The P.T. Barnum Museum and Menagerie at Broadway and Ann Street, Part III

Posted: 25th October 2015 by The Hatching Cat in Animal Attractions, Animal Stories
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In September 1853, two giraffes that had been captured in Africa for the Royal Menagerie of Cairo appeared at the P.T. Barnum American Museum. The male, Colossal, was 17 feet tall, and the female, Cleopatra, was 15½ feet tall. Barnum advertised the pair as “The Only Giraffes in America.”
In September 1853, two giraffes that had been captured in Africa for the Royal Menagerie of Cairo appeared at the P.T. Barnum American Museum. The male, Colossal, was 17 feet tall, and the female, Cleopatra, was 15½ feet tall. Barnum advertised the pair as “The Only Giraffes in America.”

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 in New York City.

P.T. Barnum American Museum occupied a large, 5-story marble building on the southeast corner of Broadway and Ann Street from 1841 to 1865.
P.T. Barnum’s American Museum occupied a large, 5-story marble building on the southeast corner of Broadway and Ann Street from 1841 to 1865.

In Part I of the American Museum story, I wrote about the history of the museum, which once stood at the southeast corner of Ann Street and Broadway. Then in Part II, I explored the fascinating history behind the land at this famous Manhattan intersection. In this final post, I write about the animals at Barnum’s museum — including the whales and the Happy Family — and the horrendous fire that took their lives in 1865.

Whale Watching on Broadway

On July 1, 1861, the New York City Board of Alderman granted permission for Phineas T. Barnum to lay a six-inch cast-iron pipe from the corner of Broadway and Ann Street, down Fulton Street, under the Washington Market, and into what was then called the North River (Hudson). The work, which was supervised by the Croton Aqueduct Department, cost Mr. Barnum $7,000.

Although the Beluga whales were originally kept in a large "pool" in the basement, P.T. Barnum later put his whales on display in a large tank on the second floor of his museum so that it would be easier for the people to observe them. The tank was about 25 feet long and six feet deep.
Although the Beluga whales were originally kept in a large “pool” in the basement, P.T. Barnum later put his whales on display in a large tank on the second floor of his museum so that it would be easier for the people to observe them. The tank was about 25 feet long and six feet deep.

When it was completed, the pipe allowed Barnum to use a powerful steam engine to pump salt water – at the rate of 300 gallons per minute – into a large Beluga whale tank on the second floor of his American Museum.

Beluga whale in tank Boston Aquaria Gardens
P.T. Barnum got his idea to bring live whales to his American Museum after watching a young girl being pulled around in a clam-shell boat by a Beluga whale in a large tank at the Boston Aquarial Gardens sometime around 1860.

Barnum’s original plan was to keep his live whales in a “pool” that he and his partner, Professor Henry D. Butler, built in the basement of the large five-story marble building. The first whale to use this pool was a nine-foot Beluga from Isle Aux Coudres on the St. Lawrence River in Quebec. The whale was transported to New York in a refrigerated train car and lived just nine months in captivity.

According to Professor Butler, who spoke to The New York Times in 1897 about his whaling adventures, Barnum later moved the whales to the second floor, where he installed a large 25-foot tank that he had purchased from the Boston Aquarial Gardens. All total, the American Museum spent $17,000 in 1861 in attempt to exhibit a living whale.

The Museum having expended altogether a sum not much less than $17,000 in the whaling business, this is probably the last attempt that will be made to exhibit a living whale in connection with the other expensive attractions of the Museum for only twenty-five cents. With these remarks, I leave this monster leviathan to do his own “spouting,” not doubting that the public will embrace the earliest moment (before it is forever too late) to witness the most novel and extraordinary exhibition ever offered them in this City. — P.T. Barnum, November 1861

Between 1861 and 1865, at least nine known whales were placed into captivity and put on display at the American Museum. The last two whales arrived on June 26, 1865, as was announced in The New York Times.

In addition to whales, Barnum's American Museum featured a second-floor Aquaria with about 40 large tanks made of marble, glass, and iron that contained turtles, eels, alligators, crocodiles, snakes, and an "educated seal" named Ned (Ned lived in an small tank on a sand bank surrounded by bird cages).
In addition to whales, Barnum’s American Museum featured a second-floor Aquaria with about 40 large tanks made of marble, glass, and iron that contained turtles, eels, alligators, crocodiles, snakes, and an “educated seal” named Ned (Ned lived in an small tank on a sand bank surrounded by bird cages).

