1865: The P.T. Barnum Museum and Menagerie at the Corner of Broadway and Ann Street, Part I

Posted: 3rd October 2015 by The Hatching Cat in Animal Attractions, Animal Stories
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In addition to live whales, bears, and other large creatures, the P.T. Barnum menagerie at his American Museum featured the Happy Family, “a miscellaneous collection of beasts and birds (upwards of sixty in number), living together harmoniously in one large cage, each of them being the mortal enemy of every other, but contentedly playing and frolicking together, without injury or discord.” -- An Illustrated Catalogue And Guide Book To Barnum's American Museum (1860)
In addition to live whales, bears, and other large creatures, the P.T. Barnum menagerie at his American Museum featured the Happy Family, “a miscellaneous collection of beasts and birds (upwards of sixty in number), living together harmoniously in one large cage, each of them being the mortal enemy of every other, but contentedly playing and frolicking together, without injury or discord.” — An Illustrated Catalogue And Guide Book To Barnum’s American Museum (1860)

When most of us hear the name P.T. Barnum, we automatically think of the circus and “The Greatest Show on Earth.” But many years before P.T. Barnum’s Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan, and Circus made its debut in 1870 — and 40 years before he partnered with James A. Bailey – Phineas Taylor Barnum rose to fame with a very large collection of artificial and natural curiosities from around the world that he displayed at his American Museum on the corner of Broadway and Ann Street in New York City.

Part I: The American Museum at Broadway and Ann Street

The history of the American Museum and the land on which it occupied is fascinating, albeit complex. In this three-part story, I’ll introduce you to the history of the museum and the famous corner at Broadway and Ann Street, and tell you the story of the whales and mammals who were occupying the museum on the day it burned down in one of the most spectacular building fires in the history of New York City.

The American Museum, depicted here around 1840 at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street across from St. Paul's Church, was originally established by the Tammany Society as a small collection of global relics and preserved animals. (Trinity Church is also visible in this illustration.)
The American Museum, depicted here around 1840 at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street across from St. Paul’s Church, was originally established by the Tammany Society as a small collection of global relics and preserved animals. (Trinity Church is also visible in this illustration.)

Our story begins in May 1791, when John Pintard, Jr., a Tammany organizer and founding father of the New York Historical Society, was authorized to use the back parlor in the old City Hall on Wall Street (Federal Hall) for “An American Museum under the patronage of the Tammany Society or Columbian Order.” (Formed just two years earlier, following the inauguration of George Washington, the Tammany Society was a social rather than political organization then.) Pintard was named secretary and Gardiner Baker was named keeper of the collection.

The first American Museum was located in the back parlor of New York's second City Hall, built in 1700 on Wall and Nassau Street.
The first American Museum was located in the back parlor of New York’s second City Hall, built in 1700 on Wall and Nassau Street. This building was renamed Federal Hall when New York City became the first capital of the United States under the Constitution in 1789. George Washington was inaugurated on the balcony of the building on April 30, 1789. Trinity Church ias also visible in this illustration.

Established for the purpose of “… collecting and preserving whatever may relate to the history of our country and as well display all curiosities of nature and art,” the Tammany Museum — better known as the American Museum — was originally limited to Tammany members and their families. Eventually, the museum was opened to the public on Tuesdays and Fridays. The entrance fee was two shillings (about 25 cents).

Shortly after it was established, the collection was moved to 57 King Street. Then in 1793, it was moved again to a large room (30 x 60 feet with a 20-foot-high arched ceiling) on the second floor of the Royal Exchange Building on Broad street.

The Royal Exchange building featured a ground floor that was open on all sides and one large room on the second floor, which was occupied by Tammany’s museum in 1793.
The Royal Exchange building featured a ground floor that was open on all sides and one large room on the second floor, which was occupied by Tammany’s museum in 1793. The very first Supreme Court, under Chief Justice John Jay, convened in this building on February 2, 1790. This building was later replaced by a more impressive Merchant’s Exchange, which was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1835.

In 1795, following Pintard’s departure, the Tammany Society relinquished control of the collection to Gardner Baker. Seeking to diversify from the Americana theme — and hoping to boost ticket sales to fund his museum — Baker added relics from Africa, China and India, as well as wax figures, preserved animals, and freakish curiosity items. He later added a menagerie to the collection, which featured a live mountain lion, raccoons, groundhogs, birds, and snakes (this was one of the city’s very first permanent animal exhibition).

Following Baker’s death from yellow fever in 1798, the collection was purchased by William I. Waldron, a grocer who unsuccessfully tried to sell it at auction. Four years later, the museum was sold to Edward Savage, a painter, inventor, and showman who owned an art gallery called the Columbian Gallery at 80 Greenwich Street.

Savage combined the holdings of his gallery and the museum and named it the Columbian Gallery of Painting and City Museum. The combined institution opened on May 11, 1802. Soon thereafter, Savage hired John Scudder, a 26-year-old taxidermist, to oversee the museum collection.

John Scudder American Museum
In 1816, John Scudder moved his American Museum to the westerly end of the old municipal almshouse on Chambers Street in City Hall Park, which had been converted into the city’s first non-profit cultural center called the New York Institute (shown here). Today, this site is occupied by the Tweed Courthouse at 52 Chambers Street.

Determined to make the museum collection his own, John Scudder took a job as a seaman and saved enough money over the years to purchase the collection in 1809. He moved the museum to 21 Chatham Street in March 1810 and expanded it to include shells, fossils, and wax sculptures of events in history and literature.

In 1816, when residents of the city’s second almshouse in City Hall Park were moved to Bellevue Hospital, Scudder was given the opportunity to display his collection on the second floor of the building — which had been renamed the New York Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences — where it continued to grow until the American Museum took up four large rooms.

Scudder's American Museum
Here’s another view of Scudder’s American Museum, from the northwest corner of Chambers Street, circa 1825. Museum of the City of New York Collections

Following John’s death on August 7, 1821, five museum trustees (including John Pintard) took over the collection until Scudder’s only son, Dr. John Scudder, was ready to take charge in 1826 (John wanted to be a doctor, and although he dropped out of medical school in 1825, most people still called him Dr. Scudder).

The story gets long and confusing here — Dr. Scudder was reportedly an alcoholic who was deemed incompetent by his sisters — but he was a good showman, and under his management, the museum thrived for several years.

American Museum and St. Paul's Church
On December 24, 1830, Dr. John Scudder’s American Museum moved into the new five-story marble building (left) he leased from Francis W. Olmstead at 220 Broadway, just opposite St. Paul’s Church. Schuyler’s Palace of Fortune, where you could buy New York Lottery tickets, was located on the first floor of the building. Museum of the City of New York Collections

In December 1830, Dr. Scudder took a big gamble by moving the museum from the New York Institute in City Hall Park to a brand new marble behemoth on Broadway and Ann Street. A year later, though, things began going downhill when Dr. Scudder reportedly got into a drunken brawl and was subsequently fired by the museum trustees.

The cholera outbreak of 1832, the Great Fire of 1835, and the financial panic of 1837 nearly drove the museum into complete financial ruin. Dr. Scudder’s sisters brought their despised brother back to manage the museum again, but by 1841 they were all fed up and desperate and ready to sell.

On May 11, 1841, the entire collection was sold to P.T. Barnum, who made arrangements with Francis Olmstead to lease the building for $3000 a year. Barnum opened his new American Museum on December 27, 1841.

