The Hatching Cat of Gotham

1920: Jack Bleeck and Minnie, the Mascot Mouser of a Men-Only Speakeasy

Posted: 11th April 2015 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Mascots, Cat Men, Cat Stories
Tags: Artist and Writers Club, Cat Stories, Cat Tales, Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, John Bleeck, New York History

Minnie was just an alley cat — a dusty black and dirty white alley cat, to be more specific. But when she passed away in 1934, she made manly men like Jack Bleeck mourn.

It was a cold November night in 1920 when good luck brought the orphan kitten to the Opera Café at 561 Seventh Avenue (near 40th Street). John “Jack” Bleeck, who had just taken over the place after working as a bartender there for nine years, saw the kitten outside and invited her in.

He was just about to put up a “Help Wanted” sign for a good mouser, so the timing could not have been better.

Jack Bleeck (pronounced Blake), the son of a St. Louis shoe man, left his home city on a freight car sometime around 1900 to find a better life on the east coast. He landed a job making a dollar a day at a cocktail bar in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. After arriving in New York, his first jobs included selling hats and shoes and tending bar at Manhattan Beach on Coney Island.

In 1920, at the start of Prohibition, Jack borrowed some money to purchase the Opera Café and turn it into a speakeasy. Business was brisk, but Jack was no match for the rats and mice who nibbled at his customers’ shoes. A cat like Minnie was the answer to his prayers.

Prohibition New York 1920 — On January 16, 1920, 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution–which banned the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors–went into effect. In New York City, police confiscated barrels of wine and beer, smashed them, and dumped their contents into gutters or harbors. While some New Yorkers watched in horror, others began finding ways to circumvent the law by selling alcohol illegally at places called speakeasies.

On the night she arrived, Minnie slept well in a warm corner of the basement, her little belly full with food. She immediately paid Jack back by catching a mouse and placing it at his feet the next morning. Within six months, she had caught most of the critters and the rest moved away.

As Jack Bleeck told the press just before her death in July 1934, while wiping tears from his eyes:

Next door to me was a rathskeller featuring a business men’s lunch for 15 cents, including a glass of near beer. No real business man could eat the cheap cuts of meat they served. The meat was so tough it attracted rats and the rats used to burrow through the foundations and sneak into my café looking for a decent scrap of sirloin.
These rats were the biggest and boldest you ever saw. They would stand right up against the bar and gnaw at the shoes resting against the brass rail. My customers stood for this tickling just so long, and then began to complain.
I put 30 to 40 traps around the café, but the rats thought it was a game and came around more than ever. I threw gallons of ammonia into the holes they bored in the walls, but they thrived on that. Altogether I spent $600 on those damned rats and they didn’t have the courtesy to leave me alone.
Then, as I say, Minnie walked in out of nowhere one cold, snowy day when I opened the door to oil the lock. Minnie may have come from the [Metropolitan Opera House] but I asked no questions and nobody claimed her. She took immediate possession of the premises and went to work on those rats.
Minnie was made of strong stuff. She’d chase the rats into the holes and then wait three or four hours to get another crack at them. Inside of six months she had cleaned out all the rodents and the survivors never dared come back. It was a tough job. The rats used to gang her, but her paws moved like lightning and she could punch like Dempsey.”

Metropolitan Opera House, — Jack Bleeck thought that perhaps Minnie had come from the nearby Metropolitan Opera House at 1411 Broadway. Erected in 1882-83, the Metropolitan Opera House was razed in 1967 and replaced by a 40-story office tower.

In October 1925, Jack sold the Opera Café and secured a charter from Albany to open a social club in a grimy loft building at 213 West 40th Street, next to the new, New York Herald Tribune building. Called the Artist and Writers Club (apparently only one artist could join), the speakeasy-disguised-as-club looked like and operated like a men’s formal dining club.

Jack was a strict disciplinarian at his club, and he was always present at a central table to keep order. If any of the club’s 6,000 members started singing a loud drinking song or tried to occupy a table without permission, Jack saw to it that he was kicked out. If a wife or girlfriend tried to get in, the entrance was blocked (during Prohibition, patrons had to enter the club through a door inside a warehouse where the Metropolitan Opera stored scenery).

Artist and Writers Club
Owner: Jack Bleeck — The club — renamed a restaurant after Prohibition was repealed — featured English pub decor with a 42-foot bar, bare oak tables, and waiters with thick German accents who served German-American fare.

In the early days the Artist and Writers Club attracted opera singers from the Metropolitan Opera House and numerous thespians and stagehands from the National Theatre (later the Billy Rose, and today the Nederlander Theatre) at 208 West 41st Street. Later on, reporters, editors, authors, and press agents from all over the city made the club a favorite literary hangout.

Minnie, Martinis, and Caruso

One of the most famous patrons of the club was the great tenor Enrico Caruso, who would stop by with his friend Antonio Scotti, a baritone, after performing at the Met. Minnie would jump on the bar and arch her back so Caruso could pet her while sipping his Martini.

