Milson O’Boy, owned by Mrs. Gertrude G. Cheever Porter of New York City, took Best in Show at the Morris & Essex in 1935, defeating 3,175 dogs.
One of the most popular owners and breeders of championship Irish Setters in the history of show dogs was Mrs. Gertrude Cheever Porter of New York City. Over the years, she owned eight champion Irish Setters and numerous other show dogs. Her pride and joy was Ch. Milson O’Boy, whose career in the 1930s included 11 Best in Show, 46 Group Firsts, and 103 Best of Breed awards.
Gertrude G. Cheever was born in New York on May 3, 1889. She was the only child of John Dow Cheever and Anna Cheever of 14 East 30th Street. John was a successful banker and also the founder of the Rockaway Hunt Club.
Her grandfather, John Haven Cheever, was president of the New York Belting and Packing Co. and of the Mechanical Rubber Co. He was also one of the first businessmen to establish a country estate at Far Rockaway, then part of Long Island.
Gertrude’s grandfather, John Haven Cheever, was a pioneer in establishing Far Rockaway, Long Island, as a country home for well-to-do New York businessmen. He was a founding developer of Wave Crest, an 80-acre gated community of mansions on what was once the Clark estate on the western boundary of Far Rockaway (in the vicinity of today’s Spray View Avenue) The Cheever home was located on a five-acre plot about ¼ mile from the ocean, where the family farmed and raised horses.
In 1909 at the age of 20, Gertrude Cheever, a New York City debutante, had her coming-out party. About this time, or perhaps at this party, she met Seton Porter, a member of her father’s Rockaway Hunt Club. Seton was a graduate of Yale and chairman of the Board of National Distillers.
Gertrude Cheever and Seton Porter held their wedding reception in 1911 on the veranda of the John Dow Cheever country home in Wave Crest, Far Rockaway. This unusually shaped home was designed by the legendary architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White and built for $17,000 in 1886. The Cheever home was demolished in the 1940s.
The two were married at St. John’s Church in Far Rockaway on June 3, 1911, and lived at 884 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Gertrude and Seton divorced in 1924. Gertrude Cheever Porter never remarried and she continued to go by the name of Mrs. Cheever Porter while collecting $840 a month in alimony; Seton went on to marry two more times.
A Champion Ice Skater
Before she started showing championship dogs, Gertrude Cheever was a champion ice skater with the New York Skating Club. She started skating while still married to Seton Porter, and was often paired with Irving Isaac Brokaw, another member of the club. In later years, she was the executive director of the Skating Carnival, an annual benefit event that took place at Madison Square Garden in the 1930s.
In 1920, Gertrude Cheever Porter and Isaac Irving Brokaw were gold-medal champions in the 10 Step, an early set pattern ice dance. Brokaw was a four-time world champion and America’s first Winter Olympian (prior to the creation of the Winter Games in 1924, ice skating was part of the Summer Games).
Founded in 1863, the New York Skating Club was the second skating club formed in the United States. In the 1860s, members skated at the Conservatory Pond in Central Park, shown here, and then at various private ponds on Fifth Avenue.
At each skating site, the members would build a clubhouse for their exclusive use. In early years, the club had an official meteorologist, Mr. E.B. Cooke, to report on the weather and skating conditions at the rinks. This particular clubhouse was located in 1868 on the southeast corner of Central Park, just off Fifth Avenue.In the 1880s, refrigerated ice surfaces replaced outdoor ice ponds, many of which had been covered over for office buildings and hotels. Members of the New York Skating Club skated at two rinks named Iceland, the first on Broadway and 53rd Street and the second at 239 West 52nd Street. In 1896, the St. Nicholas Rink, shown here in 1901, opened on Columbus Avenue and 66th Street. The area was used exclusively for ice sports until 1911, when prize box fighting moved in. The building was later used as a production center for ABC and Eyewitness News. It was demolished in the 1980s and is now the site of the network’s main offices.
Requiem for the Porter Irish Setters
When she wasn’t competing on the rink, Mrs. Cheever Porter was busy showing her championship Irish Setters. Her first two show dogs, Ch. St. Cloud’s Fermanagh III “Dixie” and Ch. Lord Palmerston II “The Woods,” were born in 1924.
Ch. Rosecroft Premier won 124 Best of Breed awards in the 1940s. Charcoal illustration by Gladys Cook, 1945
Ch. Peggy Belle was born in 1926, followed by Red Barney, who survived less than a year and never had the chance to show. Fermanagh IV “Dixie Jr.” was born in 1931 and Milson O’Boy was born in 1932. Next was Milson Copper Lad in 1935 and another great champion, Rosecroft Premier, who was born in 1938 and quickly rose to national fame.
Milson O’Boy was the son of the champion Higgins Red Coat and Milson’s Miss Sonny. The Irish Setter hit his stride at the age of three, when he won the highest honor of the year — Best in Show at the Morris & Essex Show in Madison, New Jersey. At this show and many others, he was handled by Harry Hartnett, owner of the Milson Kennels at Harrison, New York.
In 1940, the year Mrs. Cheever Porter purchased Rosecroft Premier, she reportedly had a luxury Cadillac town car built, shown here. An article in Special Interest Autos claimed that the mistress of legendary singer and band leader Vaughn Monroe had the car built and designed for him. This suggests that Gertrude Cheever Porter was Monroe’s mistress, but I can’t confirm this assumption.
Milson O’Boy had numerous offspring and sired 17 championship dogs, including Ch. Milson O’Boy II, who became the foundation stock for the Knightscroft Kennels in New City, New York. This kennel produced Ch. Rosecroft Premier, who reportedly “pushed Milson O’Boy from his thrown” and was purchased by Mrs. Cheever Porter for about $1,500 in 1940.
Milson O’Boy died on June 29, 1945, and was buried alongside six of his champion Porter “siblings” at the Hartsdale Pet Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Rosecroft Premier joined the seven other setters at Hartsdale when he died on June 12, 1951.