220 Broadway, P.T. Barnum American Museum
In 1830, the year the “Marble Building” at 220 Broadway was constructed, stonecutters were rebelling against the growing use of marble and granite cut in New York State prisons. They charged that competition from convict labor was unfair, degraded their professions, and threatened their jobs. On June 22, 1830, they stormed the construction site at Broadway and Ann Street and threatened to tar and feather the workers if the contractor did not stop using the marble. City officials arrived and arrested the leaders of the disturbance.

In 1842, at the age of 32, P. T. Barnum purchased the entire contents of Rubens Peale’s Museum at 252 Broadway. In 1850 he expanded again by purchasing the large Peale collection in Philadelphia (Charles Wilson Peale, Rubens’ father, was founder of the Philadelphia Museum). By 1865, Barnum had more than doubled the size of the American Museum.

Rubens Peale’s Museum at 252 Broadway opened on the same day as the Erie Canal, October 26, 1825.
Rubens Peale’s Museum at 252 Broadway opened on the same day as the Erie Canal, October 26, 1825. The four-story museum featured paintings, natural wonders, enormous panoramas (called cosmoramas), wax figures, and a few oddities. Peale specialized in live entertainment and lectures, with subjects ranging from animal magnetism to seances. Museum of the City of New York Collections

As The New York Times reported on July 14, 1865:

Probably no building in New-York was better known, inside and out, to our citizens than the ill-looking ungainly, rambling structure on the corner of Broadway and Ann-streets, known as the American Museum, where for more than twenty years Mr. BARNUM has furnished the public with a wonderful variety of amusements.

Here he has exhibited all the remarkable curiosities which money and enterprise could procure, or ingenuity invent. A model of Niagara Falls operated by a steam-engine; the Feejee mermaid, made up of the head and body of a monkey and the tail of a fish; the diorama of the removal of the remains of NAPOLEON I. From St. Helena to Paris; the happy Family, the “What Is it?” the Lightning Calculator, the hippopotamus, whales, alligators, baby shows, dog shows, prize poultry, and ten thousand other objects of curiosity, formed at various times the objects of popular attraction, and achieved for Mr. BARNUM a success which probably exceeded even his most sanguine expectations.”

First Grand Hall of the American Museum
P.T. Barnum American Museum

Continue this story: Part II: The History of the Famous Corner at Broadway and Ann Street

1884: Mutilator and the Legendary Newspaper Office Cats of The Sun

Posted: 15th September 2015 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Stories, Featured Felines
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Mutilator, The Sun Office Cat
This photo of Mutilator, a descendant of The Sun’s very first office cat, was published in 1900 in Helen M. Winslow’s book, Concerning Cats, My Own and Some Others. New York Sun editor Charles Dana reportedly provided the photo, along with a lengthy description of the newspaper’s many office cats.

“A single member of this [cat] family has been known, on a ‘rush’ night, to devour three and a half columns of presidential possibilities, seven columns of general politics, pretty much all but the head of a large and able-bodied railroad accident, and a full page of miscellaneous news, and then claw the nether garments of the managing editor, and call attention to an appetite still in good working order.” — Charles Dana, editor of The Sun, 1868-1897

We’re all familiar with the expression, “The dog ate my homework,” and some of us may have even resorted to this excuse when we forgot or chose not to do a homework assignment.

Reportedly, the expression dates to a story in a 1905 issue of The Cambrian, a magazine for Welsh Americans, in which William ApMadoc, the journal’s music critic, relates an anecdote about a minister who once asked his clerk whether his sermon that day had been long enough. Upon being assured that it was, the minister told the clerk that his dog had eaten some of the paper it was written on just before the service.

Well, as in many affairs involving cats and dogs, the cats trump the dogs on this one — by about 20 years.

The Sun Office Cat and the Civil Service Reform Act

On July 2, 1881, President James A. Garfield was assassinated by Charles Guiteau. Mr. Guiteau reportedly killed the president because he was angry that he did not get a government position that he felt was due him. Following the assassination, President Chester Arthur pushed through legislation to put an end to civil appointments based on patronage.

George William Curtis
In 1871, George William Curtis, the political editor of Harper’s Weekly, was appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant to chair a commission on the reform of the civil service. Curtis rose to become the leader in this reform, serving as president of the National Civil Service Reform League and the New York Civil Service Reform Association.

On January 16, 1883, Congress passed the Civil Service Reform Act, sometimes referred to as the Pendleton Act after U.S. Senator George Hunt Pendleton of Ohio, a primary sponsor of the legislation. The Civil Service Reform Act was written by Dorman Bridgeman Eaton, a staunch opponent of the spoils system, which awarded government jobs to party supporters, friends, and relatives.

So what does this have to do with a cat? Well, as the story goes, the cat came into play on December 30, 1884, when New York State governor and president-elect Grover Cleveland wrote a letter to George William Curtis, president of the state’s Civil Service Reform Association.

The letter, which stressed Cleveland’s intent to support the Pendleton Act during his administration, was submitted to several New York newspapers, including The Evening Post, The New York Times, and The Sun.

That Tuesday morning, the letter appeared in all the newspapers except The Sun. The “office cat” took the blame.

YMCA Association Hall, New York
The New York Civil Service Reform Association, founded in 1877, held its quarterly meetings at the Young Men’s Christian Association Hall at 52 East 23rd Street.

According to legend, shortly after the letter arrived at the desk of The Sun’s telegraph editor, it blew out an open window and was lost on Nassau Street.

When New York Supreme Court Justice Willard Bartlett inquired about the lack of publication the next day, The Sun’s editor, Charles Anderson Dana, remarked that it would be difficult to explain what happened to the readers, especially since it was well known that he was not all that fond of Grover Cleveland. Justice Bartlett responded, “Oh, say that the office cat ate it up.”

Charles Dana apparently thought this was a good idea, so he dictated a paragraph creating the cat as follows:

We are frequently obliged to deplore the circumstance that the Sun is not invariably conducted in a manner to please those of our esteemed contemporaries that do not happen to agree with us in opinion; but, sad as it is, we cannot always help it.

Willard Bartlett
New York Supreme Court Justice Willard Bartlett gets all the credit for inventing The Sun’s much celebrated office cat.

Here are The Evening Post and The New York Times, both seasonably exercised because the Sun happened to publish Mr. Cleveland’s letter on the civil service question on Wednesday, and not on Tuesday. The more profound of the two journals accounts for the fact on the hypothesis that we are afraid, and were “let into the astonishing journalistic blunder of trying to suppress it.”

This is a new conception worthy of its origin. The Sun is not usually suspected of being afraid of Mr. Cleveland’s publications; and we solemnly declare that, so far as we can remember, we never tried to suppress a public document that came from a President.

Since The Evening Post and The Times take interest in the conduct of the Sun, we beg to assure them that it was only through an accident that Mr. Cleveland’s letter was not published by us on Tuesday. The assistant editor, who had charge of it, lost the copy from his desk, either by some person taking it or by the wind blowing it away, or the office cat eating it up; and that is all there is of it.

In the name of the Prophet, Fudge!

Tammany Hall, 170 Nassau Street, later offices for The Sun newspaper
In 1867, when Charles Dana and his associates purchased The Sun, they moved the offices into the old Tammany Hall building at Nassau and Frankfort Street (#170 Nassau). It is here Mutilator and many other office cats made their home. This building was constructed for the Tammany Society in 1812, and featured a large room that could hold up to 2,000 people for political and social events. The rest of the building was run as a hotel. The Sun stayed at this building until July 1915, when the newspaper moved to 150 Nassau Street. Museum of the City of New York Collections

The news about the cat went viral, so to speak, and within days almost every newspaper in the country had picked up on the story of the nameless office cat. In response, Charles Dana penned the following editorial about his office cat:

The universal interest which this accomplished animal has excited throughout the country is a striking refutation that genius is not honored in its own day and generation. Perhaps no other living critic has attained the popularity and vogue now enjoyed by our cat. For years he worked in silence, unknown, perhaps, beyond the limits of the office. He is a sort of Rosicrucian cat, and his motto has been “to know all and to keep himself unknown.” But he could not escape the glory his efforts deserved, and a few mornings ago he woke up, like Byron, to find himself famous.

