1891: Princeton, the Pampered Cat of Broadway Actress Julia Marlowe

Posted: 28th July 2019 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Stories
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Julia Marlowe with her cat Princeton
Julia Marlowe with her cat Princeton

The Home for Friendless Domestic Animals

In 1891, Broadway actress Julia Marlowe boarded her cat Princeton at the new “Home for Friendless Domestic Animals” in Washington Heights. Julia reportedly paid 50 cents a week for Princeton to stay at the home while she was out of town touring with various theater groups throughout the country.

I don’t know where Julia was living at this time, but she may have read about the home for cats in the newspapers and taken the Tenth Avenue cable car, which stopped at 187th Street and allowed passengers to take cats and dogs to the home on designated days of the week.

Open Parlor E Car; Julia Marlowe may have taken this cable car to the Home for Friendless Cats in 1891.
The Tenth Avenue cable road from 125th to 187th opened on December 1, 1886. Passengers paid 25 cents to ride on the open parlor cars on this route, like the “E” car shown here. In 1890, Superintendent Edward Lyon made plans to allow passengers to take unwanted cats and dogs on the cable cars on designated days of the week, so that they could bring them to the Home for Friendless Domestic Animals.

The home, on the east side of Amsterdam Avenue near West 187th Street, was operated by the Society to Befriend Domestic Animals. The society was founded by Mrs. Sarah J. Edwards and Mrs. Grace Georgia Devide. Other members included Mrs. Sarah Jennie Edwards, Mrs. Emma Charlton, Mrs. Mary Hans, and Mrs. Mary Wilson.

In 1891, Miss Marlowe was still four years away from making her successful debut on Broadway, which would establish her as a leading American actress of Shakespeare. So I imagine she did not have a lot of money at this time, and therefore, had no other affordable option for boarding her cherished cat (just an assumption). She may have also believed that Pumpkin would be happy being with other cats in a country setting.

The Home for Friendless Cats, Washington Heights, where Julia Marlowe boarded her cat in 1891
As one New York paper reported, the old farmhouse was “on the verge of dissolution” and its surroundings were “of the most dismal description.” A signboard outside the door was painted in white letters: “We speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. Home for friendless domestic animals. Compassion.” There were also holes cut in the door so the animals could come and go.

You see, the home for friendless animals comprised a dilapidated, two-story frame farmhouse and two barns on the former Barney and Rosannah Bowers farm, which the society rented for $50 a month. The paint had all but worn off the house, and many of the windows were broken, but it did have some features that I’m sure the cats and dogs enjoyed. Here’s how Grace Devide described the home to a reporter:

“We’ve got the finest place in the world for the poor cats… It’s got a couple of barns upon it, which we’ll fix up for the cats to sleep in, you know. I’ll live in the house, and Mrs. Edwards’ niece, who loves cats just as much as I do, will be there with me, and help care for the poor maltreated things.

Oh, we’re going to have a regular little heaven for the cats up there, you know. We’ll have the place all fenced in with wire, so they can’t get out, and they will have the run of the house during the day.”

The ladies of the Society to Befriend Domestic Animals rented an old farmhouse and two stables, possibly the three yellow structures on Amsterdam Avenue between 185th Street and 187th Street. Click here for a more detailed look at Washington Heights in 1891.
The ladies of the Society to Befriend Domestic Animals rented an old farmhouse and two stables on the Bowers farm, possibly the three yellow structures circled here near 187th Street, which had not yet been cut through. Click here for a more detailed look at Washington Heights in 1891.

When the home first opened in October 1890, the women welcomed their first four-legged customers, which included 14 cats and 7 dogs (the dogs were let in through a separate side door). Some of the original feline boarders included Malta, Lady Hardy, and Cash. The fencing had not yet been installed, but the women said they planned on creating four fenced-in areas on the six-acre property to keep all the male and female cats and dogs separated.

By April 1891, there were 125 cats and 10 dogs at the house, including a few boarders whose transient owners, like Julia Marlowe, paid for their pet’s stay while they were out of town.