Gertrude Cheever Porter continued showing Irish Setters and other breeds until 1979, at the age of 90. When she died on November 14, 1980, The New York Times published a very small obituary with no details about her death or burial.
A tombstone with the name “Gertrude Cheever Porter” suggests that she was buried at Trinity Cemetery in Nassau County.
A gravestone with her name in Trinity-St. John’s Cemetery in Hewlett, New York, has no dates.
However, she left as her legacy the Cheever Porter Foundation, which was started in June 1962 and has since made numerous grants to schools of veterinary medicine, veterinary hospitals, and guide dog foundations.
In 2013, the independent foundation based in Huntington, New York, had $2.6 million in assets.
Ch. Milson O’Boy died in 1945, and was buried at the legendary Hartsdale Pet Cemetery in Westchester County. Eight of Mrs. Cheever Porter’s champion Irish Setters are buried here. Photo, P. Gavan
The elephant was stolen from her home, secretly smuggled into America, and called Topsy, after the slave girl featured in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. That says it all.
Warning: This true elephant story brought tears to my eyes, and was very difficult to write. However, I believe it’s an important story to tell in order to show how far we’ve come in America when it comes to treating both animals and humans, how far we still need to go, and how important it is for us to ensure that other countries catch up and keep pace with us.
Our sad story begins around 1875, when a 200-pound baby elephant was captured by elephant traders in Southeast Asia. Adam Forepaugh of the Forepaugh & Sells Circus smuggled the elephant into America and falsely billed her as the “first American born elephant.”
Topsy quickly became the star of the circus and a fan favorite.
Like many circus animals at the time, Topsy was subject to harsh treatment and torture during her training and performances. Trainers often prodded her with sharp hooks between the eyes and in the head or used hot pokers to make her obey their orders.
Naturally, Topsy’s temper became shorter and shorter, and she turned on her trainers. She attacked several handlers and reportedly killed two circus workers in Texas (no records exist to prove this accusation). And then in May 1902 she killed a spectator in Brooklyn who went too far.
According to published reports, James Fielding Blount allegedly offered her whiskey, threw sand in her face, and then put a burning cigarette into her trunk. The man met his end when Topsy wrapped her trunk around him, tossed him into the air, and then smashed and trampled him on the ground. Payback is a bitch, as they say.
Frederic Thompson and his business partner, Elmer “Skip” Dundy acquired Topsy in 1902 when they took over the long-term lease on Paul Boyton’s Sea Lion Park.
Following this highly-publicized incident, Topsy was sold to Captain Paul Boyton, the proprietor of Sea Lion Park at Coney Island. When his park went bankrupt a year later, Paul Boyton turned the elephant over to the new owners, Frederic Thompson and Elmer “Skip” Dundy, who were constructing Luna Park on the site.
Life before Luna Park was horrible for Topsy, but it was about to get much worse.
For the rest of her short pathetic life, she was put to use hauling building and construction materials. Frederic and Elmer called it her penance for being so aggressive.
One of Topsy’s biggest jobs was moving the massive “Trip the Moon” structure from Steeplechase to Luna Park.
One of her biggest jobs was moving the massive “Trip the Moon” structure from George Tilyou’s Steeplechase Park to Luna Park. The 80-foot tall, 40,000 square foot structure was placed on heavy timbers with big wooden rollers, and Topsy was put to work. She put her forehead against the building, and, with the help of only a few poor horses, pushed it nearly a mile down Surf Avenue to its new location.
Whitey the Elephant Beater
William Ault, better known as Whitey, was Topsy’s keeper and slave driver for over a decade. He was the only one who could handle her – but apparently he could only handle her if he tortured her. He often used a pitchfork on her, and was arrested at least one time after police observed “excessive” prodding. One time the ASPCA prosecuted Whitey for wounding Topsy’s eye, but unfortunately he was acquitted of animal cruelty because the abuse was deemed acceptable at that time.
The “Trip to the Moon” attraction at Luna Park featured a 30-passenger airship resembling a giant red canoe with wings. The “Airship Luna” was suspended from the ceiling by steel cables, permitting the ship to rock and swing lightly. Hundreds of lights and sound effects added to the experience.
The final nail in Topsy’s coffin came at noon on a December day when an intoxicated Whitey tried to ride the elephant down Surf Avenue. After about a half mile, Tospy stopped, causing Whitey to slide off.
This angered him, and he began prodding her trunk in a savage manner as a crowd watched and cheered (Yes, if there were smart phones in those days, a video of this violent act would have gone viral).
Policeman Conlin of the Coney Island police force arrested him, whereupon Whitey said he would turn the elephant loose upon the crowd. Conlin in turn threatened to shoot the trainer if he let Topsy charge the crowd.
Whitey acquiesced — temporarily. They made their way to the police station on West 8th Street, where Topsy mounted the broad granite steps and got wedged in the front door.
Topsy tried to enter the new Coney Island police station and magistrates’ court, but got wedged in the door. Located on West 8th Street, the 1897 building was known as the Little Brown Jug at Coney Island. The court was shut down in 1958 and the building was torn down. A new station for the police (60th Precinct) was erected on the site in 1971.
Sergeant Levis begged Whitey to drive the animal back, but it took him a while to obey the order (Levis should have used a pitchfork on him!). Finally, Fred Thompson showed up, paid the bail, and ordered Ault to return Topsy to Luna Park. Whitey was ordered to appear in court on charges of disorderly conduct.
Whitey was immediately fired, but with no one left to handle Topsy, Fred and Elmer had to get rid of her. They tried to raffle her off and give her away for free, but no zoo would take her. With no other options left, the men decided to euthanize Topsy.
First the men announced they would kill Topsy by hanging her from the new Electric Tower, which was being constructed in the middle of the former park’s Shoot the Chute lagoon (the tower was only 75 feet high by this time). ASPCA president John Peter Haines quickly quashed that idea.
The ASPCA would not allow Fred and Elmer to hang Topsy from the Luna Tower in Coney Island. However, 13 years later an elephant was hanged to death in Erwin, Tennessee.