We are glad to announce that he hasn’t been puffed up by the enthusiastic praise which comes to him from all sources. He is the same industrious, conscientious, sharp-eyed, and sharp-toothed censor of copy that he has always been, nor should we have known that he is conscious of the admiration he excites among his esteemed contemporaries of the press had we not observed him in the act of dilacerating a copy of the Graphic containing an alleged portrait of him…

We have received many requests to give a detailed account of the personal habits and peculiarities of this feline Aristarchus. His favorite food is a tariff discussion. When a big speech, full of wind and statistics, comes within his reach, he pounces upon it immediately and digests the figures at his leisure…

The Sun office cat
Many newspapers across the nation wrote about The Sun’s office cat and published illustrations of what they supposed he looked like. Here, the Topeka Daily Capital depicts the office cat with a likeness of Charles Dana’s face.

When a piece of stale news or a long-winded, prosy article comes into the office, his remarkable sense of smell instantly detects it, and it is impossible to keep it from him. He always assists with great interest at the opening of the office mail, and he files several hundred letters a day in his interior department. The favorite diversion of the office-boys is to make him jump for twelve-column articles on the restoration of the American merchant marine…

We don’t pretend he is perfect. We admit that he has an uncontrollable appetite for the Congressional Record. We have to keep this peculiar publication out of his reach. He will sit for hours and watch with burning eyes the iron safe in which we are obliged to shut up the Record for safe-keeping. Once in a while we let him have a number or two. He becomes uneasy without it. It is his catnip.

Many of our esteemed contemporaries are furnishing their offices with cats, but they can never hope to have the equal of The Sun’s venerable polyphage. He is a cat of genius.

Over the years, The Sun’s office cat took the blame for many news blunders. The New York Times especially liked to criticize its rival’s editorials – particularly those about politics – by suggesting the office cat must have chewed up the good parts or devoured all the copy written about any topic or candidate The Sun did not support.

Some folks took the cat way too seriously, like John J. Ford, who, while in a state of inebriation one afternoon, stormed into The Sun’s editorial room demanding to see the cat. Mr. Ford charged the cat with failing to devour an article that appeared in the Sunday paper.

Sensing that Mr. Ford did not like him, the cat howled and ran under a desk. When the man became too aggressive with the editorial staff, he was taken down by a few newspaper men and arrested by a policeman from the 26th Precinct station.

The newsmen were able to calm the office cat with a bowl of cream.

Stewart's Retail Store
In 1917, The Sun moved into the old A.T. Stewart Dry Goods Store, aka the Marble Palace, at 280 Broadway. This building was constructed in 1845 on the site of Washington Hall, the former headquarters of the Federalist Party, at the northeast corner of Broadway and Chambers Street, just north of City Hall Park. The building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965 and today houses the central offices for the New York City Department of Buildings. Museum of the City of New York Collections

“If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.”

In 1897, Dr. Philip O’Hanlon, a coroner’s assistant on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, was asked by his then eight-year-old daughter, Virginia O’Hanlon, whether Santa Claus really existed. O’Hanlon suggested she write to The Sun, assuring her that “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” One of the paper’s editors, Francis Pharcellus Church, wrote the famous editorial we still celebrate today at the holiday season.

The editorial, Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, was published on September 21, 1897. Three weeks later, on October 17, Charles Dana passed away.

Charles Anderson Dana, editor of The Sun
Charles Anderson Dana started his newspaper career in 1847 as city editor of Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune. In 1868, he became editor and part owner of The New Sun, where he remained until his death in 1897.

Sometime shortly before his death, Charles Dana was approached by Helen M. Winslow, who was writing a book about famous cats called Concerning Cats, My Own and Some Others. (If you love cats and history, it’s a great read.)

At Ms. Winslow’s request, The Sun’s editor furnished a lengthy description of the office cats. According to Dana, the first Sun office cat was a female cat who reportedly died after drinking the contents of an ink bottle. Fortunately, she had many kittens (who were “weaned on reports from country correspondents”), and one of them advanced to the duties and honors of office cat.

Mutilator, the latest office cat at the time, was a descendant of this kitten. According to Dana, Mutilator was “a creditable specimen of his family” with “an appetite for copy unsurpassed in the annals of his race.”

I can’t say for sure that The Sun had an actual office cat or whether Mutilator really existed. For all we know, all the stories about the cat could have been made up to sell newspapers.

Helen Winslow also appears to have doubts about the story. In fact, in her introduction to Charles Dana’s text, Ms. Winslow notes, “I can only vouch for its veracity by quoting the famous phrase, “If you see it in The Sun, it is so.”

1886: General Muff, the Sophisticated Literary Cat of New York’s Upper East Side

Posted: 28th August 2015 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Stories, Featured Felines
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General Muff, cat of Mary L. Booth was a literary cat of the Upper East Side.
General Muff had a wardrobe of collars of all kinds and colors, from dainty ribbon to Russian leather. Here he poses for a portrait wearing his “Fayal collar,” which was supposedly crafted in the Azores in Portugal.

May it be long before Muff’s gracious personality requires an epitaph, but when that time comes, the following lines will apply to him as fitly as to the one for whom they were written, the poet Whittier’s cat, Bathsheba:
“Whereat none said ‘Scat!’
Better cat never sat
On a mat, or caught a rat,
Than this cat. Requiescat!”
–Famous Pets of Famous People, Eleanor Lewis, 1892

For much of the first half of the 19th century, the Upper East Side of Manhattan remained very rural, to say the least. Most of the territory – about one-seventh of the acreage of Manhattan — had been owned by the city since the 1686 Dongan Charter of the City of New York, which granted to the city “all the waste, vacant, unpatented, and unappropriated lands.” The city maintained possession of these common lands for over a century, but would occasionally sell off small parcels and make them available under 21-year leases to raise funds for municipal projects.

Park Avenue tunnel, Upper East Side
For more than 40 years, much of the double-track line along Fourth Avenue was at grade level. This created a hazard for humans as well as livestock (a locomotive once reportedly hit a cow at East 58th Street.). In 1872, construction began on the two-mile Beam Tunnel, shown here. The tunnel was completely renovated in the 1980s.

During the late 1700s and early 1800s, many of the parcels in the Upper East Side were purchased by wealthy New Yorkers as speculative investments in anticipation of a real estate boom. One of these men was Isaac Adriance, an early member of the St. Nicholas Society of the City of New York who bought a considerable amount of land along Fourth Avenue (present-day Park Avenue) from about 50th Street to Harlem.

Development of the Upper East Side began in earnest with the chartering of the New York & Harlem Railroad (NY&H), which opened a double-track horse-car line along Fourth Avenue from 23rd Street to the hamlet of Harlem in 1837. The opening of Lexington Avenue and the construction of Central Park in the 1850s also drove up the value of real estate on the Upper East Side.

In 1872, the city and the railroad initiated the Fourth Avenue Improvement Scheme to help alleviate some of the locomotive dirt and noise that was now rendering the avenue an undesirable place to live. The railroad — now the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad — was widened to four tracks and placed within a tunnel from 59th to 96th Street. Above 96th Street, open-cut stations were constructed, like the Harlem station at 124th-125th Street.