Although Minnie was the first female ever admitted to the strictly stag club, the feisty feline enjoyed her privileges but did not abuse them. She spent most of her waking hours policing the basement kitchen, which was where she slept in a box filled with sawdust. At 5 p.m. every day she would come upstairs to pass an hour with the men. She loved schmoozing, but she never once meowed or complained in their company.

Artist and Writers Club — *On one wall of the club was a set of armor from the Met and a stuffed, striped bass allegedly caught by J.P. Morgan in 1884.*

Over the years, Minnie reportedly had 110 kittens. (I wonder if one of her boyfriends was Tommy Lamb of The Lambs Club?)

According to Jack Bleeck, whenever she was pregnant, members of the club would form a kitten pool and bet on the litter size. Usually she had six kittens at a time, but sometimes she’d have only four or five. The mother cat made good mousers of them all, but none of her offspring ever acquired her social abilities.

After the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, Jack had to change the name of his club to the Artist and Writers Restaurant (I guess he still wanted only one artist to dine there). To the great dismay of his patrons, he also had to allow women. It took Jack 10 months to finally open the door to women, but even then he did his best to make most of them feel quite unwelcome.

*Other than Minnie, the only women who were welcomed at the Artist and Writers Restaurant were hard drinkers like actress Tallulah Bankhead.*

The Passing of Minnie

Just six weeks before Minnie died, she gave birth to her final litter of two kittens. Jack Bleeck could sense that she was not faring well after this delivery, so he took her by taxi to the Ellin Prince Speyer Hospital for Animals. There, she was examined by Dr. Bruce Blair, who told Jack his cat had a tumor in her stomach. He said she was too weak for an operation and could not be saved.

Jack Bleeck said his last goodbye to Minnie on July 20, 1934. He then purchased a plot for her at the Hartsdale Pet Cemetery in Westchester County.

While leaving the hospital for the last time, Jack told reporters, “She has a face like a human being. She looks right up in my face as if to say to me, I know I’m sick and you’re trying to help me.” He raised a finger to his moist eyes and said, “Just some soot in my eye…She’s just a cat.”

In March 1953, Jack sold the business to Thomas F. Fitzpatrick and Ernst Hitz. He died at his home in Manhasset, Long Island, 10 years later on April 22, 1973, at the age of 83.

In 1981, the old loft building was destroyed in a fire. Today a new building houses a Hale and Hearty soup and sandwich shop, and the old employees’ entrance for the Herald Tribune building is the entrance to the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

1908: The Iguanas That Escaped From the Bronx Zoo

Posted: 11th April 2015 by The Hatching Cat in Animal Attractions, Reptile Stories
Tags: Animal Tales, Bronx Park, Bronx Zoo, Charlie E. Snyder, Lydig Mills, New York Zoological Society, Reptile House

This story about the early days of Bronx Zoo begins with an Irish immigrant named John Mullaly, who worked as a reporter and editor in the mid-1800s for several New York City papers.

John was a big proponent of green spaces, and often wrote about the lack of such spaces in New York City. Consider that at this time, the city had only one acre of public parkland for every 1,363 inhabitants, compared to one acre for every 200 in Chicago and one acre for every 300 residents in Philadelphia.

On November 26, 1881, the 46-year-old newsman and a large group of citizens concerned with widespread urban growth met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel to form the New York Park Association. John Mullaly was named secretary, Waldo Hutchins was elected president, and Hon. Luther R. Marsh was named vice president.

The goal of the new association was to secure funding to create free public parks that would be rural and governed by as few restrictions as necessary to preserve them from abuse and destruction.

Bronx Zoo 1896 — Of the 653 undeveloped acres condemned by the city for the Bronx Zoo, more than half were owned by the Lorillard Estate and 170 acres were owned by the Lydig estate. The remaining acres were owned by the Ann Bolton estate, Jefferson M. Levy, Frederick Grote, C.A.L. Kernochan, Mary L. Barbey, and Eva L. Kipp. All total, it cost the city $2.3 million to acquire the lands for Bronx Park in 1888. This photo shows the northwest corner of what would become the Bronx Zoological Park in 1896. *Collection of the author*

As a result of the group’s lobbying efforts, an act was passed to appoint special park commissioners to locate and select undeveloped lands for parks and parkways in the 23rd and 24th wards of the Bronx. The commissioners came back with several options, including 1,070 acres embracing the Van Cortlandt estate, 1,000 acres on the Long Island Sound, and 653 acres on the Bronx River. It was estimated that the cost of the land would be no more than $8 million.

Bronx River, Bronx Park, Bronx Zoo — Before the Bronx Botanical Gardens and Bronx Zoo opened in the late 1880s, the Bronx Park was a popular place for picnics, fishing, and boating. New York City pleasure seekers could get there in about a half hour by taking the train from Grand Central on the New York and Harlem Railroad. *Museum of the City of New York Collections*

In 1884, the New York State Senate and Assembly passed the New Parks Act, which provided funds for the city to condemn these lands. Within a few years, the lands would be known as Van Cortlandt, Pelham Bay, Crotona, Claremont, and Bronx Park (later, Bronx Zoo).