Next, they discussed charging a 25-cent admission to publicly electrocute the elephant. The backup plan was to feed her cyanide-laced carrots and strangle her with large ropes hung from the tower and tied to a steam powered winch.
For some asinine reason, Haines said no to the admission fee, but he was fine with a public execution.
On December 13, 1902, Luna Park press agent Charles Murray released a statement to the newspapers that Topsy would be euthanized within a few days by electrocution.
A “First-Class Execution” “The affair is expected to be one of the most brilliant society features of the Coney Island season.”—New York Tribune, January 3, 1903
The execution was set for January 4, 1903. Expecting a large crowd due to all the publicity, Fred and Elmer hired a caterer and a brass band for the event. They told the press it would be a “first-class execution.”
Fred and Elmer turned to Thomas Edison, who was then competing with Nikola Tesla’s alternating current (AC) method and trying to preserve his direct current (DC) method as the electricity standard for the United States. In his attempt to discourage the use of AC, Edison had been staging public demonstrations of its danger by electrocuting stray and unwanted animals, including cats, dogs, horses, and cows. Apparently he just couldn’t resist the opportunity to demonstrate the “dangers” of AC one more time.
Edison agreed to electrocute Topsy, and as an added bonus, he said he would document the event using a movie camera, another one of his inventions. (I guess you could say he got two bangs for the buck — major sarcasm). The electrocution was supervised by P. D. Sharkey, chief electrician with the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of Brooklyn.
You can watch Edison’s video here, but it is disturbing.
On January 4, 1903, a crowd of about 1,500 spectators and 100 photographers gathered in the Luna Park construction zone to witness the hours-long spectacle. First, elephant “expert” Carl Goliath and other handlers loaded her with chains and tried to coax her over the lagoon bridge using apples, carrots, and hay. (The men had offered Whitey 25 dollars to help with the execution, but he turned it down, saying he wouldn’t kill her for a thousand dollars.)
Days before the event, press agent Murray arranged media coverage and posted banners around the park and on all four sides of the makeshift gallows advertising “OPENING MAY 2ND 1903 LUNA PARK $1,000,000 EXPOSITION, THE HEART OF CONEY ISLAND”. You can see these signs on the unfinished “Electric Tower” in this press photograph of the electrocution.
After two hours, they finally got her in place, but then she wouldn’t stay still on the metal plates. She shook the copper-lined wooden sandals off her feet and refused to eat the cyanide-laced carrots. They say elephants are smart – she definitely knew what was happening to her.
Thomas Alva Edison, around 1903, was often associated with the death of Topsy. Edison was not present at Luna Park and it’s unclear what impact he had on the execution or its filming.
Eventually Topsy ate the carrots and Sharkey signaled for Joseph Johansen, the superintendent at Coney Island station nine blocks away, to pull the switch. At the same time, Luna Park chief electrician Hugh Thomas closed another switch at the park, sending 6,600 volts from Bay Ridge through Topsy’s body for 10 seconds.
There was a flash of fire and the odor of burning flesh. Her body shook violently and she fell to the ground. Then the steam-powered winch tightened two nooses placed around her neck for 10 minutes as an added precaution. An autopsy showed that that the poison did not have time to take effect.
Originally intended to serve as a hotel, the elephant contained a cigar store in the front legs, a gallery in the “Stomach Room,” a grand hall through the diaphragm and liver, and a museum in what would be the elephant’s left lung. The elephant’s eyes in the “Cheek Room” had telescopes and served as an observatory.
Johansen was knocked out and nearly electrocuted himself, but he sustained only small burns from the power traveling from his right arm to his left leg. When you look at these photos, it’s amazing more people weren’t injured. (Let’s see: metal plates, 6,600 volts, a 5-ton elephant on a rickety bridge over a body of water — OSHA would have had a field day with this one.)
Topsy was about 35 years old at the time of her death, which is about half the expected life span for an elephant with a decent life in the wild.
The fire also destroyed Lorenzo Shaw’s Channel Chute, a wooden roller coaster built in 1895 that encircled the hotel and was often called the Elephant Scenic Railway. This ride featured cars that were taken by elevator to the top and then circled back down around the Elephant. The nearby Toboggan Slide survived the fire.
The Elephantine Colossus
Ironically, Topsy was electrocuted on the very spot that was once occupied by the iconic Elephantine Colossus, otherwise known as the Elephant Hotel. The 12-story pachyderm designed by James V. Lafferty stood above Surf Avenue and West 12th Street from 1885 until 1896, when it was destroyed in a spectacular fire.
A Coney Island Tragedy: Burning of the Historic Elephant: The prophetic cover from the October 10, 1896, issue of The Illustrated American.
Built two years before the Statue of Liberty, the Elephant Hotel was said to be the first artificial structure visible to immigrants arriving to America. Its manager often exaggerated the view, telling visitors they would be able see places like Yellowstone Park, Niagara Falls, and Paris from the elephant’s back.
In the 1890s, the giant elephant served as a brothel (male patrons would say they were “seeing the elephant”). However, when the structure caught fire on September 27, 1896, it had not been used for several years.
When the smoke cleared, all that remained standing was a part of the elephant’s foreleg. At least this elephant was not a living, breathing creature when it fried.
In recent years, several former employees of Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus have gone public by speaking out against the way elephants continue to be mistreated. Like Topsy, these animals are abused with sharp metal bull hooks and are kept on chains for most of their lives.
On March 5, 2015, the Feld family, which owns Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus, announced that it would phase out its 13 performing Asiatic elephants by the beginning of 2018. These elephants will join the more than 40 pachyderms already resident at the Feld family-owned Center for Elephant Conservation in Florida.
Luna Park opened on May 16, 1903, just four months after Topsy’s murder. The park was quite spectacular at night, with all the towers and minarets lit up by more than 250,000 incandescent lights. It’s more than ironic that Topsy was executed by electricity at the base of the park’s iconic Electric Tower.
