1899: Leonidas Arniotis and the Great Dog and Cat Circus That Took NYC by Storm

Posted: 3rd July 2019 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Stories
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The cats and dogs of Professor Leonidas Arniotis' Great Dog and Cat Circus closed each performance with a parade across the stage led by a Great Dane ringmaster.
The cats and dogs of Professor Leonidas Arniotis’ Great Dog and Cat Circus closed each performance with a parade across the stage led by a Great Dane ringmaster. I feel bad for those poor little critters, but I imagine for some of them, their life in a circus was better than life on the hard streets of the city.

One dog on a hot day, and one cat on a hot night can do much to arouse a neighborhood, but when man tries to conceive of the pandemonium attaching to twenty-five dogs and thirteen cats, the imagination meets its Waterloo.”—New York Morning Tribune, June 19, 1899

The Cats and Dogs Survive a Fire

On Sunday morning, June 18, 1899, Charles Randolph, a porter with Koster & Bial’s Music Hall at 135 West 34th Street, noticed flames coming from the stage on the theater’s rooftop garden. Randolph and some other men who were getting the theater ready for a performance that evening grabbed a standpipe hose and tried to put out of the flames. Although the hose was attached to two large water tanks, the water was not enough. Soon the fire was out of control.

Randolph ran down the street and pulled the fire alarm. Engine Company No. 1 on West 29th Street was the first company to respond, followed by numerous other companies that responded to second and third alarms for the fire at Koster & Bial’s.

Manager Alfred E. Aarons, who lived just three doors from Koster & Bial’s Music Hall, also responded to the scene. His very first concern was for the approximately 25 dogs and 13 dogs belonging to Leonidas Arniotis. The animals were scheduled to perform their popular sold-out circus act on the rooftop garden that night.

According to one account in the New York Times, the animals were locked inside cages near the rear of the stage in the main auditorium of the building. Aarons reportedly opened a cage occupied by two Great Danes who in turn leaped out and knocked him down. He then opened all the other cages, and soon the dogs were running all over the theater seats. The cats refused to budge from their cages (what a surprise).

Within minutes, the animals’ trainer appeared on the scene and blew his whistle. All the cats and dogs immediately came to him, allowing him to lead the animals safely out the door and to the street. Not one animal was lost in the chaos.

This headline about the fire and Professor Leonidas' dog and cat circus appeared in The New York Times on June 19, 1899.
This headline appeared in The New York Times on June 19, 1899.

Another news account in the New York Tribune reported that the animals were all in cages in the rooftop garden, near the origin of the fire. This article claimed that the animals were running loose on the roof, and that several firemen were bitten by the dogs. The firemen turned their hoses on the dogs to subdue them, while the cats reportedly climbed up the smoking scenery and scaled a high wall to find refuge on the tops of adjoining buildings.

The latter news account provides a much more entertaining picture, but because the two newspapers reported the event so differently, I have no way of proving which story was correct. Either way, all the animals were saved, so that’s all that matters.

As for the fire, the firemen were able to turn four hose streams on the stage and scenery in order to douse the flames. The fire didn’t penetrate below the roof so there was no damage to the interior. Workmen spent all day making repairs and constructing a new temporary stage so that the great dog and cat circus could go on as planned that evening.

The cats and dogs performed on the roof garden of Koster and Bial’s Music Hall (formerly called Oscar Hammerstein’s Manhattan Opera House) at 135 West 34th Street, which opened on August 28, 1893. One time, 9 cats escaped and went missing in the theater while they were hunting for mice. Today, this is the site of Macy’s flagship store, constructed in 1901. Museum of the City of New York Collections
Koster & Bial 23rd Street
The first Koster & Bial’s Music Hall was located on the corner of Sixth Avenue and 23rd Street. Originally home to Bryant’s Opera House, it featured an open-air garden and an enclosed theater. NYPL Digital Collections
Leonidas Arniotis’s Great Dog and Cat Circus

“I train my dogs and cats by kindness and patience—oh, so much patience! The main thing is to get them to understand what you want them to do, and then they do it quickly enough. Dogs have more reason than cats and are far easier to train. Cats are, like women, capricious. One must coax them all the time. If you let a cat know that you are trying to make it do a thing, it won’t do it. One must be always kind to them.” –Leonidas Arniotis, in Pearson’s Magazine, Vol. 5, 1898

The cats and dogs were owned and trained by Professor Leonidas Arniotis (1862-1939), a Greek entertainer and former horse trainer who had been showcasing his animals in North America for the past two years. Leonidas had arrived in New York City on March 22, 1897. Almost immediately, the entertainer took New York City and other American cities by storm with his troupe of talented cats and dogs.