So what does this have to do with iguanas?

In 1906, a large three-foot-long python escaped from the Reptile House but was soon captured by Bronx Zoo employees. New York Public Library Collections — In 1906, a large three-foot-long python escaped from the Reptile House but was soon captured by Bronx Zoo employees. *New York Public Library Collections*

By spearheading the effort to create green space in the Bronx, John Mullaly, the father of the Bronx park system, was the first of many sparks that led to the creation of the Zoological Park at Bronx Park – today’s Bronx Zoo – where the great iguana escape took place.

Escape From Bronx Zoo

On July 20, 1890, The New York Times wrote a comprehensive visitor’s guide to the new public parks in the Bronx. Here’s what it said about Bronx Park:

“Arriving at the park, the visitor should keep well in mind the fact that he has a right to go wherever he pleases and do just what he pleases so long as ordinary park regulations are observed. He will find fences and places that look like private grounds, but there is absolutely not a foot of private ground in the park and not a fence that one is not at perfect liberty to jump over or crawl under.”

Reptile House, Bronx Zoo — The Reptile House was one of the first structures built at the new zoo in Bronx Park. Work began on August 22, 1898, and was completed in the winter of 1899. The mottled brick, granite, and terracotta building was 146 feet long and 100 feet wide, and was designed to provide “suitable accommodations for representatives of all the orders of living reptiles and batrachians.” Situated on the edge of a forest of great oaks, it featured a nearby natural pool of water in granite rock that served as a summer home for lizards. Today, only the outer structure of the Reptile House remains much as it was in 1899. *New York Public Library Collections*

Apparently, many of the animals that have lived at the Bronx Zoo over the past 115 years have read this article, including our two iguanas from Cuba, a panther from Mexico, a python, and, of course, the cobra that escaped in 2011 and started its very own Twitter account.

Bronx Zoo Reptile House 1899 — Once the iguanas escaped, they had full range of the Reptile House, shown here in 1899 when the zoo first opened. *Collection of the author*

The two giant iguanas arrived at the Bronx Zoo in July 1907. Although they were each about four feet long, for some reason Keeper Charles Snyder and the other keepers at the Reptile House decided to house them in a small cage without any lid. Even though the walls of the cage were low, they didn’t think the iguanas would try to be jail dodgers.

They underestimated the reptiles. Sometime on Saturday night or early Sunday morning, the two crawled over and out, just as they were instructed to do in The New York Times article.

That Sunday, the Reptile House was very crowded with women and children. Pandemonium erupted when a little girl started to scream after seeing one of the iguanas crawling near the base of the anaconda cage.

Bronx Zoo Reptile House and keepers 1901 — It took Keeper Snyder and two guards about an hour to catch the two escaped iguanas and return them to their cages. Here, the Bronx Zoo keepers and attendants stand in front of the Reptile House in 1901. *New York Public Library Collections*

As the people all struggled to get out of the narrow door, one man scrambled over a low iron fence into the alligator cage — he jumped out as soon as he realized where he had landed.

Meanwhile, the second iguana was hovering near the rattlesnake’s cage. Keeper Snyder came running from his office at the rear of the building and started yelling, “There is nothing to fear. The reptiles are harmless!”

The one iguana responded to that comment by striking at Synder several times as he and two guards attempted to reign in the escapees. It ran past the men and out the door, causing brave men to scatter in all directions.

Bronx Zoo Head Keeper Charlie Snyder — Charles E. (Charlie) Snyder, considered one of the world’s leading authorities on snakes, was head keeper of reptiles at the Bronx Zoo in the early 1900s. Ironically, he died of a rattlesnake bite while hunting in Suffern, New York, in 1929, making him the only person in all of New York State to die from a rattlesnake bite in the 20th century.

Snyder and the guards, who were armed with billy clubs, chased the iguana back into the Reptile House and shut the door. After an hour of chasing the two around the building, they were finally able to throw a burlap bag over them and put them back in the cage. They immediately called for carpenters to build a wire lid so they couldn’t get out again.

A Brief History of the Bronx Zoo

The New York Zoological Park has only to be seen to be appreciated. It is located in what was the old Lydig estate, and many thanks are due to the Lydigs for their thoughtfulness in leaving the great forest trees that add so much to its picturesqueness and beauty.

In 1896, the New York Zoological Society petitioned the city for a municipal zoo aimed at preserving native animals, promoting zoology, and educating the public. The site they chose was 261 acres in the southern section of Bronx Park. A large portion of this land – about 170 acres — had been purchased from the Lydig estate in 1888 to create the park.

DeLancey Mills on Bronx River — The DeLancey Mills were located on the eastern shores of the Bronx River, just south of the falls. Prior to 1895, land east of the river was part of Westchester County. The house and mills burned down in 1845. *Collection of the author*

The land dated back to 1680, when the town of Westchester granted William Richardson permission to erect mills near the falls on the Bronx River. The mills – three grist mills and a saw mill — then passed to Everet Byvanck, whose widow sold them to William Provoost in 1711. Provoost in turn sold them to Stephen DeLancey, whose heirs sold the property to David Lydig.