Some sources claim that actor John Barrymore, a frequent guest of the Algonquin Hotel, changed Rusty’s name to Hamlet. Barrymore was a big fan of cats, and he did play Hamlet on Broadway, but every newspaper article from that era calls the cat Rusty. No news articles from the 1930s or 1940s mention a cat at the Algonquin named Hamlet.
In 1936, a rather disheveled kitten about seven months old stepped into the lobby of New York City’s Algonquin Hotel on 44th Street. Like most stray cats, he was fighting for survival on the streets, and a hotel lobby was as good a place as any to search (or beg) for food and shelter.
Frank Case, the legendary owner of the Algonquin, welcomed this feline hotel guest, even though he was just a ragamuffin street cat. Somehow he knew there was something special about this orange cat with the perfect tabby markings. Plus, the hotel needed a new cat to replace Billy, who had arrived at the Algonquin around 1921 and had lived there happily for 15 years.
Frank Case named the cat Rusty, and well, as they say, the rest is history.
The Algonquin Hotel was built in 1902 following the demolition of two brick stables and two frame buildings on land once occupied by the farm of John N. Grenzebach. When it opened on November 22, it was a residential hotel with apartments that could be rented for an annual rate of $420 for a simple one-bedroom and bath to $2,520 for a luxurious suite of three bedrooms, private dining room, parlor, library, three bathrooms and private hallway. Museum of the City of New York Collections
Almost 80 years later, the iconic 12-story hotel at 59-63 West 44th Street still has a resident cat. In fact, in all these years, the Algonquin has never been without a feline host or hostess to great the guests. All but one of the Algonquin cats have been rescues.
Matilda III is the current cat of the house. She took over when Matilda II retired at the age of 15 and moved to a staff member’s home in December 2010. A beautiful ragdoll cat (although she sometimes reminds me of Grumpy Cat), Matilda III was rescued after being abandoned in a box outside the North Shore Animal League in Port Washington, New York.
The Legend of Rusty
Rusty, the Algonquin’s “snooty cat…ignores more celebrities than the Social Register…it’s whispered around by those who claim to know that he really runs the place.”– Dorothy Kilgallen, the “Voice of Broadway”
There’s not a lot of information about Billy — Frank Case gives him a cameo appearance in his book, Do Not Disturb — but Rusty often made the New York press headlines.
Over the years, Rusty grew into a very distinguished cat, weighing 18 pounds at his prime. He was a favorite among the actors and artists and writers that frequented the hotel, and he especially loved new guests.
Here’s Rusty at the bar having his daily champagne glass of milk.
Rusty would greet and nudge each new guest warmly and incorrigibly – he’d often have to be pushed off the register to they could sign it (what is it with cats and newspapers and books?).
In early years, the hotel allowed its temporary residents to have dogs, so Rusty had quite a few run-ins with canines. One time a French poodle that was staying at the hotel gave Rusty quite a tussle, and the poor cat hid under a bed for several days. He got sympathy cards from many famous people, including author Sinclair Lewis.
Rusty had a daily routine, which began every morning in the 10th-floor suite occupied by Frank and Bertha Case. Here, Bertha would prepare him for the hotel guests by grooming him. Rusty loved this ritual, and would run to Bertha as soon as he saw the brush in her hands.
Once presentable, Rusty would take the elevator downstairs to assist the Algonquin staff. For Rusty’s convenience, a little swinging door between the lobby and the kitchen was installed so he could help with the kitchen staff.
However, he spent much of the day in the Blue Bar with Louie the bar waiter, where he had a special stool reserved just for him. He’d show up for duty around 11 a.m. when guests began arriving, and keep guard until around 3 p.m. when the lunch crowd thinned out.
Rusty spent much of the day in the Blue Bar with his pal Louie the bar waiter.
When he finally had the bar and Louie to himself, Rusty would drum his front paws on the counter to demand his daily shot of milk. Sometimes Louie would whistle songs and Rusty would sort of sway to the music as if dancing.
Then promptly at 4 p.m. he’d jump off his stool and get back on the elevator in the lobby with his guardian, Mrs. Germaine Legrand, the Case family’s housekeeper (he always took the passenger elevator, never the service elevator!).
Back in the Case suite, Rusty would get a snifter of milk in a champagne glass and then take an afternoon cat nap. At 7:30 p.m., he’d appear at the bar again for his next tour of duty, and then head back upstairs for the night at 10 p.m.
In early years, the Algonquin offered an in-house physician, barber, hairdresser and manicurist who would make calls to rooms. It also had a barbershop for guests (I don’t know if Rusty had his own chair here, but I doubt he ever asked for a haircut!) Museum of the City of New York Collections
Summers at Southampton
Summers were extra special for Rusty, because he got to take a break from the big city and spend weekends at the Case family’s summer home, Shore Acre Farm, on Actors Colony Road in the village of North Haven (Southampton), Long Island.
Frank Case purchased the waterfront summer home in June 1919 from Mrs. Lilian Backus, the widow of Eben Y. Backus, who was the stage manager for the Empire Theatre on 42nd Street.
The home was located in a cottage colony of actors (hence the street name) and many famous thespians who also lived or vacationed at the colony, including Douglass Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, would often visit the family and their cat Rusty.
The Case summer home – formerly the Backus cottage (middle right) — was located just north of the old Charles M. Goodsell cottage and farm, where Julian Hawthorne, the son of author Nathanial Hawthorne, had spent a summer in 1820. The 92-acre estate on the Shelter Island Sound was purchased by the Sag Harbor Estates Company in 1910, which built a cottage park that they called Hawthorne Manor. The colony was purchased by the Conservative Land Associates in 1925, with plans to subdivide the land further for “high-class small homes.”—NYT, November 18, 1925
Rusty Dies of a Broken Heart
On February 21, 1946, five years after Rusty won a long battle with pneumonia, Bertha Case succumbed to a year-long illness and died in the Case’s hotel suite. Four months later, on June 7, Frank Case died in the hotel.