Leonidas Arniotis’ dogs included a Great Dane ringmaster and numerous other international dogs and cats. In this illustration, the Great Dane is “arresting” Cerberus following a favorite act.

Leonidas Arniotis had an international four-legged troupe that featured about two dozen dogs, including a Great Dane who served as porter and ringmaster, a Siberian wolf hound, a French poodle, a St. Bernard, a Newfoundland, and a hairless little dog from Mexico.

Although he admitted that he would prefer to train 20 dogs than just one cat, he also had about a dozen cats, including a “feline aeronaut” who dropped to the stage in a parachute. According to Leonidas Arniotis, all the animals lived in baskets and curled up “together in hearty good fellowship.”

Leonidas said he fed his animals every day at 4 p.m. (not only did the cats get the best meat and milk and soup, but they were also allowed to go foraging for mice in the theaters sometimes.). He did not believe in using hunger as a training method, because he believed they did better work with a full belly. He only “rarely” whipped his dogs but he “wouldn’t dare punish the cats at all.” As he explained, “Why, I believe if I struck one of those cats she would never act again.”

One of the favorite acts featured the dogs acting as horses and the cats as riders. The dogs would trot around the ring, and then, while they were passing under two stools, a cat would spring onto the dog’s back. Leoniadas Arniotis explained that because the cats used their claws at first to get a good grip, it took him months to teach them to hold on by the pressure of their legs instead of by their claws.

The cats would jump onto the dogs’ backs and ride them like horses.
Cerberus and Mimisse, the Stars of Leonidas’ Circus

Another show-stealer featured a Parisian cat named Mimisse, who dropped from the stage’s proscenium arch in a parachute. According to one news report, the cat was trained to climb a rope all the way to the top of the stage, walk out onto a platform under the parachute, step into the parachute basket, and, “with a look of supreme indifference at the audience below,” pull a trip rope and sail “majestically towards the stage.”

Mimisse stole the show with her parachute act during the Leonidas Arniotis great dog and cat circus show.
Mimisse stole the show with her parachute act during the dog and cat circus show.

After Mimisse (aka Pippina) reached the stage, she was met by her partner, a black spaniel named Cerberus who was wearing his best evening dress. The two would do a short comedy act, as described in the March 6, 1897 issue of Scientific American Supplement:

“A comic scene which follows is a triumph in animal training. ‘Cerberus’ is chained at the left side of the stage. ‘Pippina’ takes her place on a chair at the right, and Mr. Arniotis is seated at a well covered table in the center, ready to eat his supper. He has nothing to drink, and, as there is no one to wait on him, he is obliged to go for it himself.

After he has left the stage Cerberus slips his collar off, climbs up on the table and eats the entire meal. As he is swallowing the last mouthful a thought comes to him of the punishment that must follow, and he looks to his friend to help him out of his difficulty. Pippina is then taken by the collar and set on the table, where she remains looking sad, while Cerberus resumes his collar. Mr. Arniotis returns, is suspicious of the unhappy victim sitting among the empty dishes, and is about to punish her, when she climbs on her master and whispers in his ear that Cerberus is the real culprit. Pippina’s innocence is established, [the Great Dane appears and arrests the dog], and the audience thanks the performers with a round of applause.”

According to Helen M. Winslow, author of Concerning Cats: My Own and Others (1900), Leonidas acquired Mimisse while studying in Paris. One day, according to the story, he was standing on a bridge over the Seine when he witnessed a man tossing a cat into the river. Leonidas winked at Cerberus (the first dog he ever trained), who immediately jumped into the river and seized the cat by the nape of her neck. This was not the dog’s first rescue: he once jumped into a river to save a child who had fallen into the water, and was thereafter trained to dive for Leonidas’ purse when he dropped it into 15 feet of water.

The two animals became inseparable and performed many tricks together, albeit, Leonidas said it took him three years to train the cat by using flattery and extensive petting. For the parachute trick, he said he first taught Mimesse how to open an enter a basket that the Great Dane held in his mouth, and then he let the parachute down very slowly at first until she was comfortable with faster speeds. (He reportedly also had a German cat named Marguerite who could also perform the parachute trick. Perhaps she was the understudy.)

Leonidas Arniotis with his animals; Scientific American Supplement, Volume 43, January 1897.
Leonidas Arniotis with his educated cats and dogs; Scientific American Supplement, Volume 43, January 1897.