David Lydig was the grandson of Philip Lydig, a German ship’s baker who came to America in 1750 and worked as a grain merchant. The ship baker’s son, also Philip, arrived in America 10 years later and was apprenticed to a leather merchant. Philip’s son David was born in 1764.

Philip Lydig cottage, Bronx River — In 1846, Philip Lydig built a cottage near the former DeLancey house on a knoll overlooking the Bronx River.

Sometime around 1830, David Lydig purchased the DeLancey estate on the Bronx River, which included the mills and the old family homestead. He and he wife, Catherine Mesier, and their only son, Phillip Mesier Lydig, lived at the estate in summer months.

In 1845, five years after David Lydig died, the original DeLancey house and mills burned down. A year later, Philip built a cottage on a knoll overlooking the river and his own mills on the west side of the river, a short distance from the dam. The mills produced ground grist for the neighborhood and grain that was transported to New York City via sloops up the Bronx River.

Bronx Zoo boathouse — In the early 1900s, the foundations of the old Lydig mills were still visible near the Bronx Park Boat House, pictured here in 1914. The Boat House was very popular during the summer season and thousands of park visitors used the rowboats that were kept here. Today this is the site of Jungle World at the Bronx Zoo.

When the Lydig property was condemned for Bronx Park, the mills were torn down. However, for many years the foundations still existed, providing a beautiful view of the falls through a ruined archway.

It took a lot of cutting through bureaucratic red tape, but the New York Zoological Society finally got the go-ahead to construct the zoo. Construction began on June 1, 1898.

The Bronx Zoo (originally called the Bronx Zoological Park and the Bronx Zoological Gardens) opened its doors to the public on November 8, 1899. Under the direction of zoo director William Temple Hornaday, the zoo featured 843 animals in 22 exhibits.

Today more than 2 million visitors a year come to see the more than 6,000 animals at the Bronx Zoo. The Reptile House is still there — now called the World of Reptiles — albeit, there are no more iguanas.

1909: The Hogs That Were Hunted by the Health Squad on Brooklyn’s Barren Island

Posted: 10th April 2015 by The Hatching Cat in Pigs and Hogs
Tags: Barren Island, Floyd Bennett Field, Jamaica Bay, New York History, Walter Bensel

“Hundreds of thousands have had an olfactory introduction to Barren Island, though few have ever visited it. It is a sea-washed bit of land a mile and a half long and three-quarters of a mile wide, just at the entrance to Jamaica Bay. There are few persons living on the adjacent coasts who have not been deeply impressed with its existence, for from its shores there has been wafted by the sea breezes and spread abroad more and worse odors of a stomach-turning description than ever emanated from a spot of similar size.” New York Times, November 7, 1890

Hog Barren Island — Close to 1,000 hogs were running wild on Barren Island in Jamaica Bay in 1909, when the New York City Health Department said enough is enough. *New York Public Library Collections*

No one knows where the hogs came from or when they first took up residence on Barren Island in Jamaica Bay. But according to an estimate by Dr. Walter Bensel, City Sanitary Superintendent, there were close to 1,000 hogs on Barren Island in 1909. That was about 999 too many.

In actuality, the hogs were the least of the worries when it came to Barren Island. To put it simply, the island stunk. It smelled so bad, in fact, that the odorous vapors emanating from Barren Island were making families living along Jamaica Bay sick, depreciating the value of their real estate, and driving away summer guests from Brooklyn hotels.

Brooklyn Ash Company, Barren Island — Factories like the Barren Island Fertilizing Oil and Guano Company, the New York Sanitary Utilization Company, and the Brooklyn Ash Company (shown here) were the causes of the nauseating and offensive odors which were carried by the wind for long distances in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

One of the reasons the island was so odoriferous was the fact that the predominant industries on the island in the late 1800s and early 1900s were stench-producing fish oil factories, fertilizer plants, and horse (glue) factories on the south shore. Hundreds of men worked in these factories, and by 1909, most of them were living on the island in shacks with their families.

If bone boiling, sludge acid, and decaying fish and animal flesh weren’t bad enough, the island was also the garbage dump for Brooklyn and a dumping ground for offal (the entrails of butchered animals) and dead animals, including horses, cats, and dogs.

Barren Island 1911 — In this 1911 map, Barren Island and many other islands were still separated from mainland Brooklyn. Notice Dead Horse Bay, which got its name sometime in the 1850s when horse-rendering plants surrounded the beach and bones and other animal body parts were dumped in the water.

But getting back to the hogs: Since 1907, Barren Island had been overrun with hogs. They roamed the island at will, breaking all the sanitary codes in the book. Complaints poured into the Health Department, causing Dr. Bensel to send an inspector to the island to canvass each house to find out who owned them. (The Board of Health was okay with the inhabitants owning hogs as long as they were properly penned.) At every house, the inspector was told that the hogs did not belong to the residents.