Following his death, Frank’s body was laid in state in the suite. John Martin, manager of the hotel, held Rusty in his arms and let him take a last look at his master. Martin told the press that as he held him, a shudder appeared to go through the cat’s body. He also uttered a strange cry.
In April 1941, Rusty came down with pneumonia and had to spend some time in an oxygen tent at the Ellin Prince Speyer Animal Hospital for Animals at 350 Lafayette Street. Formerly known as the Hospital of Women’s League for Animals, the facility opened in 1914.
For several days, Rusty refused to eat or roam the premises. He no longer visited John Martin on Sundays, as he had done for years. John took him to the Speyer Hospital for Animals, where the depressed cat was diagnosed with jaundice complicated by leukemia.
Less than two weeks after Frank’s death, John found Rusty in the suite, curled beside the bed of his old master. The jaundice and feline leukemia were no doubt the cause of his death, but those who knew him, like Mrs. Legrand, said he simply died of a broken heart.
“Rusty was sick from missing the two people he loved best,” Mrs. Legrand told The New York Sun. “Always he was looking at the door as if he wondered why they didn’t come.”
According to the East Hampton Star (August 15, 1946), Rusty was buried in the place he spent many a summer day with the Case family and their famous theater friends — in the Case garden at their summer home in Southampton.
In 1924 Ben B. Bodne and his bride Mary (with Harpo Marx) honeymooned at the Algonquin. At the time, he promised Mary he would one day buy the hotel for her. Soon after Frank Case died in 1946, Ben Bodne retired from the oil business and acquired ownership and operation of the hotel.
Since Rusty’s passing, 10 cats have been king or queen of the Algonquin Hotel. Although most of the cats had full run of the place, that changed in 2011 with a directive from the New York City Department of Health, which required the hotel cat to remain in areas where food is not prepared or served.
I guess this 21st-century directive means there is no longer a special stool at the bar reserved just for the hotel’s feline and no longer a kitty door to the kitchen. Although he didn’t have a Twitter account, a Facebook page, or an email address, Rusty had it pretty good in those simpler, rule-free days.
Rusty was buried in the Case family garden at their summer home on Sag Harbor, somewhere in the vicinity of today’s Cedar Avenue. Considering the fact that all this land is now worth countless millions of dollars – even Richard Gere had a house nearby until recently – Rusty’s final resting place is pretty darn nice for a former alley cat.
Rusty received numerous letters from his fans, and every year he was recognized for donating to the March of Dimes, but that’s nothing compared to the attention Hamlet gets. As a formal feral feline (note his clipped ear) and a cat of the digital age, Hamlet is probably the most popular Algonquin Cat yet. He’s all over the Internet, and even has his own Twitter account, Facebook page, and email!
In 1895, Brian G. Hughes entered an alley cat he named Nicodemus in the first National Cat Show at Madison Square Garden. On May 5, the Chicago Tribune reported that the cat looked like “the ordinary backyard, high-fence cat that gets itself shot at moonlight nights.”
Mr. Brian Hughes died the other day at his farm in Monroe, N. Y., and with his passing New York lost its master jokesmith, the originator of countless practical jokes that made everybody laugh, even their victims. Although a successful banker and manufacturer, he was more widely known for his ability to joke than for his commercial successes.
His entire career was one of devastating jocularity. He lived to be 75 years old, and almost to the day of his death he was getting as much fun out of life as was possible.—The Galveston Daily News, Jan. 5, 1925
I discovered the late great Mr. Brian George Hughes while writing a story about Arson and Homicide, two cats that patrolled the old New York Police headquarters building at 240 Centre Street. As I was doing research on this building, I learned that the site had been previously occupied by the Centre Market.
When the old Centre Market was torn down in 1904 (shown here), Brian Hughes moved his company to a seven-story building at 133-137 Mulberry Street. Brian hired a sign painter to paint “Not for Sale” on the building, about 150 feet from the ground. He told the painter to add “Post No Bills” for good measure. Museum of the City of New York Collections
Brian Hughes & Brother, a paper box manufacturer, leased offices in the north end of the market building at 242 Centre Street. It was here Brian played one of his greatest signature pranks.
In 1904, right about the time the city was considering the site of the Centre Market for its new police headquarters, Brian and his brother Hugh (his parents also had a sense of humor) decided that the building would be a good investment.
When they inquired about purchasing the building, the city comptroller told them the property was not for sale. The next day, Brian placed huge signs in the windows with bold lettering that read “THIS PROPERTY IS NOT FOR SALE. B.G. HUGHES, AMERICA.”
When the comptroller asked about the signs, Brian told him that he was giving the city free advertising by telling folks that the building was not for sale. The comptroller was not amused, but Brian got a good laugh. From that point on, Brian placed “Not for Sale” signs on all his real estate.
From his offices on Centre and Mulberry streets, Brian devised new ways to fool people and thumb his nose at high society.
Nicodemus, the Female Tom Cat
One of Brian’s biggest jokes involved a stray cat that he purchased for a dime in 1895 from a young bootblack on Hester Street who was just about to drown it. According to one news report, Brian bought the cat because he was attracted to the cat’s six toes.
Although he originally intended to keep the cat at his factory to kill rats, the cat wasn’t a mouser (probably because Brian fed it too well). The dark gray cat did, however, hold its head at an “aristocratic angle” due to an injury he sustained when he was struck by a falling infant. That gave Brian an idea.
Nicodemus had to compete with about 200 other cats in the first-ever National Cat Show, including Mrs. Fred Brown’s Cosey, a Maine coon that won Best in Show. Several cats died during the inaugural event due to excessive heat inside the building.
Brian Hughes took the cat home and had it carefully washed and brushed. Then he entered the cat in the National Cat Show as “the last of the Dublin Brindle breed.” He told the judges that the cat’s name was Nicodemus, by Bowery, out of Dust-Pan, by Sweeper, by Ragtag-and-Bobtail.
