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.
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.
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
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). 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. 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 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.
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
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. 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.”
The former site of the Gouverneur Morris mansion is now a large FedEx shipping center.
In the first part of this cat tale of Old New York, we met Lillian Russell, the mascot cat for the old nine-hole Dyker Meadow Golf Club in Brooklyn. Lillian was a talented fisher-cat who spent most of her eight years of life on the golf course or in the clubhouse.
In Part II, I will tell you what happened to Lillian Russell and explore some more of the Dyker Meadow Golf Club history.
Requiem for Lillian Russell the Fishing Cat
Lillian Russell was the mascot cat of the Dyker Meadow Golf Club in Brooklyn
Lillian Russell was a large tabby cat who served as the feline mascot for the Dyker Meadow Golf Club, then located along 7th Avenue between 92nd Street and Cropsey Avenue in the Fort Hamilton section of Brooklyn (now the site of the Poly Prep Country Day School).
Named for the famous American actress and singer, Lillian Russell had arrived at the course in 1900, five years after the links were established.
Lillian Russell, the feline mascot of the Dyker Meadow Golf Club, was a remarkable cat who often fished in the ponds on the old Cortelyou property along the Narrows.
In 1821, Peter Cortelyou wrote a letter to William J. Lott concerning some local fishing practices that he thought could jeopardize the Cortelyou family fishery. The fishery was located on the Narrows at the foot of present-day Battery Avenue, adjacent to Dyker Meadows and what would later become Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn.
According to John McPhee, author of “The Founding Fish,” Peter had used the very same fishing practices that he was now complaining about (the use of balloon-like fyke nets held open with hooks). In fact, between 1789 and 1795, Peter reportedly caught over 100,000 shad using the nets.
By 1821, when Peter wrote the letter to William, his catch was down 96 percent, the result of over-fishing in the Narrows.
“Go up Tenth Avenue and in various cross streets running down to the river are some of the worst blocks in the city; and there are blocks corresponding with them along the East River. The names of some of these places are significant: ‘Battle Row,’ and ‘Hell’s Kitchen,’ and ‘Sebastopol.'” — James W. Shepp and Daniel B. Shepp, Shepp’s New York City Illustrated: Scene and Story in the Metropolis of the Western World (1894).
New York Sun, January 17, 1902
Like many of the homeless “crazy cat ladies” throughout New York City’s history, Helen Sawtelle had once had a home. Until she lost it for some reason.
Perhaps the reason she ended up on the streets of Manhattan without a place to call home was loss itself. Maybe she lost her job or all her savings, or maybe she lost a spouse or other loved one who had supported her. Maybe she had lost some of her mental faculties. We’ll never know for sure.