On the morning of March 16, 1909, a dozen policemen from the Health Department and Dr. Bensel took a power boat from Canarsie Landing in Brooklyn to Barren Island. Each officer was armed with 200 rounds of cartridges and ordered to kill as many hogs as possible. The moment the men stepped ashore a half hour later, the word started spreading that all the hogs were going to be killed.

Barren Island shack — In 1880, Barren Island’s 309 residents were mostly single men living in 12 residences, including factory dormitories, barracks or some other congregate company housing. By 1900, at which time the population was 520, many of the 103 households of adults, children, and boarders were living in clapboard shacks like this one. Many of the homes had rustic wood fences to enclose livestock — although it sounds like the hogs didn’t have to comply with the fencing.

As the police began shooting the hogs, many women began doing whatever they could to save the swine (there was no longer any doubt that the island residents owned the hogs). They began whistling and shouting and pleading with the officers to spare the animals’ lives. The men split up, with half going up the island in front of the houses and the other going in back of the yards.

As shots rang out non-stop, the women scattered over the fields to reign in their animals. Some men left their jobs at the factories to rescue their hogs and carry them into their homes. Many used pans of shelled corn to coax them into the back yards. Once there, the men carried the hogs into kitchens and even bedrooms to keep them safe.

Barren Island Public School 120 — The children were all at school — Public School #120 — when the hog hunt took place. In the 1900s, P.S. 120 had about five teachers who would arrive on Sunday by boat (a police launch in early days, later by passenger ferry) and spend the week in a house next to the school before heading back to their mainland homes on Friday. *New York Public Library Collections*

Fortunately, few children witnessed the hog massacre as they were inside the public school. Dr. Bensel was kind enough to pick a time and day when the kids would be in school and not outside at recess.

By the end of the day, hundreds of hogs had been killed. Many escaped to the salt marshes where no man could follow them. Others who were saved by their owners were huddled on back porches or poking their noses into kitchens.

“If Roosevelt were only here!” said one officer who was on the New York City police force when former President Teddy Roosevelt was a New York City Police Commissioner. “It was a big mistake he wasn’t invited.”

A Brief History of Barren Island

Barren Island was one of only three islands on the western side of Jamaica Bay that was inhabited or utilized during the Dutch colonial periods (the other two were Bergen and Mill islands). No one is really sure who owned Barren Island at any given time, but as early as 1664, several individuals laid claim to Barren Island or parts thereof, including William Moore and Rutgert Van Brunt.

Map Jamaica Bay — Once one of the largest of the islands in Jamaica Bay, Barren Island has been called by many other names during its history, including Equendito (the Native name), Broken lands, Bearn Island, Barn Island, and Bear’s Island.

When it was still an “island,” Barren Island contained approximately 30 acres of upland and 70 acres of salt meadow. As only shallow streams separated it from the mainland at low tide, men and livestock could reach the island on foot. Small craft could access the northern shore, and larger vessels (like garbage barges in later years) could approach its southern edge. Pasturage for horses and cows and the harvesting of salt hay were the island’s main functions in colonial times.

The island was pretty much uninhabited until the end of the 18th century, when a man by the name of Dooley built a house on the east end for entertaining sportsmen and fishermen. In 1830, John Johnson took over the Dooley house, which was designated a hotel on Dripps’ map of 1852 – and was the only structure noted on the island.

By the late 1850s, Barren Island had two fertilizer plants: One was built in 1859 by Lefferts R.Cornell and processed dead horses and other animals shipped from New York. The other was built around the same time by William B. Reynolds. From that time until the 1930s, the island had about 25 factories (no more than 7 or 8 at a time).

The Great Stink-Out

“What the Grand Canyon is to Colorado, the aroma of garbage and dead animals is, in a sense, to Barren Island.”

In the late 1890s, after receiving numerous complaints of the odors, both the state legislature and the city government made efforts to eliminate the Barren Island stench producers. These efforts failed, partly because the governor and mayor opposed to shutting them down (were the oil factory owners greasing their palms?), and partly because the city had no other plans for disposing its refuse. So the stench continued for many more years.

Garbage scow — During the busiest seasons in the early 1900s, seven or eight garbage scows, each carrying between 500 and 1,000 tons of refuse, would arrive daily at Barren Island. The horse boat also arrived every day with as many as 50 dead horses in addition to cows, cats, and dogs.

The island’s population peaked around 1905 with about 1,500 in inhabitants. During this period, Barren Island had two churches as well as the public school, three hotels, and four saloons. The residents also had their own pharmacy, butcher, bakery, and grocery stores.

Ferry service provided easy access to Rockaway, Sheepshead Bay, and Canarsie. The Canarsie Police Station was two and a half miles away, and police had a boat that they used to make trips to the island on a regular basis.

Barren Island church — In its heyday, Barren Island had a Catholic church and a Protestant church, shown here.

Floyd Bennett Field

In 1922, Judge Alfred J. Talley wrote a letter to Admiral Moffett, Chief of the Naval Bureau of Aeronautics, suggesting that Barren Island would be a great substitute for the discontinued naval air station at Rockaway Park. Talley happened to be the son-in-law of the late Andrew White, who then owned most of the island.