I’m not sure when Leonidas Arniotis stopped the Great Dog and Cat Circus, but I assume it was sometime around 1900, when the last ad for his circus at the London Hippodrome appeared in newspapers. According to the Hellenic Institute, Leonidas Arniotis spent the last years of his life in London, where he owned a bookshop and cafe in St. Giles’s High Street.

If you liked this story, you may enjoy reading about Herr George Techow, who performed with his cats in the late 1800s.

George Techow trained cats
Herr George Techow’s trained cats could walk on their front feet, jump through hoops of fire, jump over each other on a tight rope, and perform other acts that astonished vaudeville audiences in the late 1890s to early 1900s. In later years, George’s wife, Alice, took over.

For more history-related information about Koster & Bial’s Music Hall, you may enjoy reading about the boxing kangaroo that performed at their theater on 23rd Street in 1893.

1904: The Great Catnip Caper on Avenue B in New York City’s East Village

Posted: 26th June 2019 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Men, Cat Stories
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Joseph Weiss was a pied piper with catnip
The “cats came to the catnip from every gutter, roof, and basement in the vicinity like rats to the pipes of the Piper of Hamelin.”–New York Times, September 13, 1904

“This is the most extraordinary thing I ever heard of,” Magistrate Alfred E. Ommen told Policeman Levy, after Levy had finished explaining why he arrested a man for intoxicating cats with catnip powder on the corner of Avenue B and Fifth Street.

Several newspapers covered the catnip caper on Avenue B.
Several newspapers covered the catnip caper on Avenue B.

“I was walking through Fifth Street on Sunday evening,” Levy said, “when I saw a crowd of people at the corner of Avenue B. In the circle was this man, with a circle of all sorts and conditions of cats sitting around him.”

Levy said the cats were tumbling and rolling over and over, all fighting over the catnip powder that the man, Joseph Weiss, had sprinkled on the pavement.

As the cats began to gather from the neighboring roofs and basements, Joseph started to lead his feline following along Avenue B toward Houston Street.

According to a reporter for The New York Times, “Although Weiss walked steadily, the cats staggered like the Bowery after midnight, and emitted a maudlin caterwauling.”

Cats with too much catnip
I imagine this is what the scene looked like a few hours after the catnip delivery.

Several people in the crowd yelled to Policeman Levy to arrest Joseph Weiss for disorderly conduct. Levy did charge Weiss with disorderly conduct, “although he admitted that the man was not nearly as disorderly as the cats, which the prisoner had intoxicated with catnip powder.”

As Levy lead Weiss toward the Union Market police station at East Houston and Sheriff Streets, the cats followed right along, not about to lose sight of the man who had served up their drug of choice. They even followed the men into the station, where a doorman spent the rest of his shift searching for them in the cells and “chasing them off the roof with a mop, lest a shower of acrobatic cats disturb passersby.” (Sadly, the doorman eventually resorted to squirting the cats with a hose to get them to leave the station.)

Magistrate Alfred E. Ommen fined Joseph for feeding catnip to the cats
Magistrate Alfred E. Ommen fined Joseph Weiss $5 for creating a nuisance with catnip.

During his hearing before Magistrate Ommen at the Essex Market Police Court, Joseph begged for mercy, saying that he was innocent of intent to intoxicate, and did not know what effect the powder would have on the cats. He also explained that a friend had told him that he could hypnotize cats with the catnip power.

Justice Ommen–who one year later would decide in favor of a cat-hoarding woman in the Yorkville Police Court–told Levy he did not buy his poor excuse. “You knew, all right,” the judge told Joseph. “I’ll fine you $5 this time, and next time you collect a stack of cats and create a furore on the street I’ll fine you more.”

A Brief History of the Union Market Police Station

In 1834, the city’s Market Committee proposed constructing a market on the triangular lot bounded by East Houston Street (then still called North Street), East Second Street, and Avenue C. The lot was appraised at $8,000, and the committee signed a contract with Charles Overton to build the market at a cost of $5,961.

The Union Market was located on the tip of the triangular lot created by Avenue C, East Houston, and Second Street. A wooden fire bell tower building was located at the eastern end of the brick market building. The area marked in green, once occupied by 115 ramshackle tenements, including a row of brick tenements known as Bone Alley, is now the site of the Hamilton Fish Park. 1895 map via New York Public Library

The original market had stands for six butchers; more stalls were added in 1836. As was par for the course for many of the city’s early buildings, a fire in the spring of 1836 consumed most of the market, along with about 20 other buildings on Avenue D, Second, and Third Streets.

