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!
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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.
Bill, champion mouser of the Flatbush Branch of the Brooklyn Post Office; Brooklyn Times Union
On August 1, 1922, employees of the Flatbush post office sent out a BOLO (be on the lookout) alarm for their chief mouser, Bill. Described as a big, fluffy Maltese cat, Bill was responsible for keeping all the mice and rats in check at the post office.
He was also the beloved pet of the more than 100 employees on the postal staff.
Unlike the postal police cats of the General Post Office in Manhattan, who worked together in large groups, Bill preferred to work alone at the Flatbush sub-station of the Brooklyn Post Office. In fact, he worked just as hard to keep other cats away as he did to keep the mice at bay.
In other words, he got into a lot of cat fights with other felines hoping to steal his government civil service job.
Always victorious in these fights, Bill would often seek a quieter place to hang out for a while until his hot temper cooled down. Even when he disappeared for a few days to chill out, the gray cat always came back to the Flatbush post office.
But this time, he didn’t come back for many weeks.
Unlike New York City’s Post Office cats, who were featured in a news article in 1898, Bill did not work with any other cats at the Flatbush Post Office. He was a lone mouser.
Postal Clerk William Kuek, who was Bill’s main caretaker (and perhaps, namesake), told the Brooklyn Times Union, “If anyone sees a gray Maltese with a fighting disposition and a string of jingling bells around his neck,” they should let him know. Kuek also said he was almost certain the cat would return once he learned of a new ruling on postal cats that had just been wired from Washington, D.C.
According to the ruling, postmasters would be able to provide meat at the government’s expense for their office cat. Kuek explained that it required a little stretching of the law to make it possible, but the cats were very valuable to the postal service, so the funds could be justified.
“Every dog has his day,” Kuek said, “and from this time on, ‘tabby’ cat is to have money-bought food, if he happens to be a post office guardian. It is held that the cat is a protector of the government from the ravages of rodent pests.”
Bill the Cat Comes Back
On August 18, 1922, the Brooklyn Times Union reported that Bill had finally returned to the Flatbush Post Office, “and the smile is back again on the faces of postal employees.”
Kuek told the newspaper that he would make sure Bill got his fair share of meat that the government now provided for postal cats. He said he hoped the daily serving of meat would keep Bill satisfied at the Flatbush post office, and that he would no longer run away after a cat fight.
From 1913 to 1924, the Flatbush Post Office occupied top floor of this building at 959-963 Flatbush Avenue, between Albemarle Road and Snyder Avenue, which was also home to the Flatbush Savings Bank at the time. This is where Bill the cat was employed in 1922.
I have a feeling the prospect of a good daily meal led to many more fights with cats that wanted Bill’s job, but hopefully Bill had a long career with the Flatbush Post Office.
This concludes the story about Bill the post office cat of Flatbush. If you are interested in the history of Flatbush’s postal services, or want to learn more about the old post office where Bill lived and worked, continue reading. I had a lot of fun researching this history and finding dozens of tiny pieces to put the entire puzzle together.
An Epic History of the Flatbush Post Office
The history of the Flatbush post office begins with a rural postmaster named Michael Schoonmaker, who ran a grocery store and a roadside tavern and inn on Flatbush Avenue. It also features an enterprising stage coach operator named Colonel James C. Church, and an ambitious young letter carrier named John F. McCarthy.
Schoonmaker, the third postmaster of Flatbush (preceded by Abraham Van Deveer [1814] and John Leffers [1819]), collected and sorted mail for the farmers and other residents at his grocery store from 1829 to 1845. Church delivered the mail to the first Flatbush post office. And McCarthy spent many years as a letter carrier, eventually becoming the first superintendent for the Flatbush post office when the town was incorporated into the City of Brooklyn in 1895.
The Early Years of the Flatbush Post Office
In the early 19th century, before there was a post office in town, a Customs House clerk from East Flatbush named Cornelius Duryea picked up and delivered mail for Flatbush residents on his daily trips to the City of Brooklyn. The town’s first post office was established in the 1830s, when Colonel James C. Church started a daily mail-coach route between Fort Hamilton and Flatbush.
