1904: Lillian Russell, the Fishing Cat of Brooklyn’s Dyker Meadow Golf Club, II

Posted: 19th May 2019 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Mascots, Cat Stories
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Part II of a 2-Part Cat Tale

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 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.

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1904: Lillian Russell, the Fishing Cat of Brooklyn’s Dyker Meadow Golf Club, I

Posted: 13th May 2019 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Mascots, Cat Stories
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Part I of a 2-Part Cat Tale
Fishing at Dyker Meadows
Lillian Russell was the mascot cat of the Dyker Meadow Golf Club in the early 1900s

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.

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1902: The Homeless Cat Lady of Battle Row on Tenth Avenue and West 61st Street

Posted: 27th April 2019 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Stories, Crazy Cat Ladies
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“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.

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1924: Gerry and the Cats of Fort Greene Place Who Drove an Artist From His Brooklyn Home

Posted: 19th April 2019 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Stories
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Too many cats in Fort Greene
Scranton Times Tribune, March 15, 1924

Most of the cat-women stories of Old New York were of two genres: outlandish tales of the proverbial “crazy cat lady” who had a dozen or more cats in her house or newsy stories about women who bred cats on a professional basis to sell to wealthy Victorian ladies or to show at the various New York cat shows.

The following cat story set on Fort Greene Place in Brooklyn falls under the former category.

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1911: The Civil Service Cat Of the New York City Tenement House Department

Posted: 9th April 2019 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Stories
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Cat on Tenement House Steps, photo by Jacob Riis, 1890. Museum of the City of New York Collections

A tenement house in New York is any building or part thereof which is occupied as the residence of three families or more living independently of each other and doing their own cooking in the premises. It includes apartment houses, flat houses and all other houses of similar character.”

–John J. Murphy, Commissioner of the Tenement House Department, Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York, April 1915

The Grid and the Tenement House

Manhattan’s rectangular grid plan of streets, established by the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, allowed for standard building lots measuring 25 feet by 100 feet. These long and narrow lots were OK for the old frame houses and smaller row houses that had been constructed in the 1700s or early 1800s. But the “old-law” tenements constructed in the mid-1800s tended to occupy about 90 percent of the lots, which did allow much room for natural light or air shafts.

Those buildings that did not occupy the entire lot often featured “rear tenements” in the back yards, which provided even fewer windows and worse conditions for the residents than did the buildings facing the streets. The dense, crowded, and unregulated conditions created a perfect breeding ground for disease and disaster.

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