According to reports, the fire had started in White’s and Poulson’s carpenter shop at 304 Third Street and quickly spread, destroying tenements, the market, and the fire bell tower. The market building was a total loss, albeit, the stalls, fixtures, and meats were saved before the fire had reached it.

During the fire, the firemen “flipped their caps” (they turned their hats around) and went on strike, refusing to perform their duties in protest to the firing of Chief Engineer James Gulick. (The men learned that Gulick had been replaced by J.R. Riker during the fire.) The firemen refused to suppress the fire until Gulick had been reinstated. According to news reports, the quarrel resulted in about $300,000 worth of property damage.

Firemen flipped their caps and went on strike during the Union Market fire of 1836, resulting in the loss of many buildings on Avenue D, Second, and Third Streets.

Firemen flipped their caps and went on strike during the Union Market fire of 1836, resulting in the loss of many buildings on Avenue D, Second, and Third Streets.

The following month, the city appropriated $3,000 to rebuild the market and the Fifth District Watch House. About 20 years later, in 1853, the city spent $20,000 to construct a much larger building that could also accommodate a police station for the Eleventh Precinct on the upper floors. The market section of the new building accommodated 18 butchers, 26 hucksters, and several fishermen and butter dealers who had been located on overflow sheds on vacant ground east of the smaller old market building.

Prior to 1864, the Union Market occupied most of the building, as noted on this 1853 map. The yellow building was the wooden fire bell tower.
bell tower at Truck No. 1 station in Stapleton, Staten Island

The fire bell tower at the Union Market would have looked similar to this bell tower at Truck No. 1 station in Stapleton, Staten Island. At one time, 14 policemen were assigned to the various fire towers throughout the city as bell ringers. The tower system in Manhattan was replaced by a telegraph system on November 15, 1865. The new system comprised all the main machinery at police headquarters on Mulberry Street and four lines of wires for the East, West, South, and North districts.

In 1864, the Union Market building was reconfigured again to serve primarily as a police station, with only the eastern end dedicated to market purposes (as shown in the 1895 map above). The city shut down the police station (then known as the Seventeenth Precinct) in 1921, although it continued to use the building as a storage facility for all the malt, spirits, and other liquors confiscated by the police during the Prohibition era.

In fact, in June 1921, Deputy Police Commissioner John A. Leach officiated at a “funeral” for the liquor, in which numerous barrels and bottles of alcohol were opened and poured down a manhole on Sheriff Street, turning the East River into a $50,000 cocktail.

New York City Deputy Police Commissioner John A. Leach (R), ordered the police and other men to pour liquor into the sewers during the height of prohibition.
New York City Deputy Police Commissioner John A. Leach (R), ordered the police and other men to pour liquor down manholes and into the sewers during the height of Prohibition.

In 1931, Police Commissioner Edward Pierce Mulrooney reopened the Union Market police station and placed Captain Jerome A. Foley in command. The new precinct was home to a new Eleventh Precinct made up of police officers from the nearby Clinton Street and Fifth Street police stations.


The Union Market police station at 130 Sheriff Street, also known as the Sheriff Street Station, as it looked around 1940.

When the city widened East Houston Street in the late 1950s, all the buildings on the north side of the street–including the old Union Market building–were obliterated, creating numerous empty lots and leaving the back of the tenement rows along East Second Avenue exposed until development picked up in later years.

If you enjoyed this cat tale, check out another catnip caper that took place in 1909 in East Harlem!

1902-1908: The Chevalier and His Clowder of Cats on Carnegie Hill, Part 2

Posted: 18th June 2019 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Men, Cat Stories
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Chevalier Albert de Bassini loved his cats that lived with him in the Carnegie Hill neighborhood of Manhattan.
Chevalier Alberto de Bassini could never turn away a stray cat in need of food and shelter, even after he was ordered by the New York Health Department to stop harboring cats.

In Part I of this cat-man tale of Old New York, we met Alberto Gaston de Bassini, aka the Chevalier, a kind and generous opera singer who truly loved and cared about cats. The Chevalier rescued cats from the streets of Carnegie Hill, fed them, bathed them, sang arias to them, and named them after heroes and heroines from famous operas.

In June 1902, an inspector from the New York Health Department ordered de Bassini to remove all of the stray cats from his yard and apartment at 171 East 92st Street. One or more of the Chevalier’s Carnegie Hill neighbors had complained that the noisy clowder of more than 20 felines were making their lives miserable in the apartment building.