The Happy Family

While traveling in Scotland sometime in the 1850s, P.T. Barnum visited an exhibition called The Happy Family, which featured about 200 birds and animals, including predators and prey, supposedly living in harmony in one cage. Barnum bought the exhibition and installed it in his American Museum. The Happy Family suggested that love really could conquer all, and was designed to demonstrate how so many different species could dwell together in peace and unity.

Considered one of the most interesting of the many curiosities exhibited at the museum, the Happy Family was located on the third floor, south side of the building, and consisted of a long wire cage, about 10 x 5 feet. Inside were dogs, cats, monkeys, anteaters, squirrels, mice and rats, parrots, chickens, ducks, turkeys, quails and pheasants, guinea pigs, rabbits, turtles, snakes, frogs, robins, pigeons, and more.

P.T. Barnum's Happy Family
The Happy Family was described in An Illustrated Catalogue and Guide Book To Barnum’s American Museum (1860) as “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.”

The Great Fire of 1865

Those animals and other creatures may have been happy, but they didn’t smell nicely; they doubtless lived respectable, but…to tell the truth, they frequently fought fiercely, and were badly beaten for it. However, they are gone; all burned to death, roasted whole, with stuffing au naturel, and in view of their lamentable end we may well say, “Peace to their ashes.” — The New York Times, July 14, 1865

On July 13, 1865, Thomas Floyd-Jones, the assistant foreman of Brooklyn’s Atlantic Hose Company No. 1, happened to be on the corner of Broadway and Maiden Lane when he saw flames shooting out from the front of the museum. Floyd-Jones later wrote about the American Museum fire in his book Backward Glances, Reminiscences of an Old New Yorker.

The fire had reportedly started in the basement engine room, which was used to produce the steam to pump fresh air into the Aquaria and propel the fans that kept the halls cool. By the time Mr. Tiffany, the treasurer, had run to the roof to open a large water tank, flames were bursting through the second floor and observed on the third floor near the stage. The water tank in which the whales were kept was reportedly broken in attempt to flood the floor and extinguish the fire.

American Museum fire
The American Museum burned to the ground on July 13, 1865. Museum of the City of New York Collections

At this time, the New York Fire Department was in the process of merging into a paid system. Although many of the volunteer firemen were disgruntled, several of the old volunteer companies stepped in to help out at the fire, including a few companies from the Brooklyn Volunteer Fire Department, which responded by way of the Fulton Ferry.

Alfred Dorlon
Alfred Dorlon was known as the Great Oysterman of Fulton Market. I imagine Ned the seal considered himself very lucky to escape the fire and land in a giant fish tank filled with oysters.

The fire burned the whole front on Broadway between Ann and Fulton, including Knox’s and White’s hat stores, and destroyed all the buildings down Fulton Street, nearly reaching the New York Herald offices at Nassau Street. The fire also took the lives of all the animals in the Happy Family exhibit and all the fish and other creatures in the Aquaria, including the two new whales that had just arrived two weeks before (one whale carcass was reportedly left to rot on Broadway for several days after the conflagration).

One of the animals that was rescued from the fire was Ned, the learned seal. Ned was quite popular with the public for his ability to “play” the hand organ, and had performed for many visitors over the years, including Abraham and Mary Lincoln and their sons Robert, Todd, Willie, and Thomas (they visited in February 1860), and Joseph F. Smith, who was very impressed with Ned when he saw him in July 1863.

According to Thomas Floyd-Jones, Ned was saved by Clifford C. Pearson, a member of the Atlantic Hose Co. No 1. Pearson reportedly took the seal under his arm, placed him in a basket, and pulled him by cart to the Fulton Street Market, where he placed him in Alfred P. Dorlon’s fish trough.

Fireman's Hall, Henry Street, Brooklyn
One of the companies that responded to the American Museum fire was the Atlantic Hose Company No. 1, the oldest hose company in Brooklyn. Organized as the Atlantic Hose and Relief Company on November 27, 1835, in a vacant store at 132½ Fulton Street, the company was made up of merchants, lawyers, and other professionals. Its first headquarters was a shed on High Street, but in 1836 it moved to the old Firemen’s Hall on Poplar Street. In 1851 the company moved to the new Firemen’s Hall on Henry Street, pictured here, and later, it was stationed at 12 High Street. The company remained active until 1869, when Brooklyn’s first paid professional Fire Department went into operation and the volunteer system was disbanded.

