There is a saying that goes, “Cats rule. Dogs drool.” When it came to picking a side during the women’s suffrage movement in Brooklyn, the cat in this story ruled. She picked the winning side–the Brooklyn Woman Suffrage Association.
Pussy Suff was a black cat with seven toes on each forepaw and “a nasty, catty disposition.” According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, she was a cat that believed in women’s suffrage. The news reporter put it this way:
“Merrow, merrow, meeeerrrrooowwww!” Translation–“Votes, votes, votes for woman!!!”
Perhaps the cat knew that the name of the woman who headed by Empire State Campaign Committee for the woman suffrage movement in New York State was Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt (the successor to Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who founded the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in 1869). But more likely, she joined the association because she was a good neighbor.
Pussy Suff lived next door to the first headquarters of the Brooklyn Woman Suffrage Party at 27 Lafayette Avenue. She spent many hours at the headquarters and was on a “purring acquaintance” with many of the Brooklyn suffragists.
The Brooklyn Woman Suffrage Party had headquarters at 27 Lafayette Avenue, on the right. The building is no longer standing. NYC Archives, 1940 tax photo.
The cat had a fondness for the group’s yellow ribbons, and would often steal one of two and carry them off. The women decided to give her a ribbon to wear around her neck, which she did so with pride.
As a reporter noted, “She wears it around her neck all day and parades it along the back fences at night when she sends up her war cry of defiance to the anti forces.”
Brooklyn Woman Suffrage Association Ribbon; National Museum of American History
One of Pussy Suff’s best friends at the Brooklyn Woman Suffrage Party headquarters was Mrs. Charles Winslow, leader of the movement in the Third Assembly District. She never missed an opportunity to pet the cat, and the cat would sometimes allow her to pick her up, such as when a photographer snapped the picture above in 1915.
On the other side of the fence, so to speak, was the Brooklyn Auxiliary New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage. As one newspaper noted, the Anti-Suffs, as they were called, were prone to adorning their dogs with anti-suffrage pennants and making their cats “look very indignant” by placing anti-suffrage ribbons around their necks.
One of their mascot dogs who never went out in public without his anti-suffrage pennant was Bob Williams, “a dog of fine family” who belonged to Miss M. Panette Williams. Miss Williams was an active worker in the fight against giving women the right to vote and took charge of the cake an candy sales that the women held outside their headquarters at 320 Livingston Street.
Like Pussy Suff, Bob Williams was proud of his neck adornment, and any attempt to remove it was met with growls (anyone dopey enough to be persistent in their efforts to remove the pennant were punished with a nip on the hand or leg “in a very business manner.”)
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle reporter summarized Bob William’s conversations: “Bowwow, bowwo, grrrrrr!!” Translation–“Opposed, opposed, no votes for women!””
Pictured in The Suffrage Winner are driver Miss Helen J. Owen, Mrs. H. Edward Dreier, chairwoman; Miss Ida Craft, Miss Alice Parker Hutchins, and chauffeur Alphonse Major.
The Brooklyn Woman Suffrage Party headquarters was at 342 Livingston Street. This building is still standing and now houses a cosmetics shop. NYC Archives, 1940 tax photo
In addition to their cheerleading cat, the Brooklyn Woman Suffrage Party had its own car, called “The Suffrage Winner.” The vehicle was driven by Miss Helen J. Owen, who worked as an ambulance driver and mechanic at the First Northumberland VA Hospital in England. The women said they would drive around and ring the car’s liberty bell until the women of New York won the right to vote.
In April 1916, the Brooklyn Woman Suffrage Party moved from their little shop on Lafayette Street to “the daintiest little doll-house one could imagine” at 342 Livingston Street.
The new headquarters had pussy-willows and tulips in the window, but I do not know if Pussy Suff was invited to move there or not (the new headquarters was only about a block away from the headquarters of the Anti-Suffs, so if the cat was invited, she would have been close to her rival, Bob Williams).
All the furniture in the Brooklyn headquarters featured an image of the suffrage torch, a wooden and bronze sculpture that was used in women’s suffrage campaigns in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, starting in the summer of 1915.
The new headquarters comprised an anteroom, an office for the secretary, Miss Elfrieda Johnstone, a committee room, a kitchenette, and a large library and lounge in the back. The space was reportedly decorated to perfection in blue and yellow tones, with each piece of furniture made to order.
A Brief History of the Brooklyn Woman Suffrage Assocation
The suffrage movement in Brooklyn got its official start in 1868, when Anna C. Field hosted the first meeting of the Brooklyn Equal Rights Association in her home at 158 Hicks Street. About 20 men and women met that evening to show their support for “the promotion of the educational, industrial, legal and political equality of women, and especially the right of suffrage.”
Reverend Celia Burleigh
One year later, in May 1869, the association organized at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The group’s first president was Reverend Celia Burleigh, America’s first ordained Unitarian minister and a founding member of Solaris, the country’s first professional women’s organization. Burleigh believed every person had a right to individuality and that the right to vote assured “that [every woman] would one day belong to herself, live her own life, think her own thoughts and become a woman in a better sense than she had ever yet been.”
The association was renamed the Brooklyn Woman Suffrage Association in 1883. Monthly meetings in which the women discussed various legal rights involving their children, wages, jobs, and everything else, it seems, but their rights to have their first names published in newspapers if they were married, took place on Fridays at different homes throughout Brooklyn, including 155 Pierpont Street, 114 Pierrepont Street, and 80 Willoughby Street.
In November 1912, the group established permanent headquarters on the second floor of 27 Lafayette Avenue. Two years later, the group moved down to the ground floor, which opened the door of opportunity for a neighboring black cat with seven toes to stroll inside and make herself at home.