Park Avenue 59th Street 1876 Upper East Side Development
The Fourth Avenue Improvement Scheme of 1872 helped to alleviate some of the dirt and noise by placing the railroad tracks within a tunnel that was partially enclosed to allow for the locomotive smoke and cinders to escape. In this circa 1876 illustration of Fourth Avenue and 59th Street, you can see 101 East 59th Street, where our feline protagonist made his home, on the right (surrounded by iron fencing). Notice how all of the buildings face the side streets. New York Public Library Digital Collection

The plan worked pretty well, however, and soon numerous tenements and row houses were built along Fourth Avenue from 42nd Street northward. Since a Fourth Avenue address was still not desirable for well-to-do folks, most of the residences on corner lots were constructed to face the side streets rather than the main avenue. (That all changed after 1886, when Fourth Avenue north of 42nd Street was renamed Park Avenue.)

It was in one of these corner residences of the Upper East Side that General Muff made his home.

Mary Louis Booth
Mary Louise Booth


General Muff and Miss Mary Louise Booth

General Muff has been described as “a real nobleman among cats.” It is said that the soft gray Maltese with white paws and breast was extraordinarily handsome, amiable, and uncommonly intelligent. He was also a “cat cousin” of the late John Wilkes Booth. Yes, that one.

Muff was the beloved pet of Mary Louise Booth, a prominent member of New York’s literary circle who was best known for being the founding editor of Harper’s Bazar (as it was spelled until 1929). Muff lived with Mary and her best childhood friend, Mrs. Anne (Allie) W. Wright, in a three-story brownstone at 101 East 59th Street, on the northeast corner of Park Avenue.

Harper's Bazar 1867
In 1867, Fletcher Harper, the editor of Harper’s Weekly, invited Mary to take charge of his new publication, Harper’s Bazar. Under her leadership for almost 17 years, the magazine was a great success, growing to a circulation of 80,000 in its first decade. Here is the cover from the first issue, November 2, 1867.

In the 1880s, Saturday nights at Mary Booth’s Upper East Side home were legendary among New York authors, musicians, artists, statesmen, and other likewise professionals. Described as “the nearest approach to the French salon possible in America,” Mary Booth’s weekly literary gatherings were always well attended despite the remote location on East 59th Street.

Sometimes Mary’s cousin Edwin Booth would attend these events — one story described him as “a sad, gloomy man” who would stand with folded arms in the corner and talk very little to the others attending the literary meetings.

The salons took place in Mary’s parlors, which were described in The Current in 1883 as “cheerful and light in color” and decorated with items from all over the world.

There were vases from Japan, old silver from Norway, unique trinkets from Mexico and the West Indies, and even a collection of real strands of hair from the heads of Shelley, Keats, and Byron.

The pictures on her walls were all gifts from famous friends, including authors Mary Mapes Dodge and Sara Jane Lippincott, editor Whitelaw Reid, and poet Richard Watson Gilder.

Mary Louise Booth
“Tall and with much majesty of demeanor, she moved among them like a queen; her gray hair, rolled back over a cushion, becoming her as a crown would have done, her dark-brown eyes, the rose tint on her dimpled cheek, and her beaming smile, all made her beautiful; and the ready bon mot, the witty and good-natured turn upon her tongue, made her charming.” — Harriet Spofford, A Little Book of Friends

Muff always figured prominently at the Saturday evening salons, donning his elaborate and expensive lace collar made in the Yucatan (a gift from writer and expeditionary photographer Madame Alice Dixon le Plongeon), and taking full responsibility for entertaining all the guests.

No Saturday evening at Miss Booth’s would be complete without his offering of a mouse during the reception in the drawing room.

Muff rarely spent much time outdoors – he was terrified of the feral cats in the backyard – but if a window was left open, he wouldn’t hesitate to take a quick romp among the backyards of 59th Street and put his superb mousing skills to work.

Inside the brownstone, he shared his little world with two canaries – Fluff and Allegretto – several red birds and mocking birds, and a little gray cat named Vashti. The cats and birds spent many hours together in Mary’s library on the second floor, which faced the backyard.

[Park Avenue from 55th to 59th Street.] Upper East Side under development.
In this circa 1871 photo, you can still see some wooden shanties and rocky outcrops at the intersection of 55th Street and Fourth Avenue. Mary Booth’s brownstone is visible at the top left of the photo. You can also see the Church of the Advent, erected in 1870 at 123 East 57th Street (white roof, in the right center). Museum of the City of New York Collections

Author Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford, a dear friend of Mary’s, once wrote of Muff’s relationship with Vashti:

“His latter days were rendered miserable by a little silky, gray creature, an Angora named Vashti, who was a spark of the fire of the lower regions wrapped round in long silky fur, and who never let him alone one moment: who was full of tail-lashings and racings and leapings and fury, and of the most demonstrative love for her mistress. Once I made them collars with breastplates of tiny dangling bells, nine or ten; it excited them nearly to madness, and they flew up and down stairs like unchained lightning till the trinkets were taken off.”

From Millville to Brooklyn to the Upper East Side

Booth Kinney House
Mary Booth was born in this small wood-shingled Cape house in Millville, New York, in 1831. This home is still standing, and has undergone a complete restoration courtesy of the Yaphank Historical Society and Suffolk County.

Mary Louise Brown was born on April 19, 1831, in Millville (present-day Yaphank), a small hamlet in the town of Brookhaven, New York. Her father, William Chatfield Booth, had a small woolen mill and dye house, and also taught school in the winter months.

William was a descendant of Ensign John Booth, who, in 1652, reportedly purchased Shelter Island off the coast of Long Island from the Manhansett tribe for 100 yards of calico. Her mother, Nancy Monswell, was also a teacher.

Sometime around 1845, when Mary was 14, the Booth family moved to Brooklyn. There, her father opened the very first school in Williamsburg (possibly Primary School 1, which was on North 7th Street between present-day Berry Street and Bedford Avenue). Mary taught at the school for two years, but due to health issues, she stopped teaching at age 16 and devoted herself to literature.

1859 History of the City of New York, Mary Louise Booth
Although renowned for her translation work in earlier years — primarily of contemporary French works about the American Civil War — Mary Booth’s greatest achievement was her 1859 History of the City of New York, the first comprehensive study of the city in the 19th century.

In 1849, Mary moved to a small boarding house in Manhattan. Before taking the helm of Harper’s Bazar in 1867, she worked as a vest maker, contributed to various journals, worked as a space-rate reporter for The New York Times, and was quite active in promoting women’s rights, working alongside Susan B. Anthony and other leaders in the suffrage movement.

Mary died in her home on March 5, 1899, and was buried in the family plot in Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn. Muff died very soon thereafter. Vashti, who was also very much admired by Mary’s literary friends, was given to Miss Juliet Corson, a leader in cookery education and superintendent of the New York School of Cookery, which she founded in 1876.

“No sweeter or lovlier woman ever moved in New York literary circles.” — The Philadelphia Times, March 24, 1889.

The Booth Brownstone at 101 East 59th Street

This concludes the story of Muff, but if you enjoy history, you may want to read about the fascinating history behind the intersection of 59th Street and Park Avenue on the Upper East Side, of which Muff and Mary Booth played only a very small part.