In addition to Ned the seal, two bears also reportedly survived the fire. Samson, a grizzly bear, had been removed just before the fire began, and another large bear was reportedly lowered down from a fire escape by a chain. Some news reports tell of of a polar bear that escaped and walked down the street to the Custom House (where it then fell from a balcony and broke its neck), and of animals jumping from windows to escape the flames.

The ruins of P.T. Barnum American Museum
The remains of several animals were reportedly discovered in the ruins, including a whale and a crocodile. Museum of the City of New York Collections

Barnum’s New American Museum at 539-541 Broadway

Not easily defeated, Barnum quickly picked up the pieces and began looking for new curiosities to replace those he lost in order to fill his new museum at the old Chinese Museum building at 539-541 Broadway, between Prince and Spring streets.

As the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported on July 15, 1865:

“He is already in negotiation with the leaders of the Republican party, who are expected to be a welcome substitute for the Happy Family. The man who tamed that cat so that it took the rat to its embrace, is confident that he can keep the discordant leaders of the Republican ranks quiet in the same cage.”

Maybe today’s Republican Party would be open to a similar suggestion…

Barnum's New American Museum
Barnum reopened his museum in the old Chinese Rooms, formerly known as Buckley’s Opera House, home of Buckley’s Serenaders, a famous minstrel troupe in the 1850s. The museum featured a large lecture hall, pictured here.

In addition to setting up shop at a new location, Barnum was also able to quickly sell his land lease for $200,000 to James Gordon Bennett, who bought the property from Olmstead for $500,000. Out of the ashes of the old museum then arose the new marble building of The New York Herald.

In May 1895, the New York Herald building was razed to make way for a skyscraper built by Henry Osborne Havermeyer, the president of the Sugar Trust, who had reportedly purchased the property for about $900,000. Called the St. Paul building, the skyscraper stood at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street from 1899 until 1958, when it too was razed in the name of progress to make way for the Wester Electric Building, which still stands today at 222 Broadway.

The New York Herald Building around 1875.
The New York Herald Building around 1875.
St. Paul Building, New York
At 315 feet tall, the St. Paul Building was one if the tallest buildings at the time when it was completed in 1899.

Incidentally, P.T. Barnum’s New American Museum was destroyed by fire in 1868. I’ll save that for another story some other time.

1865: The P.T. Barnum Museum and Menagerie at Broadway and Ann Street, Part II

Posted: 18th October 2015 by The Hatching Cat in Animal Attractions, Animal Stories
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Two hundred years before P.T. Barnum opened his American Museum at Broadway and Ann Street, there was a large saltwater meadow bounded by the East River and Broadway north of Wall Street called Smit’s Vly (or Fly), for “blacksmith’s valley” T. Smit had a forge in this meadow near the foot of Maagde Paegje (Maiden's Path), where a ferry to Long Island -- actually a canoe -- was operated by Cornelius Dircksen. This illustration shows Smit’s Vly and the forge at the foot of Maagde Paegje. That may even be Dircksen's canoe at the dock or on shore. Museum of the City of New York Collections
Two hundred years before P.T. Barnum opened his American Museum at Broadway and Ann Street, there was a large saltwater meadow bounded by the East River and Broadway north of Wall Street called Smit’s Vly (or Fly), for “blacksmith’s valley” T. Smit had a forge in this meadow near the foot of Maagde Paegje (Maiden’s Path), where a ferry to Long Island — actually a canoe — was operated by Cornelius Dircksen. This illustration shows Smit’s Vly and the forge at the foot of Maagde Paegje. That may even be Dircksen’s canoe at the dock or on shore. Museum of the City of New York Collections

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 – P.T. 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 in New York City on the corner of Broadway and Ann Street.

In Part I of the American Museum story, I wrote about the history of the P.T. Barnum American Museum, which once stood at the southeast corner of Ann Street and Broadway. In this post, I’ll explore some of the fascinating history behind the land at this famous Manhattan intersection.