Church was the postmaster for the Fort Hamilton post office, which was located in his general store on the shores of the Narrows, at the foot of the State Lane (Fort Hamilton Avenue). His mail coach route ran through Bath Beach and along the King’s Highway to Flatbush, serving the post offices at Flatbush, New Utrecht, and Fort Hamilton. He also ran a passenger stage coach from Fort Hamilton to Fulton Ferry in the City of Brooklyn; the fare was 25 cents.
Colonel Church lived in this home on Fort Hamilton Avenue near 100th Street, which he built in 1843.
At this time, the Flatbush post office–which served all of Flatbush, Gravesend, and Canarsie–was located in the corner of Schoonmaker’s grocery store on Flatbush Avenue, across from the Reformed Dutch Church and adjacent to the Erasmus Hall Academy. The grocery store and post office were housed in a building that was described by The Chat newspaper as “a one-story and attic structure, with a porch extending across the front but a few inches above the sidewalk and protected with a roof.”
Schoonmaker’s grocery store was located across from the Reformed Dutch Church. His roadhouse tavern and inn occupied the Catherine Lott cottage (noted as C. Lott Est on this map). In the early 1900s, the cottage was occupied by Dr. G. Newtown Ferris. It was razed in 1917 to make way for the Flatbush Savings Bank.
Mail bags for collection and delivery to and from all parts of the world would be picked up and dropped off at Schoonmaker’s once a day via Church’s mail stagecoach. During the busy summer months, Church would make two daily mail trips.
When the mail arrived, Schoonmaker would leave his roadside tavern in the old Catherine Lott homestead and cross the street to his grocery store. There, he sorted the the incoming and outgoing mail. Since there was no house-to-house delivery, residents had to pick up their mail at Schoonmaker’s store or rely on neighbors or travelers to bring it to them.
If residents did not collect their mail, Schoonmaker would publish an ad in the newspaper, like the one below. It cost three cents to mail a letter from the post office.
The Long-Island Star, October 1832
Following Schoonmaker’s death in the 1840s, his wife took over the tavern and the postal job, becoming the first postmistress of Flatbush. In 1845, their son, Richard L. Schoonmaker, was appointed postmaster.
The following is from an article published in the Brooklyn Standard Union in December 1900 describing the daily mail delivery in the 1840s:
“At 9 A.M., with a loud blast of the horn and great prancing of steeds, the heavy mail coach, drawn by four horses, would rumble down the post road from New Utrecht [now Church Avenue], turn the corner by the old Dutch Church and draw up before the quaint old inn of the widow Schoonmaker.
The mailbag would be taken over to the post office, opposite the church, and its contents sorted by widow Schoonmaker, the postmistress. It was then flung up to the driver, who deposited it under the boot at the foot of his high seat, and with a loud snap of his long whip and a still louder blast of the bugle, the cumbrous vehicle would disappear in a cloud of dust down the turnpike, to return at 5 P.M.”
The Schoonmaker’s inn was located to the right of the former Lott residence at 920 Flatbush Avenue, pictured here in 1922. (The new Flatbush Savings Bank is just visible on the right). The Lott home was destroyed by fire in 1923 and demolished. NYPL Digital Collections
The Flatbush Presidential Post Office
In the later half of the 19th century, the Flatbush post office was operated as a Presidential post office. Presidential post offices served as a collection depot for mail, but there were no delivery services.
Each post office had a postmaster who sold stamps and money orders and sorted the mail for the customers’ collection boxes. Total annual revenue determined whether the post office would be classified as a first-, second-, third-, or fourth-class facility. The postmasters were appointed by the President of the United States; thus, if the president was a Republican, the postmaster and clerks would also be Republican.
Gilbert Hicks was Flatbush postmaster for six years.
Postmasters received a small salary from the government for their services, which was based on the classification. The classification system incentivized them to sell as many stamps and money orders as possible, but it sometimes led to grifting and other scandals.
Most postmasters had at least one other job, such as selling books, medicines, and stationery, or working as a shipping agent. As long as the post office was not too busy, they were able to work at both occupations in the same location.
During this time period, Flatbush had several postmasters, and each man operated the post office out of his own place of business. (One woman, Miss. Phebe J. Case, was postmaster from 1865 to 1870; there is no other published information about this woman.)
