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.
Read the rest of this entry »
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
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.
Read the rest of this entry »
On a late summer day in 1909, during the dog days of August, to be exact, a reporter for the New York Sun noted that there were almost as many cats on Morton Street as there were politicians. I’m not sure if he meant “as there were politicians on Morton Street” or if he meant “as there were politicians throughout New York or the entire country,” but I still laughed when I read that comment.
To demonstrate his point, the reporter shared a tale about a young mother named Sadie Martin, who had a remarkable encounter with several felines while making her way home one day.
Read the rest of this entry »
Anna Kaiser was a crazy cat women. Her husband, Hans, was not crazy about cats. Magistrate Ommen of the Yorkville Police Court had to take one side or the other, whether he liked cats or not.
Before the couple married, Anna (née Ammann) had about 50 cats. She agreed to get rid of 20 of them to please her would-be husband. I’m not sure how she did this; I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know.
I’m also not sure why he went along with the deal, but for some reason Hans agreed to marry Anna even though she still had 30 cats.
By 1903, Hans and Anna were living in their tenement apartment at 343 East 47th Street with about 20 or 30 cats, give or take a few. Hans supported his wife and her feline friends by working as a maltster, possibly at one of the many breweries in their Turtle Bay neighborhood.
Read the rest of this entry »
On the morning of June 15, 1897, a large fire destroyed the immigrant landing station that covered most of Ellis Island, causing a property loss of close to $1 million for the United States Government.
Every immigrant escaped unharmed, thanks to the watchmen, attendants, doctors, and nurses who came to their rescue. All of the employees were also accounted for, thanks to the heroic pet dog of Dr. Joseph H. Senner, the Commissioner of Immigration.
Read the rest of this entry »