The Cows on Maiden Lane

Once upon a time in New Amsterdam, in other words, around the 1630s, all of the land bounded by Broadway (Heere Wagh), the East River, Maiden Lane, and present-day Ann Street was farmland owned by Anthony Jansen van Salee, the Turk, who arrived in New Amsterdam about 1633. This part of lower Manhattan along the East River north of Wall Street was called Smit’s Vly (aka Smit’s Fly or Smith’s Valley).

Cornelius Van Tienhoven’s homestead was near the intersection of present-day Front Street and Maiden Lane, pictured here in 1816 when it was the site of the Fly Market, the predecessor to the Fulton Street Market.
Cornelius Van Tienhoven’s homestead was near the intersection of present-day Front Street and Maiden Lane, pictured here in 1816 when it was the site of the Fly Market, the predecessor to the Fulton Street Market. Before it was laid out and cobbled in 1698, Maiden Lane was a footpath along a pebbled freshwater brook that ran from Nassau Street to the East River. Van Tienhoven often led his cows up Maiden Lane to the common pasturage on Broadway.

Anthony Jansen Van Salee, a troublemaker who was married to Grietse Reyniers (dubbed Manhattan’s first “lady of the night”), and whose descendants include Cornelius Vanderbilt, reportedly acquired the land in 1638 and named the farm “Wallenstein” in memory of Albert van Wallenstein, a Bohemian military leader and politician. Van Salee transferred the deed to this land the following year.

According to historical records, the next owner of record was Cornelius Van Tienhoven, a womanizer and embezzler — or so they say. Born in Utrecht, Netherlands, in 1601, Van Tienhoven came to New Amsterdam as a Dutch West Indies Company accountant in 1633. He was promoted to schout-fiscaal (secretary) with the arrival of Director Willem Kieft in 1638, and later named receiver general under Peter Stuyvesant in 1651.

Ann Street between William and Gold streets was the old Van Tienhoven farm lane, where the P.T. Barnum museum would later be built.
If you’ve ever walked down the narrow part of Ann Street between William and Gold streets — as I did to take this photo — you would have walked over the old Van Tienhoven farm lane. This was also the site of Ann Kilmaster’s school (31 Ann Street), which is the school Washington Irving attended in 1786. Although the city widened most of Ann Street in 1830, for some reason this section was not included in the plans.

There was at this time a narrow lane that ran north through Van Tienhoven’s farm from about today’s Fulton and Gold streets to present-day Ann Street (where there stood a great tree), and then westward to Broadway. Van Tienhoven’s Lane, as it was called, was not carefully laid out, but was merely an access lane through underbrush and woodland to the triangular pasture where City Hall now stands.

(As an aside, for a very short time around 1690, part of today’s Pine Street between Pearl Street and Broadway was called Tienhoven Street. Tienhoven Street was absorbed by King Street in 1691, which was renamed Pine Street in 1694.)

Following Van Tienhoven’s death (murder?) in November 1656 – his hat and cane were found in the North River (Hudson), but his body was never recovered — the farm was sold to glassmaker Johannes (Jan) Smedes, who owned a glassworks on Glass Makers Street (today’s South William Street.)

Fast-forward 20 years to the Bolting Act of 1676, which forbade tanners, butchers, and shoemakers to operate within the walled city limits (south of Wall Street). At that time, Coenraet Ten Eyck, a tanner and shoemaker, owned a parcel of swampy land west of Broad Street (Heere Graft) and north of Beaver Street (a former sheep pasture). He and several other tanners and shoemakers operated the tanning pits at the intersection of Broad Street and Exchange Place (Prince Graft).

Map of Shoemakers' Pasture
Shoemakers’ Pasture is #7 on this 1852 map of New York City farms. The Vandercliff Farm was east of the Shoemakers’ Pasture (#8), and Beeckman’s Pasture (#10) and the Commons (#11) were to the north. The small triangular lot south of Park Row was owned by Andrew Hopper, who had a store on this site in the late 1700s.

When the Bolting Act was passed under British control, Ten Eyck and his fellow shoemakers were forced to find another location for their tannery. Enter Jan Smedes.

At this very same time, in 1676, Governor Edmund Andros had directed all owners of vacant lots or ruinous lands to build upon or improve them under penalty of having them sold at auction. Smedes sold his farm to Coenraet Ten Eyck and three other shoemakers — John Harpendinck (aka Harpending or Herbendinck), Carsten Luersen and Jacob Abrahamson.