Alberto Gaston de Bassini was a famous singer from Italy, who moved to the Carnegie Hill neighborhood in the late 1800s
Alberto Gaston de Bassini was a famous opera singer from Italy

Alberto complied with the orders by giving away most of his cats to the many women who were seeking a musically educated cat of their very own. However, he did keep a few cats, including two kittens that were too young to be adopted and one other cat that that was too troublesome for any potential mistress to desire.

The Chevalier Continues Collecting Cats on Carnegie Hill

Being given to the artistic temperament, he has dealt unpractically in the matter of housing stray tabbies. No cat ever saw the kindly face of the old tenor, now a teacher, that it did not purr pleadingly at his heels and receive a welcome. In the neighborhood the chevalier was known for his tenderness of heart and for his consideration of stray and hungry and friendless tabbies. –New York Times, October 22, 1908

In 1908, Chevalier de Bassini was back to collecting and care for homeless cats.
In 1908, Chevalier de Bassini was back to collecting and caring for homeless cats. This comical headline ran in the New York Times on October 22, 1908

Sometime between 1902 and 1908, de Bassini moved his family to a new flat in the Carnegie Hill neighborhood at 111 East 96th Street. I’m not sure if he brought cats with him, or if he started collecting new tabbies once he moved, but by 1908 he had 28 cats. According to the New York Times, that was about 27 more cats than he could take care of at that time.

One of the cats was a tiny black kitten that the Chevalier had rescued from a barbershop on Lexington Avenue near 96th Street, about a block from his home. The barbershop was run by Tony Savareto, aka the Yorkville Barber, and his apprentice, Club-Foot Frank.

According to a small article in The Sun, Frank was sweeping the floor when he noticed a tiny black kitten caught up in the tufts of cut hair from a man’s beard. The Chevalier, who had just stepped into the shop, scooped up the kitten and took him home.

In October 1908, the Chevalier reportedly brought the 28th cat to his apartment in the small, three-story with basement brick and brownstone building on East 96th Street. It was this cat, a reporter for the New York Times said, who was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Here’s what the Times reported:

Yesterday the chevalier took in his twenty-eighth cat and found that there was barely room for his most promising pupil. The young lady was prepared to sing Azucena’s ‘Stride la Vampa,’ and was primed and ready for it when the twenty-eighth cat began a suffragette argument with the other twenty-seven, and the music lesson began with an obbligato that would have given ideas in cacophony to Richard Strauss.

‘Mater beatissima!’ moaned the chevalier. ‘It is time to get rid of a few cats.'”

According to the story, a friend of the Chevalier went to a telephone and informed the newspapers that de Bassini would be giving many cats away that afternoon from 2 to 4 p.m. The news was rushed for the early afternoon editions.

Musical Cats for Elegant Homes

Later that day, when he was finished with his music students, de Bassini sat down with a glass of wine and his smokes, and waited for the cat lovers to arrive. He told the press he would choose only those who promised to provide an elegant home for the cats; young boys and any type of shop owner–especially a butcher shop owner–would be turned away if not slapped in the face for even trying to get a cat.

Only these people who could promise to provide an elegant home for the cats-like this vintage kitty obviously had--would be allowed to take one of the Chevalier's felines.
Only these people who could promise to provide an elegant home for the cats–like this vintage kitty obviously had–would be allowed to take one of the Chevalier’s felines.

The first customer to arrive was a deaf woman who said she knew all about the history of Egyptian cat worship. She said she wanted a few cats, and that she knew all about cats and their philosophy and yearnings. The woman reportedly left the flat with as many cats as she could carry.

As the New York Times noted, “The deaf woman was followed by a dozen other women with keen ears and large desires to own cats. They swamped the apartment house, all demanding cats, and all wanting to know whether it was true that the Chevalier’s tabbies had become so trained in music that they could howl in key to the music of Verdi and the other Italian masters.”

One woman told de Bassini that she was also an artist, and that she knew for certain that cats “have a musical comprehension” and an “artistic nature.” The Chevalier bowed low and presented her with a cat.

Another woman scorned those who were too snobby to take a mangy cat, noting that these cruel women didn’t love cats for themselves, but only wanted cats of a certain pedigree. She selected three beautiful cats and one mangy white cat whom she said would improve with a little kindness and some cold cream.

Alberto de Bassini
Alberto de Bassini was a leading tenor of the opera at La Scala, godson of the great Verdi, music teacher to the Queen of Portugal and the King of Italy, and a kindly friend of all animals.

Later on in the day, a horde of newspaper reporters descended on de Bassini’s apartment, joining all the curious neighbors and “cat-demanding multitude.” Finding himself cornered, he fell into the arms of a reporter and begged him to end the publicity and lead him away from his almost cat-less home.