In May 1858, real estate broker A.J. Bleecker sold a block of parcels owned by Isaac Adriance and bounded by Third and Fourth Avenue. J.C. Henderson purchased quite a few of these lots, including the lots at the intersection of 59th and Fourth Avenue. The lots remained undeveloped for about 12 years, allowing numerous squatters to take advantage of the land and establish wooden shanties there.

On May 3, 1869, at about midnight, a Croton water main on Fourth Avenue and 59th Street suddenly burst, creating a large explosion. The rushing water tore up the railroad tracks and washed away about 20 feet of 59th Street, which at the time was about 15 feet above ground level. All of the wooden shanties in the sunken lots were demolished, but miraculously, no lives were lost.

Croton water main
The 48-inch Croton water main under Fourth Avenue – like these pictured nearby in Central Park in 1890 — burst open at 59th Street around midnight on May 3, 1869, creating a huge explosion and putting many people’s lives at risk. Museum of the City of New York Collections

According to news reports, a shanty on the southeastern corner of Fourth and 59th was occupied by a woman and her child who had to be lifted to the roof and rescued. Jerry Curtin, a blind man, lost everything in the disaster. As the water rushed up to his chin, it was all he could do to get out of the shanty with his wife.

By the time the Croton Aqueduct Department shut the water off, it had risen to 25 feet, covering the roofs of the shanties and turning the lots into lakes. About 25 families were left homeless, all their worldly possessions scattered along the flooded streets.

Two years later, when the 1871 photo (above) of Fourth Avenue was taken, only a few shanties remained south of 59th Street. Numerous brand-new brownstones now stood where the water main explosion had taken place.

Overin's Stables, New York City. Upper East Side.
Sometime around 1891, Mary Booth’s brownstone was demolished and replaced by a five-story, 75 x 100 foot brick building occupied by Henry Clay Overin’s Market Boarding and Livery Stables. The new address for this building was 501-505 Park Avenue. (This photo is of Overin’s other stables in a similar building at 600-610 Seventh Avenue.)

In March 1874, John Fettretch placed a classified ad for the 3-story brownstone at 101 East 59th Street. Rent was $1,700 a year or $2,000 with gas fixtures, window shades and carpets. In July 1874, Patrick Donahoe was listed as a resident, and in 1882, Mr. Stephen D. Caldwell was living at the home. Mary Booth purchased the building sometime around 1883.

In 1891, a year after Mary’s companion, Anne Wright, died, the Booth brownstone was demolished and replaced with a five-story brick stable owned by Henry Clay Overin. The stables were one of the most popular in the city until Overin’s death in 1897.

Mineola Garage on Park Avenue and 59th. Upper East Side.
In this circa 1917 photo of the Mineola Garage on Park Avenue and 59th Street, you can see a few surviving brownstones at Nos. 105-109 East 59th Street. Mary’s brownstone would have been identical to these before their lower floors were renovated for retail space. Museum of the City of New York Collections

With the advent of the motorized vehicle, the stables were converted and renamed the Mineola Garage. Several deaths are associated with this garage, including that of two-year-old Catherine Clancy, who fell four floors to the basement in a large automobile elevator shaft in 1915, and Mrs. Rose Tighe of 512 West 158th Street, who was killed in 1939 when employee Raymond Kahn lost control and drove a vehicle through a fifth-floor wall, sending an avalanche of bricks to the street below.

In 1923, Hester A. Booth of Yonkers sold the Mineola Garage and land lease to Frederick Brown. He also purchased 105 East 59th Street from Georgina McGinley and the two other brownstones shown in the photo above.

505 Park Avenue. Upper East Side
In 1948, a 21-story structure was built at 505 Park Avenue for the Arabian American Oil Company. The building also housed the Hudson Pulp and Paper Corporation, National Association of Cost Accountants, and Lever Bros. A Howard Johnsons restaurant was on the ground level.

In 1924, Frederick Brown sold his property to Arthur Brisbane and M.L. Annenberg. The land was sold one last time in 1946 to Percy and Harold Uris, who put up a modern 21-story office building. According to Property Shark, in 2015 this building had a value of $78,095,000.

Should you have the chance to walk by 505 Park Avenue — or maybe attend a wine tasting there at Sherry-Lehmann — close your eyes and picture a handsome gray cat wearing a lace collar sitting in the window.

505parkavenue

1908: The Belgian Sheepdogs That Came to New York on the Tail End of a Jewel Heist

Posted: 14th August 2015 by The Hatching Cat in Dog Tails
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This is one of my longer stories — which is why it took me so long to post — but it’s chock full of New York City and Murray Hill history.

Belgium Sheepdogs from Ghent Kennels

In March 1908, NYPD Detective Henry G. Firneisen purchased six Belgian sheepdogs from the Ghent Kennels in Belgium. One dog reportedly died enroute to America and was replaced with an Airedale terrier. AKC Gazette, 1928.

In July 2013, I wrote about the police dogs of Parkville Brooklyn, who came to America in 1907 and were the first canine police squad in New York City. Those dogs were so successful in stopping crime in the rural areas of Brooklyn that the city decided to get a few more in 1908.

A jewel heist involving a New York socialite and a good butler gone bad created the perfect opportunity to add a few more K9 cops to the New York City police force.

The $8,000 Jewel Theft

On Sunday, March 8, 1908, David Percy Morgan sent a messenger boy to the police headquarters building at 300 Mulberry Street to report that $8,000 worth of diamonds and jewelry, including heirlooms, had been stolen from an open safe belonging to his mother, Carolyn Fellowes Morgan.

Mrs. Morgan was the widow of David Pierce Morgan, a Wall Street banker and distant relative of J.P Morgan (both men were descendants of brothers Miles and James Morgan, who came to America in 1636). She had married David Morgan in 1858 at the age of 26 and had seven children: Caroline, William, Clara, David, Alice, Lewis, and James.

American Sugar Refining Company

Before losing his wife and his fortune, David P. Morgan was an assistant treasurer for the American Sugar Refining Company – aka, the Sugar Trust and Domino Sugar. Incorporated in New Jersey in 1891, the ASR was the largest American business unit in the sugar refining industry in the early 1900s. It operated one of the world’s largest sugar refineries in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, pictured here in 1893.

At the time of the theft, David P. Morgan was living with his mother in her four-story-with-basement brownstone at 70 Park Avenue in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan (she also had a home in Washington, D.C.).

A former assistant treasurer for the American Sugar Refining Company, David had recently been divorced from his wife, Edith Parsons. Two months before the burglary, he also lost his entire fortune in the stock market.

68-70 Park Avenue

In this circa 1917 photo, Nos. 68 and 70 Park Avenue are the brownstones in the center (mansard roofs), at the corner of Park and 38th Street. The first floor of No. 68 — the Gould residence — appears to be boarded up. Museum of the City of New York Collections

Mrs. Morgan occupied a room on the second floor of the townhouse, where she kept her jewels in a small safe. Sometime around 6 p.m. that day, she discovered that several items, including a Louis XVI diamond tiara, diamond collaret, diamond brooch, three gold bangles, diamond heart-shaped locket, pearl necklace, diamond earrings, diamond sunburst, and several less valuable pieces were missing from the safe.

David tried to call the police by phone, but the telephone wires had been disconnected. So he called for a messenger boy to deliver a note to police.

Detectives William Browne and Henry G. Firneisen responded to the residence.

The Butler Did It

How many times do you get to say “the butler did it” and actually mean it?

When the detectives arrived, they concluded that it was an inside job. They took a census of the servants and discovered that the second butler, Claude J. Heritier, was missing in action.

The Morgans told police that they had last seen him about 4 p.m. on the second floor. They also said Heritier had been very faithful since joining the family in November 1906, and that he had previously worked at the Whippany Club in Morristown, N.J.