For 20 years, the shoemakers’ tannery, or “tan pitts,” operated on the marshy land near the southeast corner of Maiden Lane and William Street (right about where the Louise Nevelson Plaza is today). All the land including and surrounding the tannery — about 16 acres — became known as the Shoemakers’ Pasture (aka Shoemakers’ Meadow).

In 1695, Shoemaker’s Pasture was divided into lots, a majority of which were acquired by John Harpendinck. In 1720, Ann Street (Van Tienhoven’s lane), John Street (named in honor of Harpendinck), and Fulton Street were laid out through Shoemakers’ Pasture. Following Harpendinck’s death in 1724, all of his deeded land was bequeathed to the Consistory of the Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church. The Consistory built the North Dutch Church in 1769 on the northwest side of Horse and Cart Lane (now William Street) at Fulton Street.

The North Dutch Church was built in 1769 on at the northwest side of Horse and Cart Lane at Fulton Street.
The North Dutch Church was built in 1769 on at the northwest side of Horse and Cart Lane at Fulton Street. During the Revolution, the church was used as a prison and a hospital. It was demolished in 1875 and replaced by shops. Today it is the site of apartments and a Chipolte Mexican Grill.

From about 1700 to 1770, the northwest corner of Shoemakers’ Pasture, bounded by Broadway, Nassau, Fulton and Ann Street, was occupied by the city’s first pleasure garden known as “Spring Garden.” The garden was lined with shade trees, and featured walkways and small grassy squares bordered by hedges. There was a large public house called Spring Garden House at the Ann Street corner, which was occupied by winemaker Thomas Scurlock (1739), and later by John Elkin (1760) and Henry Bicker (1770).

In March 1770, the Sons of Liberty persuaded Bicker to sell the house to them for use as their headquarters. They named it Hampden Hall, in memory of John Hampden, who had given his life in the struggle against arbitrary taxation 100 years earlier. Their first meeting here took place on March 19, 1770.

Following the Revolution, Ann Street had about 20 houses, most of them on the south side of the street. Mr. Ketchum lived at 22 Ann Street, where the Society of Peruke Makers and Hair Dressers met; St. John’s Masonic Lodge No. 1 occupied 2 Ann Street; Washington Irving lived at No. 40; Mrs. Ann Kilmaster’s school was at No. 13; Christ Church in Ann Street was at No. 49; and Johnathan Pearsee kept a tavern at No. 16.

On May 21, 1766, the Sons of Liberty erected a Liberty Pole on the site of today’s City Hall Park in celebration of the repeal of the 1765 Stamp Act.
On May 21, 1766, the Sons of Liberty erected a Liberty Pole on the site of today’s City Hall Park in celebration of the repeal of the 1765 Stamp Act. Over the next four years, British solders chopped or burned the pole down many times, but each time the townsfolk would replace it. The final straw came on January 19, 1770, when the pole’s destruction set off a series of riots on John and William streets known as the Battle of Golden Hill. This battle, just six weeks before the Boston Massacre, was reportedly the first time blood was shed during the Revolution.

In 1803, the old Hampden Hall at the corner of Ann Street and Broadway was the town residence of Andrew Hopper. He also had a dry goods store on this block in a building at 222 Broadway that he shared with John Scoles, an engraver and bookseller. A few years later the site was occupied by Jotham Smith, who also operated a large dry goods store on this corner.

In 1825, Nos. 220 and 222 Broadway — now occupied by the stores of John Vreeland and others — was sold at auction by the estate of Andrew Hopper. The land was purchased by Francis W. Olmstead, who constructed a large, 5-story marble building on the site. John Scudder opened the American Museum in this building in 1830. P.T. Barnum entered the picture in December 1841.

And so we’ve come full circle. In Part III, I’ll tell you about the animals at Barnum’s museum and the horrendous fire that took their lives.

Broadway, looking north from Ann Street, was very serene in 1819 when this illustration was drawn. St. Paul's Church is to the left, and 220-222 Broadway, a dry goods store, would have been just to the right. Museum of the City of New York Collections
Broadway, looking north from Ann Street, was very serene in 1819 when this illustration was drawn. St. Paul’s Church is to the left, and 220-222 Broadway, a dry goods store, would have been just to the right. Museum of the City of New York Collections

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
Tags: , , , ,
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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
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