“Heaven knows when he’ll be back,” neighbor Miss Lula Baer told the press. “He is a great man and sings divinely. So do his cats. You ought to hear them. They all come in with him from the streets hungry and dirty and he feeds them and washes them, and then those cats get the artistic temperament.”

Miss Baer continued, “Oh, it’s wonderful, but it’s hard to keep as many as twenty-eight cats in a small flat, and he’s married, you know, and wants to go back to Italy soon. It would be a hard job to get a wife and twenty-eight cats to Italy.”

Vera de Bassini, the Italian Nightingale
The Chevalier’s daughter, Vera, was a successful singer on the Vaudeville circuit during the early 1900s. She was known as “The Italian Nightingale.”

All in all, Alberto gave away about 17 cats and kept the rest for himself. Two of the cats he kept were Carmen, a 12-year-old, blind, jet-black cat, and Bee Ju Gee, a cat with deformed front feet.

The Chevalier of cats eventually did get back to Italy, but not before moving out of the Carnegie Hill neighborhood and living in East Harlem for a while at 1590 Lexington Avenue. By 1915, only his wife and daughter–who had a very successful career as a singer with the vaudeville circuit–were living in Manhattan. (Perhaps Alberto de Bassini chose to return to Italy with his cats rather than his wife and daughter? È possibile!)

The Chevalier passed away in Milan, Italy, at an unknown date.

A Brief History of Carnegie Hill

In the early 1900s, Alberto de Bassini lived with his human and feline family in the Carnegie Hill neighborhood, which is roughly bounded by East 86th to East 96th Streets between Fifth and Third Avenues.

Carnegie Hill as it looked in 1818 when the Randel Farm maps were created.
Carnegie Hill, as it looked in 1818 when the Randel Farm Maps were created. Prominent landowners at this time included the Rhinelanders, Sandfords, Benson, Durye, Douglas, Gautro, and Bogert.

The earliest known history of this part of Manhattan goes back hundreds of years, when a tribe of the Algonquian Nation lived in a seasonal village called Konaande Kongh, which was located on a hillside stretching between present-day 93rd and 98th Streets along Park Avenue. The village was surrounded by dense woods of maple trees and berry bushes to the west and a cultivated fertile plain to the east for growing vegetables and herbs.

In October 1667, Governor Richard Nicolls granted large tracts of land in New Haerlem (which encompassed from about 74th Street to 129th Street) to Thomas Delavall, John Verveelen, Daniel Tourneur, Joost Oblinus, and Baron Resolved Waldron. The patent included all houses, buildings, barns, stables, orchards, gardens, mills, ponds, fencing, and other natural and man-made structures on the land. Resolved Waldron’s allotment was known as Hellgate or Horne’s Hook, and primarily encompassed the land from 75th to 94th Streets between Third Avenue and the East River.

Resolved Waldron’s farm, later referred to as the Waldron Farm, passed through several generations of Waldrons, including Samuel, Johannes, William, and Adolph. At one point, the farm comprised 156 acres, which included the original patent plus additional lands acquired throughout the years.

Just prior to the Revolutionary War, Adolph Waldron sold his fields and pastures to Abraham Durye, a New York merchant. Although Durye’s heirs retained a small tract near 93rd Street, most of the irregular, triangular tracts were conveyed–through the early 1800s–to John G. Bogert, Nathaniel Sandford, Xaviero Gautro, Natianiel Prime, Edward Douglas, and William Rhinelander.

The two apartment buildings where the Chevalier lived with his cats in the early 1900s were constructed on lands formerly owned by Gautro and Douglas.

This illustration depicting the area of Fifth Avenue and 96th Street in Carnegie Hill was created in 1875.
Land speculation in the Carnegie Hill area did not go into full swing until the late 1870s, with the opening of the IRT Third Avenue Elevated Railroad in 1878. This illustration depicting the area of Fifth Avenue and 96th Street was created in 1875. New York Public Library Digital Collections

Madison Avenue, 95th Street, 1891
Even in 1891, when this photo of a very old frame house on Madison Avenue between 95th and 96th Street was taken, what would become the Carnegie Hill neighborhood was extremely rural. Note the cobblestone roadway. NYPL Digital Collections.
Carnegie Hill was named for Andrew Carnegie, who completed his mansion (right) at 91st Street and Fifth Avenue in 1901. The mansion was the first American residence to have a steel frame and among the first to have a private Otis Elevator and central heating. NYPL Digital Collections.
Carnegie Hill was named for steel industry magnate Andrew Carnegie, who completed his mansion (right) at 91st Street and Fifth Avenue in 1901. The mansion was the first American residence to have a steel frame and among the first homes to have a private Otis Elevator and central heating. NYPL Digital Collections.