General Slocum

On June 15, 1904, Henry Firneisen’s wife, Emma Christina, daughter Marie Theresa, and sons Henry and William, were aboard the General Slocum when it caught fire and sank in the East River, killing an estimated 1,021 of the 1,342 people on board. The Firneisens, who lived at 40 East Seventh Street, were able to tread water until they were rescued by Engineer Patrick J. Lynch of Engine Co. 60. Henry Firneisen presented Lynch with an inscribed gold chain and watch. Lynch also received the Congressional Medal of Honor for saving 45 lives that day.

While searching the home for clues, detectives Browne and Firneisen discovered a checkerboard game with Heretier’s name and the following address scribbled on the back of the board: 70 Portsmouth Square, London. They immediately cabled Heretier’s description and address to Scotland Yard in London.

Now it turns out that Claude Heritier (alias Lester Graham) had an accomplice by the name of William O’ Connell (aka William Wilson), a former ship steward. Following the burglary, the two men occupied a room that they rented just two blocks from the Morgan residence. For two weeks, they hid out there and took turns watching the detectives enter and leave the Morgan house.

During this time, the men sold a valuable pair of earrings in a saloon. They also discovered that two of the necklaces were imitation pearls.

Old Madison Avenue Bridge

The jewel thieves tossed some of Mrs. Morgan’s costume jewelry from the old bridge that connected Madison Avenue in Manhattan to 138th Street in the Bronx. This bridge was designed by architect Alfred Pancoast Boller and opened in 1884 at a cost of $509,106. It was later replaced by the much larger Madison Avenue Bridge, a four-lane swing bridge that cost $1.1 million when it opened in 1910.

Cash in hand, they headed up to the Bronx and tossed the costume jewelry into the Harlem River from the bridge at 138th Street. Then they made their way to Philadelphia, where they boarded the Red Star Line steamer Marquette for Antwerp, Belgium. In Antwerp, Heritier sold about nine loose diamonds worth about $300 to a dealer.


The Fugitives Are Captured

On April 20, Heritier was arrested in London by Scotland Yard and remanded to the Marylebone Police Court. He was carrying 16 small diamonds valued at $400 when he was captured, but he couldn’t give police a good reason for having them.

A week later, on April 27, Scotland Yard recovered two necklaces in Heritier’s lodgings. He confessed to the crime and also named William O’Connell, who had been arrested in Liverpool on April 25 when he was found with 14 loose diamonds in his pockets. The two men were held in London to await extradition papers from New York.

Ghent kennels training sheepdogs

The sheepdogs were thoroughly trained in catching vagrants and escaping marauders at the kennels in Ghent. It was Firneisen’s job to teach the dogs all the commands in English.

Following the arrests, detectives Firneisen and Browne – who had both traveled to London at the end of May to make extradition arrangements – separated to do some other police work in Europe. While Browne went to Paris, Firneisen set out for Antwerp to find the loose diamonds — and a few good police sheepdogs from the famous kennels at Ghent.

As Firneisen told the New York press:
“The dogs I intend to purchase are of the same breed and in fact come from the same kennels as those that have proved so valuable to the Belgium police, who were the first to train dogs to detect crime. Some of them are already trained, but I shall spend the time occupied in the voyage to New York two weeks hence in getting acquainted with them and teaching them English.”

On June 7, Detective Firneisen, Detective Browne, Claude Heritier, William O’Connell, and six sheepdogs boarded the Red Star Line SS Zeeland in Antwerp. A week later, when the ship was within 20 miles of the Sandy Hook lightship in the Ambrose Channel, many passengers were startled to see Detective Browne put handcuffs on Claude and William. Apparently, the men had been allow to mingle freely with the passengers on the trip over (I wonder if they picked anyone’s pockets?).

Red Star Line SS Zeeland

The detectives returned to New York City aboard the Red Star Line SS Zeeland on June 15, 1908, with two fugitives and five police dogs in tow (one dog died in transit).


The Morgan Home at 70 Park Avenue

The Morgan townhouse on the northwest corner of Park Avenue and 38th Street was in the neighborhood known as Murray Hill, which takes its name from the eighteenth-century country estate and farm of Quaker shipping merchant Robert Murray.

To be exact, it was located on what was the northernmost boundary of Murray’s 29-acre wedge-shaped parcel, which extended from about today’s 33rd Street to 38th Street between the old Eastern Post Road (aka Boston Post Road) near present-day Lexington Avenue and the old Middle Road (near today’s Madison Avenue).

John Murray farm boundary, 1867

In this 1867 Matthew Dripps map, you can see the old boundary lines of the Murray farm between Middle Road and Eastern Post Road. The three Phelps family mansions, erected in the 1850s on the east side of Madison Avenue between 36th and 37th streets, are visible to the left.

The Murray farm was located on a high point of Manhattan that was once wilderness and called Inclenbergh in the 1700s. Robert and his wife, Mary Lindley Murray, leased the common lands from the city in the 1750s (the city leased land to meet the expenses of building the new City Hall on Wall Street), and in 1760 they erected a mansion that they named Belmont on the crest of the hill at what is now the intersection of Park Avenue and East 36th – 37th Street.

Robert and Mary Murray house, pre-1834.

Surrounded by wide lawns and extensive gardens, and approached by a tree-lined avenue from the Eastern Post Road, the Murray’s Colonial-style home had a magnificent view of Kips Bay and the East River. When the New York City street grid was superimposed over the Murray farm in 1811, the house was located within Fourth Avenue (now Park Avenue). However, the street grid remained solely on paper, and the land remained a farm until the house burned down in 1834.

In addition to the large house, the property featured two barns, a coach house, a large garden, and meadows for cultivating hay. The Murrays also owned a large cornfield that was reportedly located on the site of today’s Grand Central Station. During the Revolutionary War, British soldiers marched through these fields.

Following Robert Murray’s death in 1786, the farm went to his daughter Susannah, the wife of Captain Gilbert Colden Willett. Willett had a business with Robert’s brother, John Murray, and when that failed in 1800, Susannah and Gilbert passed the lease to John. John Murray eventually purchased the property from the city for $62,000 in 1806.

After John Murray’s death in 1808, his children Mary and Hannah Lindley Murray, Susan Ogden (wife of William Ogden), and John R. Murray occupied the house. Several attempts were made to rent or sell the property in 1812 and 1813, but I do not know the outcome of these early efforts.

Mrs. Robert Murray distracts British troops


George Washington and British Commander William Howe reportedly spent some time at the Murray home during the Revolutionary War in September 1776. In fact, the Murrays played a key role in the war by hosting a “party” at their home on September 15 of that year, in which they served good food and wine to the British soldiers in order to distract them while the New York troops under the command of Major General Israel Putnam were making their escape up to Harlem Heights. NYPL Digital Collections

In 1835, the Murray heirs imposed a series of restrictive covenants on some land that they sold to the Ministers, Elders, and Deacons of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of the City of New York on the north side of East 38th Street. The church had previously purchased the northern half of the block from the James Quackinbush estate, and it needed the Murrays’ land in order to divide the block into standard 25 x lOO foot building lots. No. 70 Park Avenue was erected on one of these lots.

The covenants restricted development to “brick or stone dwelling houses of at least three stories.” Exceptions could be made for private stables, carriage houses, and churches, but such establishments as smith shops, breweries, and places for the exhibition of wild animals were expressly forbidden.