Sadly, the home was shut down in 1893, and the cat women got in trouble with the law for killing hundreds of cats, which was reported by Nellie Bly. I wrote about this morbid turn of events a while back in The Crazy New York Cat Ladies and the Murderous Band of Mercy.

The Home for Friendless Cats, where Julia Marlowe boarded her cat, was on six acres of land along Amsterdam Avenue overlooking the Harlem River. Today the site is occupied by brick tenements and a residence hall and other buildings that are part of Yeshiva University.
The Home for Friendless Cats was on six acres of land along Amsterdam Avenue overlooking the Harlem River. Today the site is occupied by brick tenements and a residence hall and other buildings that are part of Yeshiva University.
Julia Marlowe Moves to the Catskills

In 1899, Julia and her husband, actor Robert Taber, constructed a country home in the western part of the Catskill Mountains which they called Highmount. The estate featured a large colonial home on 400 acres, of which only a small amount was laid out in lawn, garden, and driveways.

Julia loved the outdoors, especially going for long walks and playing golf. She also lived to go “automobiling,” which could do on the driveway leading to her country estate.  

Although Julia and Robert divorced in 1900 after only six years of marriage, Julia continued to reside at Highmount during her off-season, which ran from the end of May through September. Hopefully Pumpkin was able to stay with her in this beautiful home while she was there.

Julia Marlowe Highmount country estate
Today the home of Julia Marlowe, on Route 28, is part of a proposed Belleayre Resort at Catskill Park, adjacent to the Belleayre Ski Center.
The Beresford Cat Club

In 1899, the same year Julia built her new home in the Catskills, Mrs. Clinton Locke of Chicago founded the Beresford Cat Club. The club was named in honor of Lady Marcus Beresford of England, who had founded The Cat Club of England in 1898.

Mrs. Clinton Locke and her Siamese cats, Beresford Cat Club
When Mrs. Locke founded the Beresford Cat Club in 1899, two Siamese cats were listed in the club book, which proves that Siamese cats were owned in America at least one year prior to 1900.

Julia Marlowe was reportedly a very active member of the Beresford Cat Club. According to an article in the Inter Ocean in October 1902, she had several valuable show cats, some of which may have been Siamese.

Fiametta, the Critical Cat

In 1907, while staying at the Royal Palace Hotel in London, Julia was presented with a cat that had been found on the Island of Malta. Ms. Marlowe named her Fiametta, after a play in which she had appeared in New York.

One time, about a year later, Julia received a manuscript for a new play from a theatrical agent in London. While she was away at breakfast, Fiametta sunk her claws into the papers and destroyed them. When Julia returned to her drawing room, she found the cat buried under a pile of the shredded, typewritten pages.

Apparently Fiametta did not think highly of the new play. In fact, according to a small article about the incident in the Altoona Times (Altoona, Pennsylvania), “Julia’s pet cat tore up the manuscript of the play simply because the sagacious animal deemed it worthless.”

Julia Marlowe’s Final Years

Several years after the death of her second husband, actor Edward H. Sothern, in 1933, Julia donated her entire collection of costumes and books to the Museum of the City of New York. She moved into a small suite at the Plaza Hotel overlooking Central Park, which comprised a living room, a small pantry, and two small bedrooms.

Julia Marlowe died at the Plaza on November 12, 1950, at the age of 85. The newspapers noted that she never had any children; there was no mention of her cats.

Julia Marlow and E.H. Sothern as Romeo and Juliet

1904: The Not-so-Lucky Cigar Shop Cat of Bushwick, Brooklyn

Posted: 12th July 2019 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Men, Cat Stories
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Brooklyn cigar manufacturer Charles J. Nielsen had a cigar shop cat named Luck who brought him everything but luck.
Brooklyn cigar manufacturer Charles J. Nielsen had a shop cat named Luck who brought him everything but good luck.

In August 1904, Charles J. Nielsen, one of the most prominent cigar manufacturers in Brooklyn, acquired a black cat for his Bushwick cigar shop at 1369 Broadway, on the southeast corner of Gates Avenue.

I don’t know why Charles added a feline employee to his cigar store. I also don’t know where he got the cat. What I do know is that he named the cat Luck — which, sadly, turned out to be an appropriate name.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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