1902-1908: The Chevalier and His Clowder of Cats on Carnegie Hill, Part I

Posted: 14th June 2019 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Men, Cat Stories
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The story of the Chevalier and his cats was reported in dozens of newspapers across the country. This image appeared in the New York Evening World on June 5.
The story of the Chevalier and his cats was reported in dozens of newspapers across the country. This image appeared in the New York Evening World on June 5.


“No cat ever saw the kindly face of the old tenor, now a teacher of music, that it did not purr pleadingly at his heels and receive a welcome.”–New York Times, October 22, 1908


Alberto Gaston de Bassini, aka the Chevalier, was a man who truly loved and cared about cats. He rescued them, fed them, bathed them, and sang to them, and named them after heroes and heroines from famous operas.

Unfortunately for de Bassini–and the cats–his wife and daughter were not fond of felines. Neither were his neighbors or his fellow tenants at 171 East 91st Street in the Carnegie Hill section of Manhattan.

When an inspector from the Health Department paid a visit to de Bassini in June 1902, he found about 17 cats in the backyard and about 11 cats lounging on the mantelpiece and dining room table inside the ground-floor apartment.

Neighbors told the inspector that de Bassini had as many as 35 cats in a room he had established for them in the basement of the building. (And this is only Part I of the story, so this was only the start of this crazy cat man’s obsession with felines!) The neighbors complained that the cats were giving them insomnia and making their lives miserable.

Read the rest of this entry »

1901: The Tramp Cats That Took Over A Bronx Tenement on St. Ann’s Avenue

Posted: 2nd June 2019 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Stories
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Vintage cat lady
This is not Mrs. L.J. Watts, but I just love the vintage cat-lady photos.

In January 1901, give or take a month, Mrs. L.J. Watts, the janitress for the five-story tenement at 141 Saint Ann’s Avenue in the Bronx, opened her heart–and the door–to a purring fur-ball that was seeking shelter from the cold. Mrs. Watts led the kitten into the cellar and gave her some food.

Luckily for the stray cats of Saint Ann’s Avenue, Mrs. Watts’ heart was also a soft one with lots of room for love. The next morning, she found three more cats, all of whom she welcomed and fed in the cellar. From that point on, the cats kept coming.

As a reporter noted in the New York Times on March 4, 1901, “tramp cats like tramp men have their means of letting each other know of anything good that may exist for all.” Two days after Mrs. Watts took in the one kitten, there were 10 more cats waiting for her at the cellar door. By the end of the week, she had almost 70 cats.

Mrs. Watts confessed that she had a soft heart, and she welcomed the poor cats out of the kindness of her heart. She told the reporter that she could not bring herself to shoo the suffering creatures away.

By the end of the week, the tenants in the building began grumbling. Either the cats moved out, or they would.

Some of the tenants told the press that they had been awakened several times in the middle of the night by what they thought was a wailing infant. One woman on the third floor complained, “Grand opera is bad enough, where they sing in a different language every night, but this polyglot performance sort of continuous Tower of Babel style can’t go on any longer.”

Within a few months, Mrs. Watts had almost 50 cats living in the cellar. Regretfully and with some misgivings of conscience, Mrs. Watts went to the Health Board. “Take them by ones, take them by twos, take them in baskets, wagons–only take them,” she petitioned. But the board told her they could do nothing for her.

The Health Board directed the cat lady to apply to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. “Bring them to One Hundred and Second Street and East River and we’ll prevent any further cruelty,” they wrote her. But Mrs. Watts had no means of transportation, so that was not a viable solution either.

SPCA dog pound, 102nd Street and the East River, 1934.
The SPCA wanted Mrs. Watts to bring all of her cats to their dog pound on the East River at 102nd Street, pictured here on the left in 1934. Although the SPCA typically offered to bring its wagons to private residences free of charge, in 1901, the year this story takes place, the SPCA notified residents that it would no longer provide this service as it could not handle the hundreds of requests to pick up unwanted dogs and cats. New York Public Library Digital Collections

In the end, it was one of the disgruntled tenants who dispersed the cats, albeit, in a rather cruel way. According to news accounts, Mr. Bergman purchased two pounds of sulfur, which he took to the cellar, and, after closing all the doors except the front one, he placed on a large iron pot. He then dumped the sulfur into a shovelful of live coals and made his escape.