Old Murray Hill houses, Lexington and 37th Street. 1859

Although the Murray heirs started to sell their farm land in the 1830s, the development of Murray Hill did not begin in earnest until the 1850s. Here are a few of the first Murray Hill stone houses constructed on Lexington and 37th Street, circa 1859. Museum of the City of New York Collections

On June 11, 1835, James Bleecker & Sons auctioned off the Murray Hill Estate – about 400 lots in all. Most of the buyers were lawyers and businessmen who could afford to hold the property for a few years as an investment until the residential district expanded northward into Murray Hill.

Development first took off in the early 1850s at the western edge of the former farm, when three members of the Phelps family erected mansions on Madison Avenue between East 36th and 37th streets. Thirty-three feet wide and seventy-three feet deep, the houses were “furnished in elegant and luxurious style” and featured elaborate gardens and private stables.

Union Club League clubhouse

In 1931, the Union League Club’s fourth clubhouse was erected on land owned by J.P. Morgan — and once occupied by the Robert Morgan farm and homestead. Museum of the City of New York Collections

The northern-most Phelps mansion was later home to J.P. Morgan, Jr., and today is part of the Morgan Library & Museum. In 1926, J.P. Morgan also purchased the property upon which the old Murray homestead once stood. Four townhouses on the property were torn down and replaced with the elaborate clubhouse for the Union League Club, of which he was a member.

As for 70 Park Avenue, the earliest record goes back to 1886, when the townhouse was occupied by John T. Farish, a Virginian who made his wealth in tobacco. The Farish estate sold it to Dr. John C. Barron in 1895, who in turn sold it to Oliver Harriman in 1901 for $31,500.

Carolyn F. Morgan purchased 70 Park Avenue in November 1905 and installed an elevator in 1909. In 1912, two years before her death, her son William Fellowes Morgan moved into the home.

In 1925, Nos. 70 and 68 were acquired from William Morgan and the late Charles A. Gould and demolished to make room for a 15-story apartment hotel. Today this is a boutique Kimpton Hotel called 70 Park Avenue. It happens to be a pet-friendly hotel that accepts “any number of pets without size or weight restrictions and for no extra charge or deposit.” You just gotta love that!

Park Avenue and 38th Street

In this circa 1926 photo, the new 15-story apartment hotel at 68-70 Park Avenue is visible at left. Museum of the City of New York Collections

And speaking of dogs, on September 6, 1908, The New York Times reported on the new police dogs’ progress. All of the dogs were in active service in Flatbush, and according to Fourth Deputy Police Commissioner Arthur Woods, the dogs had made good.

“Why, let me tell you something,” Woods told a reporter. “Burglars are so rare in Flatbush now that we have to put fake burglars on the job to keep the dogs in practice. Why, the burglars fear those police dogs a lot more than they fear the cops.”

The dogs continued to make the headlines in Flatbush and Parkville, Brooklyn, until 1951, when the caretaker of the dogs’ kennel at 2801 Brighton Third Street (present-day mounted police Troop E stable) retired and the canine unit was dissolved on the “grounds of obsoleteness.”

1917: Zowie, the Beloved English Bulldog of Vernon and Irene Castle

Posted: 1st August 2015 by The Hatching Cat in Dog Tails, Hartsdale Pet Cemetery
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Irene Castle and Zowie
Irene Castle with Zowie in Paris, 1912. Although Zowie has often been referred to as a small terrier or Griffon, one news article claimed she was an English bulldog. In this picture, she looks more like part-bulldog to me.

“Her death last year was the hardest to bear of any – until his came. Somehow I like to think that her little soul was waiting to greet his, so that he mightn’t feel strange or alone in the great world above us. I can see her jumping and running for joy and licking his hand to show she has not forgotten, and crying – just a little—to find I had not come too.”—Irene Castle shares memories of Zowie in her book “My Husband,” 1919

You’ve no doubt heard of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. This is a story about Vernon and Irene Castle, a great dance team that rose to fame when Fred and Ginger were just children.

Vernon and Irene Castle

In the early 1900s, Vernon and Irene Castle were two of America’s favorite stars. The dances they created, like the Castle Walk and Hesitation Waltz, were all the rage around the world. Irene and Vernon were international symbols of youth and beauty, and millions of people tried to dance and dress and style their hair just like them.

The story of Vernon and Irene Castle
The Castle story is a wonderful love story for all time, full of romance, adventure, struggles, fame, and tragedy. But my favorite part of their story is how they supposedly met in 1909.

According to one story told in the Tarrytown Daily News and several other upstate New York papers, Vernon and Irene were both swimming in the Long Island Sound at the New Rochelle Yacht Club in the summer of 1909 when a little English bulldog swam beyond her limit and began to flounder.

Irene Foote Castle
The Foote family, around 1899. Irene spent her childhood surrounded by many animals, including her father’s horses and dogs.

Irene and Vernon both came to her rescue and thus became acquainted. They named the dog Zowie after Zowie, the Monarch of Mystery, which was a role Vernon Castle (his stage name) played in The Hen-Pecks at the Broadway Theatre. (Other reports claim that Irene and Vernon received the dog as a gift from Irene’s father after they married, which makes more sense when you look at the timeline. The Hen-Pecks first opened in February 1911, so they couldn’t have named the dog after Zowie the Monarch of Mystery in 1909. But of course, I prefer the rescue tale.)

Pryer Terrace, New Rochelle, Foote residence
In 1906, the Footes sold their large home at 304 North Avenue (now the site of the New Rochelle Transit Center) to the developers of Halcyon Park. They moved to a larger house a few blocks away on Pryer Terrace across from the Beechmont Oval Park, where Dr. Foote erected a large red barn for his horses and kennels for his dogs. Irene and Vernon were married in this home, shown here, in 1911.

Born in 1893 in New Rochelle, New York, Irene was the daughter of Dr. Hubert Townsend Foote and Annie Elroy Thomas Foote. She lived in New Rochelle until 1910, when she moved in with her older sister, Elroy, on Columbus Avenue in Manhattan to be closer to her new beau, Vernon William Blythe. Vernon proposed to her on Christmas Day, 1910, and they married on May 28, 1911, at the Foote residence in New Rochelle.

In 1912, the Castles traveled to Paris, where Vernon was appearing in a French musical revue. Their stay in Paris was short lived, though, as Irene had to return to America in May 1912 to attend her father’s funeral.

Edward Bliss Foote
Irene’s grandfather, Edward Bliss Foote, was a medical doctor who shared an office with Dr. Hubert Foote at 120 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. A pioneer in the sexual revolution, Edward Foote called for sexual freedom and offered women birth control advice in the 1860s. He also invented several female birth control devices, such as the womb veil (a precursor to the diaphragm). Edward was once declared a “danger to the nation” by conservative postal inspector Anthony Comstock.

Accompanied by Zowie, Irene spent a lot of time on the ship looking out for icebergs and staying on deck, determined to get in a lifeboat if necessary (the Titanic had gone down only a year earlier). “In the confusion of abandoning ship, they would think I was carrying a baby” she told the press. “A very ugly baby.”

A Castle Tour of New York City

During their brief marriage, Vernon and Irene Castle spent most of their time between New York City and Long Island. They had a townhouse in the building previously occupied by Irene’s father and grandfather at 120 Lexington Avenue.

They also purchased the J.R. Ely estate in Manhasset near the Long Island Sound. Here they had kennels and stables for their 24 dogs (including 12 police dogs), 5 horses, donkey, and numerous other animals.