He noted that the island was now connected to Brooklyn via Flatbush Avenue (the avenue was extended to Jamaica Bay in 1921) and that the abandoned buildings could be made suitable for navy uses. There appears to be no followup on this suggestion.

In 1928, about 20 years after the great hog hunt, New York City commissioned Clarence Chamberlain to recommend a site for a new municipal airport. He chose Barren Island, which by that time already had a small dirt runway. This runway was referred to as Barren Island Airport and was used primarily by Paul Rizzo, who established the runway in 1927 to take customers on joy rides.

Barren Island Airport, a dirt runway, was used primarily by Paul Rizzo for taking customers in his plane on joy rides.

The new municipal airport was created by connecting Barren Island and a number of smaller marsh islands to the mainland by filling the channels with six million cubic yards of sand pumped from the bottom of Jamaica Bay. The airport was named after Navy warrant officer Floyd Bennett, a Brooklyn resident who co-piloted the first flight over the North Pole in 1926.

Floyd Bennett Field was dedicated on June 26, 1930, and officially opened on May 23, 1931.

The End of an Era

By 1930, the factories, school, stores, and most of the island residents were gone. All that was left were two dozen clapboard shacks, the skeleton of an old fertilizer factory, a church, and about 25 families (mostly Irish, Polish, and Italian) on the eastern end. Each household paid $10 to $12 in monthly rent, or $3 in water taxes if they owned their own homes.

Since the factories had all closed (only the garbage plant was still operating), most of the men lucky to have jobs during the Great Depression commuted to Manhattan. The women stayed on the island to care for the cows, ducks, chickens, and goats (try to picture this with planes flying ahead) while the children attended school in Brooklyn.

Barren Island cars on beach — Although residents continued to live in run-down shacks, each family owned at least one car in the 1930s. Many of the women wore jewels and diamond-studded combs and had other valuable souvenirs that they found when the island was used as a garbage dump.

In the spring of 1936, the city’s parks commissioner, Robert Moses, condemned Barren Island to build the Marine Parkway Bridge. The few remaining families were given 30 days to leave. Although a few people moved their shacks to a corner of the island that was still privately owned by the White estate, most of the residents left the island. Their cottages were bulldozed and the colony was dispersed without ceremony.

The federal government purchased the White tract in 1942, putting a final end to the final hold-outs of Barren Island.

1900: The Goats That Goaded the Fox Hills Golfers on Staten Island

Posted: 8th April 2015 by The Hatching Cat in Goats of New York
Tags: Fox Hills Golf Course, Isaac Mackie, Louis Henry Meyer, Mount Manresa, New York History, Rosebank

Staten Island once was home to more than a dozen golf courses. The first was Harbor Hill, which opened in 1878 and was bounded by Brighton, Lafayette, and Prospect Avenue in New Brighton. Another popular course was the semi-private Fox Hills Golf Course in Clifton, which opened in 1900 and was Staten Island’s first 18-hole course.

Goats golf — The Fox Hills Golf Course members told police that the goats “turn out on the links like a regiment of soldiers and frighten the women players.” In some cases, they said, the goats would chase the balls and run away with them. (In 1902 some cows invaded the course, but that’s another story for another time.)

Staten Island – the Borough of Richmond – was also once home to hundreds of goats. New York State Governor Al Smith (1923-28) said the first time he visited the island, there were four goats to every human.

Fox Hills Golf Course Clubhouse, Staten Island — The Fox Hills Golf Course had a clubhouse near Vanderbilt Avenue, which was then considered the largest golf clubhouse in the country. The clubhouse stood about where Osgood and Fairway avenues meet today; the site is now occupied by residential duplexes. *New York Public Library Collections*

In 1900, members of the new Fox Hills Golf Club overlooking the Narrows began complaining to authorities about the goats that were running at large and interfering with their game. They claimed that the goats came from “Goatville,” a settlement near Rosebank inhabited primarily by Italian immigrants who held tightly to the old country customs and religion.

The Health Department in the Borough of Richmond went to war against the goats and their owners. The police also got involved, including Sergeant Shay of the Stapleton Police, who issued summonses to a number of goat owners for violating the sanitary code by keeping goats without a license.

Bell Street, Staten Island — Bell Street in Rosebank is so narrow it can barely accommodate one car lane. In the 1800s and early 1900s, this road was a farm trail in a settlement called “nanny goat hills.” Here, Italian immigrants grew vegetables, raised goats, and planted fig trees (which is why today you can still find fig trees in backyards from Rosebank to Tottenville.)

A Brief History of Fox Hills

In the 19th century, the area we now call Clifton and Concord was only a small rural hamlet with fishing ponds and wooded trails. Around 1860, Louis Henry Meyer, the former president of the Fort Wayne Railway company and one of the founders of the Staten Island Savings Bank, purchased 18 acres of land along present-day Fingerboard Road.

Fox Hills Golf Course — With the goats gone, golfers including Walter Clark and Isaac Mackie could enjoy a round of golf at Fox Hills in August 1905.