In less than fifteen minutes, 39 cats of all sizes and colors rushed from the basement and scattered about the neighborhood. I have a feeling that they may have all come back eventually, but nothing was reported in the press.

A Brief History of Saint Ann’s Avenue
Saint Ann's Avenue on map
The five-story brick tenement building at 141 Saint Ann’s Avenue (formerly Carr Street) was located near the corner of East 134th Street (now the site of the Major Deegan Expressway overpass). This land was all once part of the estate of Gouverneur Morris, who established the large township of Morrisania in 1808 and built a mansion house on his farm overlooking the East River between present-day St. Ann’s Avenue, Cypress Avenue, and East 130th-133rd Streets.

Saint Ann’s Avenue was located in the Port Morris section of the Bronx,
which was established as a seaport in 1842 by Gouverneur Morris II, son of United States founding father Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816). Back then, Port Morris was part of the large township of Morrisania.

In the early 1800s, Saint Ann’s Avenue was called Fordham Avenue. In addition to the Boston Post Road and the railroad, it was one of only three transit routes through this section of the Bronx.

On this 1811 map, you can see the location of Gouverneur Morris' estate at the southern tip of the Bronx (center left of map).
On this 1811 map, you can see the location of Gouverneur Morris’ estate at the southern tip of the Bronx (center left of map). Northwest of the G. Morris mansion, on the western side of the Mill Creek, was the home owned by Gouverneur’s nephew, Commodore Richard Valentine Morris. Another nephew, Colonel Lewis Morris IV, lived in a house close to the Harlem Bridge. The map also shows the estates of John Graham (Gouverneur’s cousin) and Joshua Waddington (the husband of his cousin Gertrude Ogden).
Saint Ann's Avenue is noted on this 1867 map of Port Morris; however, the street has not yet been developed.
Saint Ann’s Avenue is noted on this 1867 map of Port Morris; however, the street has not yet been developed. The location of the old Gouverneur Morris mansion is also noted on this map.

At the age of 57, Gouverneur Morris married Anne Cary Randolph of Virginia. Their son, Gouverneur Morris II, was born in Morrisania in 1813. The son became a pioneer railroad builder and a notable figure in Bronx real estate development; he was the first to develop Port Morris in the 1840s.

In the 1850s, the Port Morris waterfront developed as an industrial center for businesses such as stone works and furniture and piano factories. By the late 1800s, Port Morris was the capital of piano manufacturing in the United States. Throughout the inland section of the seaport, developers constructed apartment buildings and commercial blocks to serve factory employees.

The large, 5-story double flat with stores at 141 Saint Ann’s Avenue where the cats sought shelter in 1901 was constructed some time during the 1880s. In the early 1900s, the building was owned by Barnett Fishman and Jacob Berman.

The Gouverneur Morris mansion was located at the intersection of Saint Ann's Avenue, Cypress Avenue, and East 132nd Street
The old Gouverneur Morris mansion was between present-day Cypress Avenue and Saint Ann’s Avenue near East 131st Street, about three blocks south of the tenement house featured in this story. The house remained standing until 1905.
The Gouverneur Morris mansion was located at the intersection of Saint Ann's Avenue, Cypress Avenue, and East 132nd Street
This photo of the old Morris mansion was taken in 1900, the home was demolished in 1905. City of the Museum of New York Collections
The Gouverneur Morris mansion was located at the intersection of Saint Ann's Avenue and East 132nd Street. This photo shows the well for the home.
Here is the well for the old Morris mansion, which was still standing in 1910. City of the Museum of New York Collections

In 1905, there was a meeting in the office of Olin J. Stephens, president of the North Side Board of Trade, to discuss a plan to save the old Morris mansion from being converted into a freight terminal for the New York, New Haven, and Hartford railroad terminal, which then owned the property. The plan was to turn the property into a public park, but sadly, those plans fell through.

The location of the large Morris mansion (pink building) and the farm buildings and stables (yellow buildings) are noted on this 1885 map.
The location of the large Morris mansion (pink building) and the farm buildings and stables (yellow buildings) are noted on this 1885 map. Some of the farm buildings remained standing through about 1920.

On November 22, 1905, the New York Times reported, “recently our hearts ached at the demolition of the most prominent historic landmark of the Bronx–the venerable Gouverneur Morris mansion. The New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad Company coveted its site, and it is a thing of the past.”

Saint Ann's Avenue in 2019
The former site of the Gouverneur Morris mansion is now a large FedEx shipping center.

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