From 1876 to 1882, Gibert Hicks ran the post office from his two-story brick store on the corner of Flatbush and Clarkson Avenues. When Thomas Moorehead took over, he removed the post office to his store across from the Reformed Dutch Church (where the original post office at Schoonmaker’s had been.)
In 1884, Henry Paton was appointed postmaster. He moved the post office back to the intersection of Flatbush and Clarkson Avenues, where his family lived and ran a harness shop in a two-story brick building next to Hick’s store (the building was across the driveway that led to Hick’s stables, as noted on the map below.)
The post office was not in the harness shop proper, but in a one-story frame structure that was eventually detached from the harness shop. According to the Brooklyn Times Union, this building was so cramped, “it had barely room to swing a cat in.” Luckily, Bill the cat did not live and work in this building.
The Flatbush post office was located in several locations near the intersection of Flatbush and Clarkson Avenues, including Gilbert Hick’s two-story brick store, Henry Paton’s two-story harness shop, and the small frame building next to the harness shop, as noted on this E. Robinson map issued in 1890.
Because most residents of the town had to travel two or three miles to get their mail, there was much discussion during this time about implementing free delivery services. In the meantime, those who did not want to walk or ride into town had to rely on a young man named John McCarthy.
Flatbush Post Office Superintendent John McCarthy
John F. McCarthy, the first postal carrier and postmaster of Flatbush.
Born in the Town of Flatbush in 1868, John F. McCarthy received his early education at the school for boys at Holy Cross (present-day St. Gregory’s Academy on Church Avenue) in Flatbush. He then attended St. Francis Academy on Baltic Street. When he was just 16, his father, James, died, leaving John in charge of supporting himself and his mother, brother, and sister.
McCarthy’s first job was as a clerk at the Kings County penitentiary. To supplement his small income, he came up with an idea to deliver mail to the residents in the far reaches of Flatbush. He correctly assumed that many of his fellow rural residents would prefer having their mail delivered to their home every day rather than picking it up in town at the Flatbush post office.
The Brooklyn General Post Office was once located on Washington Street between Johnson Street and Myrtle Avenue, next to the 41st Precinct Station House and the Brooklyn Theatre (the theatre burned down in 1876). Look closely and you can see “Post Office” on the building. NYPL Digital Collections
McCarthy established his business with several hundred residents, who paid him two cents for every piece of mail delivered. It took him all day and night to pick up the mail from Brooklyn’s General Post Office on Washington Street (pictured at right) twice a day and deliver it to his customers–his route was extensive and the country roads were poor. But as Flatbush continued to grow, so did his business.
In 1895, McCarthy got a full-time job working as a clerk in the Flatbush post office, which was then under Democratic President Grover Cleveland. Five years later, in 1890, Charles H. Zelinsky was appointed postmaster of Flatbush by Republican President Benjamin Harrison. McCarthy, a Democrat, lost his good-paying job.
Fortunately, McCarthy had never given up his side job delivering mail to hundreds of paying customers. The money he earned from delivering mail was sufficient to support his widowed mother until he could secure another good postal job under a Democratic president.
Toward the end of 1893, the Democratic Association of Flatbush passed a resolution asking President Grover Cleveland to appoint McCarthy as postmaster of the Flatbush post office. The appointment was not needed: In 1894, when Flatbush was incorporated into the City of Brooklyn, the Flatbush post office became a sub-station of the Brooklyn General Post Office. The old Presidential postal system was finally replaced by a carrier station in Flatbush.
From 1894 to 1896, the Flatbush post office occupied this building at 805-811 Flatbush Avenue (the post office was in #809, which has the barber pole). This property was once owned by former postmaster Richard Schoonmaker in the late 1800s. Two doors down, at #805, was John H. Reis & Company, which also owned the row of brick buildings directly across the street. The frame buildings pictured here in 1922 were demolished in 1930 when Caton Avenue was extended. NYPL Digital Collections
Unlike the Presidential system, the carrier service fell under the Civil Service Commission and did not require political appointment or loyalty. It also replaced the position of postmaster with a superintendent. And, the new carrier system required something Flatbush did not yet have: numbered street addresses for private residences to make home delivery possible.
In March 1894, Brooklyn Postmaster Andrew T. Sullivan appointed McCarthy as superintendent of the new Flatbush sub-station, aka, Station F. Sullivan based his hiring decision not on politics but on the many endorsements the young man had received from the residents of the town. The new Station F post office at 809 Flatbush Avenue opened on March 1, 1894.
