the Apprentice Library on the corner of Henry and Cranberry Streets.
Almost 250 buildings were destroyed during the Great Brooklyn Fire of 1848. This map shows what was called the “Burnt District,” which was about a dozen acres.
Next, the post office moved to the Montague Hall building (concert and assembly rooms) on Court Street, and from there it moved to 337 Fulton Street near Rockwell Place–under Postmaster Daniel Van Voorhis–where it remained until 1857.
At one time, the Brooklyn Post Office occupied the Montague Hall building (large building on the right) opposite the old City Hall building on Court Street.
During the 1860s, under Postmaster William H. Peck, the main post office was located in a building on Montague Street near Court Street. When the rent was raised, Colonel Samuel H. Roberts, Brooklyn’s eighth postmaster general, secured a vacant lot on Washington Street between Johnson Street and Myrtle Avenue, next to the 41st Precinct Station House and, later, the Brooklyn Theatre (now the site of the Kings County Supreme Court). The new post office building was completed in 1867.
In 1867, the Brooklyn General Post Office moved into a new building on Washington Street between Johnson Street and Myrtle Avenue, next to the 41st Precinct Station House and the Brooklyn Theatre (the theatre was erected in 1871 and burned down in 1876). Look closely and you can see “Post Office” on the building.
At this point in time, the Brooklyn Post Office had two post offices (the other one was in Williamsburg) and 60 employees, including 13 clerks, 32 carriers (who delivered about 5,000 letters and 1,000 newspapers a day), and four collectors of letters from the lamppost letter boxes. Prior to 1861, postal carriers were allowed by law to collect one cent on each letter delivered. The post office established the free delivery system in July 1861, which set annual salaries for the carriers.
In large cities, mail was carried on specially designed trolleys or streetcars. Brooklyn was the second city (behind St. Louis) to implement the Railway Post Office (RPO) streetcar under Postmaster Andrew T. Sullivan in 1894. Sullivan contracted for special trolley cars to be built so that passengers could ride up front, and mail could be sorted in the back as the cars moved from station to station. Shown above is RPO trolley car #5 from the Fulton Street line.
In the early 1880s, the Federal government finally decided that Brooklyn deserved a much grander building for its postal services. Several sites were considered for a joint Federal Building/Post Office, including one on the corner of Fulton and Flatbush Avenues and the site of the old Dutch Reformed Church between Joralemon, Court, and Livingston Streets.
The Federal government considered building a new Brooklyn Post Office on the site of the circa 1835 Dutch Reformed Church, but the deal fell through.
Finally, a real estate investor named Leonard Moody was authorized by Secretary of the Treasury Charles J. Folger to purchase a site on the corner of Washington (now Cadman Plaza East) and Johnson Streets–provided he could do it for a cost no more than $450,000.
Eighteen people owned the property, so Moody had to dance around and make deals without letting anyone know what the property was going to be used for. If it leaked out that the government was planning on purchasing the land for a federal building, all the property owners would have jacked up the buy-out price.
George Collins was postmaster in 1892, when the new Brooklyn General Post Office was completed.
Within five days, all the property had been secured at a cost of $165,00–just $15,000 more than what the government wanted to pay. Work on the four-story Romanesque-Revival-style building of Bodwell granite began in 1883 and was completed in 1891. The Brooklyn Post Office moved into the building in 1892.
Five years later, in 1897, the New York Mail and Newspaper Transportation Company (a subsidiary of the American Pneumatic Service Company), opened its the 27-mile pneumatic mail tube system connecting 22 post offices in Manhattan and the new Brooklyn General Post Office.
The Brooklyn General Post Office is one of the few historic buildings to escape the wrecking ball when Cadman Plaza was built in the 1950s. The building was renovated and expanded in 1999, and today it still houses postal services as well as the US Bankruptcy Court, the US Trustee, and the Offices of the US Attorney.
Animal Stories That Made the Holiday Headlines in Jolly Old New York
Tuesday, December 8, 2020 12-1 p.m. (ET)
Take a virtual sleigh ride back in time as I take you over the river and through the woods to Christmas past in jolly Old New York. Explore some of the city’s timeless holiday traditions via fun and amazing animal stories that made the headlines in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Hear about:
* The penguins and sea lions that frolicked in the Prometheus Fountain * The Christmas kittens born in the Dewey Arch on Fifth Avenue * The Bronx Zoo reindeer delivered by crane to Rockefeller Center * The animal balloons that crashed into planes at the Macy’s Parade * The holiday rush on Angora cats at Wanamaker’s Dry Goods Store * The annual yuletide event “to celebrate all good dogs, cats, and horses” * The horses that delivered America’s first public Christmas tree * And a holiday kitten shipped to Yorkville by parcel-post-delivery
Reindeer delivered by crane at Rockefeller Center
Hosted by Untapped New York. Jolly good fun for animal lovers and history fans alike!
To Register:
This event is hosted by Untapped New York. If you are already an Untapped New York Insider, log in to your account and register for the event. You will receive an email confirmation with the Zoom link to join. You will need to download the Zoom app for your computer or phone in order to join the event.
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I am available for virtual author events across the United States and in-person presentations in the New York City metropolitan region (including northern New Jersey and the Hudson Valley). Click here for more information.