Irene and Vernon never had children; however, they had lots of pets to keep them company, many of whom were performing animals that they rescued from the theater. In addition to Zowie, some of their favorite fur-babies included a German shepherd named Tell van Flugerard, a monkey named Rastas, and a dog named Punchinello. Many say that in addition to their dancing, it was their shared love of animals that kept them united.

Rossmore Hotel, Louis Martin Cafe, Broadway, where Vernon and Irene Castle performed.
When they returned to New York in 1912, Irene and Vernon Castle enjoyed success at Louis Martin’s Café between Broadway, 7th Avenue, 41st and 42nd streets. The building that housed the café was erected in 1873 as the Rossmore Hotel, seen here. In 1909, it was remodeled as the lavish Café de l’Opera and then in 1912, restaurateur Louis Martin renovated the building to house his new restaurant, the Café de Paris. Martin’s business failed in 1913 and the building was demolished by 1915 to make way for an 11-story office building. NYPL digital collections.
24-26 East 46th Street Vernon and Irene Castle Dance Studio
On December 15, 1913, the Castles opened a dance hall called the Castle House at 24-26 East 46th Street, opposite the entrance to the Ritz-Carlton. This building had previously been occupied by Josefa Neilson Osborn’s dressmaking company (called Mrs. Osborn’s Company). Here, in the large ballrooms on the second floor, the Castles taught clients including Mrs. Stuyvessant Fish and Mrs. William Rockefeller all the new dances in between glasses of lemonade and tea. Museum of the City of New York Collections.
120-122 Lexington Avenue, the home of Vernon and Irene Castle
Irene and Vernon Castle had a townhouse at 120 Lexington Avenue, left, which was previously the medical offices and laboratories of Irene’s father and grandfather, and also the meeting place for the New York City Women’s Suffrage League in the late 1890s. The couple also held title to the adjoining building at 122 Lexington.
Irene and Vernon Castle Estate, Manhasset
In the spring of 1914, they bought the James R. Ely estate on Manhasset Bay, Long Island, where they had kennels and stables for their 24 dogs and 5 horses.
Castles by the Sea, Long Beach, NY
In 1914, the Castles opened Castles by the Sea, a resort and dancing school at the former Danse de la Mer pavilion built by Senator William Reynolds on the Long Beach boardwalk, just east of the Hotel Nassau (today, the Ocean Club condominiums at 100 W. Broadway). The opening of the resort was featured in the 1915 silent film Whirl of Life, in which the Castles made their motion-picture debut. In later years the front of this building was extended and a theater and other stores were added. It burned down in the 1930s and today the site is occupied by the Allegria Hotel.
Irene Castle and Vernon Castle
Irene and Vernon with their German shepherd Tell and Griffon Kiki on the porch of their Manhasset home, sometime around 1915.

Goodbye, Zowie and Vernon

Born in Norfolk, England, in 1887, Vernon was very concerned about the fate of his home country during World I. So he temporarily gave up dancing, enlisted in the British military, and joined the 84th Royal Flying Corps Squadron. He flew 300 combat missions, shot down two German planes, and was awarded the French Croix de Guerre (War Cross) for heroism.

In 1917, Vernon returned to the U.S. as part of a program established by General John J. “Blackjack” Pershing to train American and Canadian aviators at Benbrook Flying Field in Texas. That same year, the couple lost two beloved pets. On July 18, 1917, Punchinello, a small dog (probably a Griffon), was killed in a fall. A few weeks later, on August 2, Zowie passed away. Both dogs were buried in the Castle plot at Hartsdale Pet Cemetery in Westchester County.

Irene Castle plot Hartsdale Pet Cemetery
The Castle plot is one of the largest at Hartsdale Pet Cemetery. Seven of Irene’s pets were buried here, including Poudie, Rastas, Sweetie, Kiki, Punchinello, and Zowie, each beneath a headstone inscribed with their name, date of birth and death, and an epitaph. Zowie’s reads: To My Adored Zowie. I do not cringe from death so much, Since you are gone, my truest friend, Thy dear, dumb soul will wait for me. However long before the end.

On February 15, 1918, Vernon was killed during a training mission in Texas. According to news reports, Captain Castle had attempted to avert a collision with another plane by “zeeming up” 75 feet. At such a sharp angle, his engine died, causing the plane to turn on its side and plunge nose-first to the ground. Neither the cadet student nor Vernon’s monkey Jeffrey were injured in the crash.

Vernon Castle and Jeffrey
Vernon often flew with his pet monkey Jeffrey. While at the British front in Paris, he also reportedly opened a private American bar with the latest New York cocktails served by Jeffrey.

Vernon was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. For his memorial, Irene recreated a bronze sculpture of a tired ballet dancer titled End of the Day, which depicts a nude dancer coiled into a ball after an exhausting day of practice. A memorial for Vernon was erected in 1966 at the crash site in Texas near the corner of Vernon Castle Avenue and Cozby West.

Just six months after Vernon’s death, in August 1918, Irene was secretly married to U.S. Army Captain Robert E. Treman, reportedly a childhood friend. (Their public marriage took place on May 3, 1919.) She sold her property at 120 and 122 Lexington Avenue two months later, and the couple moved into their gift from Terman’s father — a large home called Greystone on Cayuga Heights Road in Ithaca.

Four years later, on July 24, 1923, the couple got a divorce in Paris on the ground that “he refused to observe the marital relations.” (In the early 1900s, many couples established legal domicile in France in order to more easily obtain a divorce in the French courts.) The couple’s beautiful home overlooking Cayuga Lake was purchased for $67,000 by the Sigma Chi Alumni Association at Cornell University in 1925. Today the home is the chapter house of the Alpha Phi Chapter of Sigma Chi Fraternity.

Irene Castle
Following her marriage to Frederic McLaughlin, Irene hung up her stage hat and gave marriage and motherhood a try. On January 4, 1925, she gave birth to a 7-pound baby girl, Barbara Irene. On July 18, 1929, she gave birth to a son, William Foote. Although the press surmised that motherhood would put an end to her fondness for animals, that was simply not the case.

Not unlike Mable Lorraine Miller, the femme fatale in my last post who had five husbands, Irene didn’t waste any time making her next conquest. Just four months after her divorce to Captain Treman, she married Major Frederic McLaughlin, a divorced sportsman from Chicago who was a millionaire coffee merchant and owner of the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team.

Irene Caslte and dogs
Irene Castle was an avid campaigner for animal rights for much of her lifetime. In 1927, she founded Orphans of the Storm, an animal shelter for dogs in Deerfield, Illinois. Each year, she hosted “pooch balls” to raise money for the shelter. Sadly, she lost 90 of the 125 dogs sheltered there in February 1930, when a suspicious fire destroyed the facilities. The shelter was rebuilt, and is still in operation today.

In September 1937, Irene sued her third husband for divorce (I’m beginning to think that divorce was very popular in the 1920s and 1930s). She withdrew the suit two years later, but the couple continued to live apart. Frederic died in December 1944, and Irene was married one more time in 1946 to George Enzinger, a divorced Chicago advertising executive.

Irene Foote Castle Treman McLaughlin Enzinger died at the age of 75 on January 25, 1969, in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Just five years earlier, while in New York to be the guest of honor at America’s Ball of the Year, Irene told a reporter that when she died, she wanted her gravestone to say “humanitarian” rather than “dancer.” She said she only danced for fun and money, but “Orphans of the Storm comes from my heart. It’s more important.”

The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle
In 1939, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers played Vernon and Irene Castle in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. The RKO radio picture was based on “My Husband” and “My Memories of Vernon Castle,” both written by Irene. The movie even featured a dog named Zowie, albeit, this dog does not look like a bulldog.
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