This acreage was part of a land grant dating back to 1685, and had been previously owned by Samuel H. Kelly (1685), George Brown (1691), Isaac Simonson (1749), Samuel Bowne (1852), and Manuel X Harmony (1859). Meyer invested $800,000 in Samuel Bowne’s manor home to make it one of the premier homes on Staten Island. In doing so, Meyer joined an exclusive group of men who established estates around the borough and called themselves the “Staten Island Barons.”

Two years after Meyer’s death in 1898, Fox Hills Golf Club was founded with 200 members. The 18-hole course, which had been laid out on the former Meyer estate by the Staten Island Cricket Club in 1899, boasted the finest links in the tri-state area, with numerous sand traps and a large pond creating challenging obstacles for even the best golfers. (The 13th hole was so difficult it was nicknamed Hell’s Kitchen.) Its grounds encompassed what is today Park Hill (and the Park Hill Apartments), Celebration, and Eibs Pond.

Fox Hills Manor, Staten Island — Louis Meyer named his estate Fox Hills Manor after his passion for fox hunting. In 1898, following his death, the 20-room estate served as a boardinghouse. The property then sat empty until Father Shealy purchased it in 1911 for a Jesuit retreat center, Mount Manresa. The villa was torn down in the 1960s, and in April 2014, the New York Province of the Society of Jesus sold the property to a developer of shopping malls and townhouse neighborhoods. That’s called progress.

The course was reportedly designed by Isaac Mackie, a native of Scotland and apprentice golf club maker who came to the U.S. to become a professional at Fox Hills. Mackie also competed on a national level in the U.S. Open from 1901 to 1921, and won the Eastern PGA Championship in 1908 at Fox Hills.

Isaac Mackie, U.S. Open — Fox Hills pro Isaac Mackie is pictured here (left) at the 1904 U.S. Open with Jack Hobens, Alex Ross, and George Thomson.

In 1918 during the first World War, Hoff General Hospital No. 41 was built on land adjacent to the Fox Hills Golf Course. Constructed in a record four months at a cost of $2 million, the facility was the largest army hospital in the world with a capacity for 3,000 patients.

The Fox Hills Base Hospital, as it became known, operated until 1922, when it was determined that the rundown hospital had become a firetrap. The facility closed on March 7, 1922, and the few remaining patients were transferred to Sea View Hospital.

With the arrival of the Great Depression, the Fox Hills Golf Club was no longer sustainable. The club closed its doors in 1935. By that time, the goats were long gone. (Albeit, Staten Island was New York’s last stand for goats: In 1928, The New York Times reported that 130 Staten Island residents were still licensed to keep goats.)

During World War II, the U.S. Army reactivated the old Fox Hills property to serve as an army base, an Italian prisoners of war camp, and a trading post along Vanderbilt Avenue. When the war ended, the barracks became makeshift homes for veterans who faced a severe housing shortage in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The facility shut down completely in the early 1950s.

As late as the early 1970s, farm animals still grazed at large in Staten Island. These ducks, goat, and horse are grazing on yet-to-be-developed land near the Staten Island Mall on Richmond Avenue in New Springville. — As late as the early 1980s, farm animals from Artie Klages’ Richmond Hill Animal Farm at 147 Richmond Hill Road still grazed at large in Staten Island. These animals are grazing on yet-to-be-developed land on Merry Mount Street between Nome Avenue and Richmond Hill Road in New Springville.

If you enjoyed this golf story, you may enjoy reading about Lillian Russell, the feline mascot of the Dyker Meadow Golf Course in Brooklyn.

1933: Floyd, the Freeloading Turtle of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

Posted: 7th April 2015 by The Hatching Cat in Animal Attractions, Reptile Stories
Tags: Cornelis Van Werckhoven, Floyd the turtle, H.D. Campbell, Jerry Villafrete, New York History, Toddy Inn, Willis Stock Farm

According to legend, this story all began when a customer brought three pet turtles into the Toddy Inn on 5th Avenue in Bay Ridge in 1933. Soon after the customer placed all three on the bar to show off their “racing skills,” one of the turtles made his escape. Either he was a very fast turtle, or everyone had slow reflexes from drinking too many hot toddies.

One year later, the runaway turtle everyone called Floyd showed up at the bar on his own. He would continue to appear at the Bay Ridge bar for about a week every year in May or June for more than 20 years.

Floyd the turtle, Toddy Inn, 1954
Bay Ridge, Brooklyn — This actual photo of Floyd the turtle at the Toddy Inn in Bay Ridge was taken in 1954, about 20 years after the turtle began making his annual pilgrimage to the bar. *Brooklyn Public Library Collections*

According to Jerry Villafrete, a bartender who worked at the Toddy Inn in the 1950s, Floyd’s routine was pretty much the same every year. He’d walk in through the back door and take up residence under the same particular booth in the tavern. For about a week, he’d take naps under the booth and short walks around the bar. None of the patrons ever fed him, although once and awhile he’d get a bite or two of lettuce provided by the management.