At the show, Nicodemus was placed on display on a silk cushion inside a gold-plated cage surrounded by roses and attended to by a woman in a nurse’s gown. According to The New York Times, one woman reportedly walked by and commented on how absurd it was for a cat to have its own nurse when so many children in the world did not receive half the amount of care and attention.
Each day of the show, an African-American livery footman by the name of Sam Smith would arrive with ice cream and chicken packed in the boxes of a celebrated caterer. A florist would also deliver flowers to the alley cat every day. The other cats, including those belonging to Mrs. Standford White, Miss Louisa (J.P.) Morgan, and Mrs. John J. Astor could only look on in envy.
This news article about New York’s practical joker depicts Brian Hughes as the grinning funny face logo of Steeplechase at Coney Island. Notice Nicodemus in the bottom left.
Nicodemus created a great sensation at the show, and several offers of $2,000 and more came in for the former street urchin (even though Brian advertised him as “the $1,000 Cat Not for Sale”). He took a fifty-dollar prize in the class for brown and dark gray tom cats (there were no other winners in this sub-class).
Despite all the attention and great food, Nicodemus apparently did not like the high life. According to a report in the Rochester Daily Union and Advertiser, he broke away from his attendant on the last day of the show and disappeared. A few days later, however, he appeared at Brian’s offices in the old Centre Street market.
A year later, Brian pulled the stunt again with the same cat. But this time, the joke was on him when it was discovered that his “male” cat was actually female. Sure enough, the alley cat soon gave birth to two kittens.
Determined to have the last laugh, Brian pulled the trick again in 1899, this time disguising his name as Nairb G. Sehguh and making up a fabulous story for the organizers of the International Cat Show at the Grand Central Palace.
Brian Hughes told everyone his cat had been a mascot on the Vizcaya during the Spanish-American War and was once owned by the King of Spain.
Brian said his new cat, Eulata, was a native of Hindustan who was once a mascot on the Spanish ship Vizcaya, and that when the ship sank in 1898 during the Spanish-American War, she swam to the USS Oregon and was rescued by sailors. As if that story wasn’t good enough, Brian also said the cat had been presented to the King of Spain by a Bombay merchant, who in turn presented her to Captain Don Antonio Eulate of the Vizcaya.
During the show, Eulata dined from silver dishes, slept on velvet cushions, and was occasionally sprayed with violet perfume. Her gilded cage was bedecked with fresh roses, violets, hyacinths, and carnations. On top were American and Spanish flags, a doll’s trunk labeled “Eulata,” and a box of food in a box stamped with “Sherry’s.” The cat had been completely shaved (save for her head and the tip of her tail) and was like nothing the judges had ever seen before.
This time, though, the judges figured out the joke when they realized that Nairb G. Sehguh was Brian G. Hughes spelled backwards.
Puldeka Orphan, the Old Car Horse
Since the cat pranks got so many laughs, Brian decided to try something similar with a horse in 1900. A few months before the National Horse Show opened at Madison Square Garden, he purchased an old streetcar mare from the Metropolitan Street Railway Company for $11.50. He got such a great deal because the horse was old and about to lose her job pulling a car on the 59th Street line to an electric trolley car.
Brian’s daughter Clara riding Puldeka Orphan at the National Horse Show.
Brian sent the horse up to his farm, Brightside, in Monroe, New York, and told his head stable man that he was entering her in the horse show. Brian said that every cent of the $500 prize money would go to the man who was able to get the horse into condition to compete. For the next two months, the old car horse got the lion’s share of attention in the stable.
The day before the show, Brian paid $24 for a special rail car to transport the horse back to the city. When the Garden show opened, Brian entered the horse as “Puldeka Orphan, by Metropolitan, dam, Electricity.” She was placed in a stall surrounded by flowers and attended to by two livery grooms. She looked absolutely majestic in the arena, with Brian’s daughter at the reins.
Brian Hughes’ country estate, Brightside (bottom left on this 1875 map), was located at the intersection of present-day Route 17M and Freeland Street.
Now, everything would have gone smoothly, and Puldeka may have even won, had nobody noticed the small bell placed under her saddle. You see, Puldeka was used to hearing one bell (start) and two bells (stop), and didn’t know any other signals or “giddyup.” Miss Clara Hughes, Brian’s 18-year-old daughter, had to use the bells several times, which Brian said was what cost him the blue ribbon.
The funny thing is, although they noticed the bell, nobody noticed until the event was over that the name of the horse could be read, “Pulled a car often, by Metropolitan. Damn electricity.”
Brian Hughes’ “Reetsa Expedition” hoax appeared in The Big Book of Hoaxes, published in 1996.
Another time, Brian claimed to have funded a South American expedition to catch a rare animal called a reetsa. For a year he supplied the media with updates about the expedition. Then he announced the capture and arranged for a ship to pull into the docks on the Hudson River. All the newsmen anxiously awaited for a chance to see this rare beast — which turned out to be a steer (reetsa spelled backwards).
The Man Behind the Practical Jokes
Brian Hughes was born in Ireland on May 16, 1849. He arrived in America in 1858, and soon thereafter pulled his first prank while living uptown.* Central Park was just being laid out at this time, and Brian would often play hooky to snare yellow birds from the area of the new park and sell them as singing canaries.
Brian married Josephine White of Boston in 1876 and the couple had three children: Gertrude Marie (later Mrs. John Joseph Burrell), Clara, and Arthur (who legally changed his name to Brian G. Hughes in 1909). They lived for a time in Brooklyn and also at 49 East 126th Street.
Brian Hughes owned a farm he called Brightside in Monroe at the intersection of what was then called the road to Harriman and Freeland Street. Today this site is occupied by an auto body shop, a Gulf station, a trailer park, and a large strip mall. In the 1950s, the house was a French restaurant called the Tuxedo Rendezvous; it burned down in the 60s or 70s.
Little is known about his earlier life in New York or how he came to work in the box manufacturing industry. However, he became one of the most prosperous box makers in the city, and everyone seemed to know him, even though the only address he ever used was “America.” Almost any New York mail that was addressed “Brian G. Hughes, America” found its way to his desk.