Mail delivery began on May 16, 1894, with six letter carriers reporting to McCarthy: Edward R. Burt, Michael Rutledge, Tom Easop, Harry Ahearn, Tom Burney, and Louis D. Ryno. They made four deliveries a day. (When he retired in 1920, Ryno estimated he had walked millions of miles delivering mail along his route from Lenox Road to Malbone Street and from Rogers to Albany Avenues.)
Sadly, McCarthy took gravely ill shortly after taking over the new post office. Although he realized that death was near, he continued working until he was too weak to leave his house.
On December 17, 1895, at the age of 28, McCarthy died of consumption in the home he shared with his mother on Nostrand Avenue. As the Brooklyn Times Union noted, “He was honest, honorable, and reliable in every respect. Those who knew him best loved him most. In his death the people of Flatbush has sustained a loss.”
Postmaster Richard Flannery
Richard A. Flannery, formerly a chief clerk of Station U on Fifth Avenue and 12th Street, was immediately appointed to fill McCarthy’s former $1,000-a-year position.
Under Flannery, with Flatbush experiencing exponential growth, the post office moved directly across the street into the second floor of the new, four-story Reis and Davenport building at 830 Flatbush Avenue, just south of Caton Avenue. That year, 1896, the number of carriers increased to nine, and the number of deliveries increased to five per day.
The Flatbush post office was in a 4-story brick building at 830 Flatbush Avenue (later renumbered #826), as noted on this 1905 Sanborn map. The building was owned by real estate developers John Reis and Henry Davenport.
Over the next few years, the post office was expanded two times (notice the rear extension to the building in the map above), more than doubling in size. It remained at this location until 1913.
From 1896 to 1913, the Flatbush post office occupied the second floor of the boarded-up building on the far left. The first floor was occupied by a store; the two top floors were occupied by apartments. The government paid $2,000 a month to rent the space. Here is the corner of Flatbush Avenue and Caton Avenue in 1929. The old post office building is just out of view on the far left.
In 1913, a new Flatbush Post Office was constructed on Flatbush Avenue between Snyder Avenue and Albemarle Road. The new facility shared the building with the Flatbush Savings Bank.
It was here that Bill the cat was working when he disappeared in 1922. During this time, William F. Costello was the superintendent. (Perhaps the superintendent was Bill’s namesake?)
The post office where Bill the cat lived and worked was above the Flatbush Bank at 959-965 Flatbush Avenue, as shown on this 1920 E.B. Hyde map. NYPL Digital Collections
Two years after Bill the cat disappeared and reappeared, the Flatbush Post Office moved one block east to a building at 2265 Bedford Avenue. The modern brick and limestone building was considered the nicest sub-station in Brooklyn, with 8,000 square feet of space on the first floor, plenty of ventilation, and lots of windows for selling stamps and money orders.
Hopefully, when the 108 employees moved into the new building on April 1, 1924, they took Bill the cat with them.
The new Flatbush post office at Snyder and Bedford Avenue, March 1924. Here is the same building as it looks today.
When the lease expired on this building in April 1934, the post office moved into a brick factory building on the southeast corner of Erasmus and Lott Streets. The problem with this temporary location was that the street was considered a “play street” for young boys. Patrons often complained that they could not get their vehicles down the street or that their car windows had been broken by batted base balls.
Young boys played ball and rode bikes on Erasmus Street, making it difficult for patrons to use the temporary Flatbush Post Office.
In August 1934, a new site at 2273 Church Avenue–previously occupied by an auto repair shop and a blacksmith, and then occupied by a used car lot–was selected for the next and current Flatbush Post Office. A dedication ceremony for the $140,000 facility took place on October 7, 1936.
Before there was a post office: 2271-2287 Church Avenue, showing Cain & McIntyre Auto Repair and Halliday’s Blacksmith shop, about 1922. New-York Historical Society2271-1187 Church Avenue in 1932, two years before the new Flatbush post office was constructed on the site. NYPL Digital Collections.
The new Flatbush post office on Church Avenue.
A dedication ceremony for the new, $140,000 post office took place on October 7, 1936.