7913 Fifth Avenue (between 79th and 80th Street)
Bay Ridge — The three-story brick structure at 7913 Fifth Avenue (between 79th and 80th Street) where Floyd made his temporary home was built in 1920. It was originally occupied by a real estate firm, J.A. Fausner & Co., before becoming the Toddy Inn tavern. The building is currently the home of Fillmore Real Estate.

Floyd Introduces His Girlfriend

In 1954, after 20 years of bachelorhood, Floyd surprised everybody by showing up with another turtle. Everyone assumed it was his girlfriend, so they named her Gertrude.

As owner Anthony Baranella told the press, “Floyd decided it was a good place to bring a gal of good family for a drink or two.” He said he liked having the pair around because they drummed up business and didn’t drink too much of the profits.

According to Mrs. Bessie Hecht, a scientific assistant in the reptile department of the Museum of Natural History, Floyd and Gertrude probably lived in the Bay Ridge area – maybe in the backyard of the Toddy Inn – and hibernated in the ground from the fall until spring. In 1953, she told the Brooklyn Daily Eagle that the turtles probably lived in the backyard all summer, feeding on grubs and worms.

1929 Bay Ridge — Floyd didn’t have much of a backyard at 7913 5th Avenue (lower left of this 1929 map), but perhaps he ambled on over to the greenhouses at Denyse’s Nursery just up the block.

What Floyd and Gertrude probably did not realize was that the yard in which they made their home once belonged to one of the most prominent families of New Utrecht. This land was also once part of the British base of operations for the Battle of Long Island during the Revolutionary War.

What we now call Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst was once part of the town of New Utrecht, one of six towns established by the Dutch and later combined by the British to form Kings County.

The area was first settled in 1652, when Cornelis Van Werckhoven of Utrecht, Holland, began building a colony on land known as the Nyack or Najeck tract. His agent Augustus Heermans had purchased this land for him from the Canarsie and Nyack Indians for 6 shirts, 2 pairs of shoes, 6 coats, 6 pairs of stockings, 6 axes, 6 kettles, 6 knives, 2 scissors, and 6 combs (the items and numbers vary in published accounts).

Following Van Werckhoven’s death in 1655, Jacques Cortelyou, the private tutor for Cornelis’ two children (Peter and Cornelis Jansen), received permission to sell lots and create a town on the Nyack tract. Nineteen families received grants of 50 acres each, and by 1660, they had built 11 houses.

Most of these homes were near the broad main street of the village, which is now 84th Street between 16th and 18th Avenues. The settlers named the town New Utrecht in honor of Van Werckhoven’s place of birth.

Many prominent Dutch families, including the Barkaloos, Van Brunts, Bennetts, Denyses, Bergens, Van Pelt’s, and Bogarts established their farms and homesteads in New Utrecht. Long into the 19th century, as this 1873 map shows, these families held onto their farms and shunned development.

But that all changed in the late 1880s, when the Union Elevated and Brooklyn City railroad lines were extended through Brooklyn, and the outsiders started to move in.

Bennett Homestead Shore Road — The Bennetts were one of the most prominent Dutch families with extensive realty holdings in New Utrecht. Charles C. Bennett was born in the old family home (pictured here) at what is now 96th Street and Shore Road on September 15, 1851. The family also had a manor home on Shore Road and 87th, a farm near today’s Shore Road and 79th Street, and many other real estate holdings.

In 1889, James Townsend bought the Adolphus Bennett farm lying along 79th street between Third and Sixth Avenues. That same year, Hoik D. Campbell purchased the John J. Bennett estate, which was bounded by 5th Avenue, 83rd Street, 4th Avenue and Denyses Lane.

According to news reports, Campbell’s intention was to establish a land company and build cottages on the property. However, he reportedly didn’t begin selling off these lots and some of his other holdings until the early 1900s. In 1920, the block of buildings that included the Toddy Inn on 5th Avenue was constructed on the old Bennett estate.

A Hudson Valley Aside

J.D. Willis Stock Farm, Middletown — H.D. Campbell purchased the J.D. Willis Stock Farm in Middletown, New York, in 1892.

My readers in the Hudson Valley may be interested to know that H.D. Campbell was the owner of the old Willis Stock Farm just south of Middletown, New York. Campbell purchased the farm in 1892, and he and his family established their summer home on the 112-acre property, which featured a 14-room farmhouse, a carriage house, a large farm barn, colt, mare, and stud barns, and granaries. The farm also had a half-mile track.

Apparently Campbell didn’t know a lot about horses, but he thought the horses and the track would make a good investment. In 1897, the Orange County Agricultural Society purchased his track and the three surrounding fields. Today we know this property as the Orange County Fairgrounds, the Orange County Fair Speedway, and the Middletown High School.

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1920: Jack Bleeck and Minnie, the Mascot Mouser of a Men-Only Speakeasy

1908: The Iguanas That Escaped From the Bronx Zoo

1909: The Hogs That Were Hunted by the Health Squad on Brooklyn’s Barren Island

1900: The Goats That Goaded the Fox Hills Golfers on Staten Island

1933: Floyd, the Freeloading Turtle of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

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