One time Brian Hughes told a colonel of the British Army that his trees in Monroe grew vegetables. Sure enough, when the colonel came to visit, he saw an old apple tree with cabbages, cantaloupes, lemons, onions, peaches, pineapples, sweet pickles, and other vegetables “growing” on it. What he didn’t see were the copper wires used to attach them to the tree.
Not All Fun and Games
Although local and national newspapers often wrote about Brian and his practical jokes, the news was not always jovial. In 1910, several upstate New York papers reported on the grim discovery of Brian’s grandson, John Burrell, in a concrete ice house on Fairland Farm in Goshen, New York. The boy was still alive, but he had been confined to the small underground ice house for about a month.
According to the story, for some time there had been rumors among the farmers near Prospect Lake (today’s Goshen Reservoir) that Burrell had locked his son in the ice house. He was discovered by Fred Mann and Fred Mabee, two young neighbors who saw a farmhand entering the structure with bread. The health officer was summoned and the boy was taken to the State Hospital in Middletown.
Brian’s son-in-law, John Joseph Burrell, owned Fairland Farm just south of Pleasant Lake in Goshen (bottom center of this 1903 map). The farmhouse and ice house were near the intersection of today’s Reservoir Road and Strack Road.
Mr. Burrell told authorities that his son had been committed to an asylum on several occasions but could not be contained. He said the ice house was the only place he could keep him from destroying his property. The boy’s mother, Gertrude Hughes Burrell, was living in Harlem with the couple’s daughters at the time.
Two of the Burrells’ daughters, Josephine and Gertrude, were confined to the St. Vincent’s Retreat in Harrison, New York. Another daughter named Clara was a “spinster” who lived near Lake Sapphire Road in Monroe and died in Tuxedo Hospital April 7th, 1951.
A Permanent Moratorium on Jokes
On August 1, 1915, Brian’s wife died at Brightside in Monroe. Only 57, she had been in poor health for some time, and had left their city home on Madison Avenue in Harlem for the country about 6 weeks earlier.
Three years later, Brian Hughes became president of the Dollar Savings Bank in the Bronx. In light of this new position and the war, Brian told the public that he would put an end to the pranks.
Brian Hughes, his three children, and two of his grandchildren lived in this townhouse (right door) at 1984 Madison Avenue in Harlem during his later years. The family also had a cook and a butler who lived at the residence.
Brian Hughes died at his home in Monroe on December 8, 1924. More than 400 people attended the services at the All Saints Church on Madison Avenue in Harlem. Reverend Patrick F. MacAran, founder of the Parish of St. Anastasia in Harriman, New York, officiated the mass. Brian was buried at Calvary Cemetery in Queens.
Four years later, at age 42, Brian G. Hughes, Jr. shot himself with a pistol in the Mulberry Street office just minutes after talking to his young bride, Margaret. His wife and secretary thought he was just pulling a practical joke, but when they went in to check on him, they found him dead on the floor. To this day, the motive remains a mystery.
* No census reports for the Hughes family from 1860 or 1870 could be located, which makes me wonder if Brian may have grown up in one of the many shanty houses occupied by Irish immigrants before Central Park was completed. Brian’s first pranks involved painting Central Park sparrows yellow in order to sell them as canaries to wealthy women.
Mike was the fire dog of Engine Company 8 from 1908 to 1914. Twice, he won the blue ribbon in the Dalmatian class at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at Madison Square Garden.
Mike was no ordinary fire dog. In fact, he was no ordinary Dalmatian. As the son of Oakie and Bess, two of the most famous mascot dogs in the history of the Fire Department of New York, he was destined for greatness as the fire dog of Engine Company 8.
Oakie was raised in Newport, Rhode Island on Oakland Farm, the residence of Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt. In March 1907, Vanderbilt shipped the dog by crate to Engine Company 39 at Fire Headquarters after he heard that their fire dog, Pinkie, was killed trying to slide down the pole at the firehouse. Oakie was placed in charge of Foreman Edward J. Levy.
Oakie with Foreman Edward J. Levy, March 21, 1907
Bess also came from a litter of aristocratic dogs, but her master is not known. As the story goes, he very much admired the work of the firemen who responded to a fire at his house, so he decided to give them a Dalmatian.
One day he drove up to the firehouse of Engine Company 8 in his touring car and gave them a puppy. He didn’t say who he was, but told them that the dog’s name was Bess and that he wanted her to be a real dog working with firemen.
Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, Sr. was the third son of Cornelius Vanderbilt II and Alice Claypoole Gwynne. He was among the 1,198 passengers who died on the RMS Lusitania when it was torpedoed by a German U-boat on May 7, 1915, off the coast of Ireland. He was called a hero for helping others into lifeboats – he even offered his own life jacket to a woman with an infant even though he couldn’t swim. Vanderbilt’s body was never recovered.
Boisterous, beefy Michael Creegman, aka, Mickey the Breeze, clicked with little pup right off the bat, and took her uptown every night for dinner. Perhaps he had connections, or perhaps it was his dominating presence, but somehow Mickey got her a special pass to ride the Third Avenue Railroad trolley cars with him.
In March 1908, Bess gave birth to several noble pups. From the litter, a puppy the firemen named Mike was selected and turned over to driver David M. Lynx of Engine Company 8.
Third Avenue Railroad Pass
Shortly after Mike starting training for the position of fire dog with Engine Company 8, Bess was transferred to a quieter station house in Queens to recover from injuries sustained from running into burning buildings.
Since she would no longer need her surface rail pass, Fireman David Lynx escorted Mike to the office of Receiver Frederick Wallington Whitridge to see if it could be transferred to Bess’ son.
Metropolitan Steam Engine Company 8 was organized on September 11, 1865. The company spent the first four years at 128 E. 50th Street, and then moved to its current location at 165 East 51st Street in 1869. Today the company shares headquarters with Ladder Company 2 and Battalion 8.
Now, Mike was not one for acknowledging anyone not wearing a fireman’s uniform. But according to David Lynx, he jumped right up on Whitridge’s lap “just like a politician asking for a favor.”
Whitridge gave the fireman permission to transfer the pass to Mike, saying, “It’s the only pass of the kind ever issued by the road, and if Mike is willing to take all the risks and not sue the company in case of accident I guess we’ll transfer the pass to him.”
Frederick Whitridge of 16 East 11th Street was appointed Receiver of the Third Avenue Railroad on January 6, 1908, following its foreclosure under the collapse of the Metropolitan Street Railway, which then controlled the rail company. In 1910, the Third Avenue Railway was chartered, acquiring all the properties of the former Third Avenue Railroad. Whitridge was named president of the new company around 1915.
The special pass was engraved on a silver plate attached to his collar, which also held a tiny brass fire helmet. The inscription read: “To conductors: permission is hereby granted to carry a fire dog on the cars of this company. Third Avenue Railway Company. Frederick W. Whitridge, Receiver.”
All the conductors were instructed to honor this pass, which let him ride back and forth on the front platform of all the Third Avenue lines. Mike used the pass often to go home with the firemen for dinner and to visit his fire dog pals in uptown fire houses.
The Third Avenue Railroad Company formed in 1852 and began operating its horse-drawn cars on July 3, 1853. By 1859, using the 125th Street Railroad and tracks along 10th Avenue (Amsterdam Avenue), the line ran from the Astor House (Broadway and Park Row) north along Park Row, the Bowery, and Third Avenue to 130th Street near the Harlem River, a distance of about 8 miles.
Mike and Jerry’s Excellent Adventures
One of Mike’s best canine friends was Jerry, an ordinary mongrel attached to what was then the 29th Precinct at 163 E. 51st Street. Jerry was brought to the police station on March 4, 1909, by a woman who had found him outside starving and shivering.
Captain John J. Lantry accepted the dog and the men named him Jerry in honor of the station’s doorman (they were originally going to call him Bill Taft in honor of President William Taft’s inauguration that year but the vote went to Jerry).
One of the dogs’ favorite activity was taking the ferry-boat from East 53rd Street to Blackwell’s Island. If it was a warm day, they’d go swimming to cool off. Sometimes they would stay there for two or three days, but they always returned to their respective stations.
By the mid-1880s, the Third Avenue Railroad Company began operating cable cars on the Tenth Avenue cable line and 125th Street line. The surface railway used cable cars as well as horse-drawn streetcars until 1899 when the company switched over to electric-powered trolleys.
When it came to the job, though, Mike and Jerry were all business. Jerry would accompany the policeman on patrol or ride along with the patrol wagon that picked up the prisoners for night court, and Mike would ride along with the fire engines of Engine Company 8. The two never switched jobs or mixed pleasure with business.
Mike did his job very well, and the firemen say he saved many lives. He’d jump up and down in excitement as the horses, Jerry, Pat, and Miguel got into their harnesses, and would run ahead to bark and snap at pedestrians in cross streets to let them know the horses were coming. On the scene of the fire, Mike would always run into the buildings with the firemen, just like he mother once did. His reward on hot nights was getting hosed down with the horses when their work was done.
Mike’s friend Jerry was attached to the 29th Precinct – originally the 19th – which was established at 163 East 51st Street on September 7, 1877. Today it’s known as the 17th Precinct.
Mike and Tom and Jerry
Mike’s two other good four-legged friends at the Engine Company 8 firehouse were a big grey horse named Jerry who also arrived in 1908 and a large black cat named Tom. The three animals loved being together, and always slept in Jerry’s stall – Mike would put his head on Jerry’s neck and Tom would sleep on Jerry’s back. Jerry fussed over his small friends in the stall, and would always lie down carefully so as not to crush them.
When an alarm came in at night, Tom would jump out of the way and walk to the street to watch the engines pull away. Then he’d go back inside to sleep until his friends came home (who said cats were not as smart as dogs?) Actually, one time Tom tried to ride on Jerry’s back as he raced to a fire. He held on for a few seconds and then jumped, landing on his end and injuring himself (so maybe he wasn’t that smart).
The four-legged buddies of Engine Company 8.
Although Mike usually went inside the buildings with the men, he must have sensed that his friend Jerry was about to lose his job when he noticed the horse was falling asleep on the scene. According to Captain Joseph Donovan, no sooner would Dave Lynx place a blanket over his team, Jerry would drop down in the gutter and take a nap. Dave and the engine men Dennis McNamara and Frank Leonard didn’t know what to do – but Mike had an idea.
For the next few nights, Mike remained outside with the horses and began nipping Jerry on the knees as soon as he started to kneel down. Sometimes he’d nip him 10 times in a half hour, but eventually the trick worked and Jerry stopped falling asleep on the job.
Mike Goes to Doggie Heaven
On December 5, 1914, Jerry stumbled and fell while racing to a fire. The large horse landed on top of Mike, crushing his hind legs. The firemen carried Mike back to the station and placed him in Jerry’s stall to quiet the horse – she seemed to know that the end was near for her dear canine friend.
Although Mike had a short life, it was a very rewarding one. Not only did he help save lives, he also took first place in the Dalmatian class at the 34th annual Westminster Kennel Club show at Madison Square Garden in 1910 and 1911. The class was specifically dedicated to firemen’s dogs. In 1910, second place went to two-year-old Smoke II of Engine Company 68 on Jay Street in Brooklyn.
This story is dedicated to the families and friends of the following firefighters from Engine Company 8, Ladder 2, and Battalion 8 who made the supreme sacrifice on September 11th, 2001.
ENGINE 8 FF. Robert Parro LADDER 2 CPT. Federick Ill, Jr. FF. Denis Germain FF. Daniel Harlin FF. Dennis Mulligan FF. Michael Clarke FF. George Dipasquale FF. Carl Molinaro BATTALION 8 BC. Thomas DeAngelis FF. Thomas McCann