Members of the Brooklyn Woman Suffrage Association in their new headquarters in 1912: Mrs. Harriet Luvin, Miss Grace Frank, Mrs. B. Zulauf, Mrs. C. Knot, Mrs. Mutter, Miss M. Rosanusky, and Miss Alice Robbins. In 1915, members of the Brooklyn Woman Suffrage Association took a rifle class. Pictured at their headquarters are Isabel Countay, Edith Case, Mrs. M. Pearson, Mrs. A. A. William, Minnie Bendschuk, Cora M. Kelley, Elizabeth Smart, Elizabeth Glassford, A. Douguid, and Catherine McKeon.
Although the Brooklyn women would ring their car’s liberty bell until November 6, 1917, which is when women won the right to vote in New York State, it would be almost another three turbulent years until the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote was ratified, 72 years after the struggle for women’s suffrage began.
Amen, sisters! New York voted to give women the vote to right on November 6, 1917. New York State Library
If you enjoyed this story, you may also want to read about Lem and Tiger, the Republican and Tammany Hall mascot cats in 1898.
This vintage feline queen is not Ko-Ko, but we can imagine that he is Mrs. Knowles’ cat.
“It is a wise cat that knows its own birthday, and Mrs. Edwin Knowles’ feline is wise, indeed.”–New York Dramatic Mirror, July 15, 1899
On July 5, 1899, Ko-Ko celebrated the thirteenth anniversary of his appearance on earth. The New York Dramatic Mirror noted, “Superstition has no place in the philosophy of Ko-Ko, so he didn’t mind coming right out and admitting the thirteen, though he doesn’t look a day over seven.”
To celebrate her beloved cat’s birthday, Mrs. Edwin Knowles (nee Sarah Goodrich) had a fancy breakfast in her home at 868 Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn.
The guests included those high-society women who supported her in the recent elections of the Professional Women’s League. (Mrs. Knowles had run for president, but she was defeated by Mrs. A.M. Palmer). Many of the young ladies in attendance wore white and had flowers woven into their hair.
The party took place at the Edwin Knowles residence at 868 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn. NYC Department of Records, 1940 tax photo
Ko-Ko, described as “perfectly formed, with beautiful tiger stripes and pale green phosphorescent eyes,” received with his mistress in the drawing room, barely taking notice of the numerous neck beads, framed engravings, and other gifts that were presented to him. One newspaper observed, “the birthday festival (was) similar to the memorable one that the Empress Eugenie gave to Napoleon III.”
During the breakfast, Ko-Ko dined on milk, crackers, rice pudding, and almonds. The New York Times pointed out that Ko-Ko was a temperance cat, and therefore did not join the ladies in drinking to his health with wine.
The feline guest of honor wore a collar of pearls of Egypt, described as “purple and brilliant.” He sat on a green silk cushion embroidered with leaves of the Lotus Alba. In addition to the gifts, the guests presented him with ribbons and flowers.
One newspaper compared Ko-Ko to the goddess Pacht (aka Bast), a goddess with feline night vision who was the protector of cats, women and children–and, incidentally, was the patron saint of firefighters. She was often portrayed as a cat, and people of Egypt worshipped cats in her honor.
Following the meal, the women danced a quadrille for Ko-Ko and read poetry while the cat “assumed the hieratic attitude of the goddess Pacht that the Pharaohs revived, and impressively he seemed to be her rightful heir in this lackadaisical age, that does not idolize cats.”
Many newspapers reported on the story and described Ko-Ko in detail. One newspaper said: “He is faithful to his home, he is affectionate without servility, he is charmingly decorative.”
Replying to a compliment about her cat, Mrs. Edwin Knowles said, “I am not worthy of lending any celebrity to Ko-Ko. He, rather, may make me famous.”
Sarah and Edwin Knowles
Sarah Goodrich Knowles was a Broadway actress when she met her theatrical husband, Edwin Forrest Knowles, in the 1870s. Knowles was also an actor at this time, but he would go on to manage numerous theaters, including the Grand Opera House in Brooklyn and the Fifth Avenue Theatre in Manhattan.
Born in Rhode Island in June 1846, Edwin Knowles began his theatrical career as an actor and chorus member with the Worrell Sisters at the old New York Theatre on Broadway. He married Sarah Goodrich in 1876, and six years later partnered with Colonel Theodore Morris as co-manager of Hyde and Behman’s Grand Opera House at 18 Elm Place in Brooklyn (now the site of a large parking garage).
Edwin Knowles managed numerous theaters throughout his career, including the Grand Opera House in Brooklyn.
The Wolf of the Amphion Theatre
Edwin Knowles opened the Amphion Theatre in 1888. The theater was on Bedford Avenue between South 9th and South 10th Streets.
In 1888, Edwin Knowles opened the Amphion Theatre on Bedford Avenue in the Eastern District (Williamsburg). The four-story theater could reportedly seat 1,700 patrons and initially featured operas and dramas.
The Amphion Theater made the headlines in December 1910 when a wolf broke loose from its cage on the stage and bit eight people in the audience. According to the New York Times, the breakout occurred during the third act of “The Queen of the Highway.”
As the wolf made its way up the aisle, terrified men and women struggled with each other to run to the rear of the auditorium and out the doors. Policeman John J. Cosgrove of the Clymer Street Station tried to stop the wolf as the enraged animal tore away at his trousers.
Edwin Knowles, 1902
Several stage hands tackled the wolf and threw a bag over its head. Dr. Dagler, who was in the audience, attended to the inured women, many of whom had fainted. When all was back in order, the stage hands raised the curtain and the last act was completed as if nothing had happened. Typical Old New York.
The theater eventfully became a cinema in the silent era. It was sold at auction in 1922 and continued to operate as a cinema until the 1930s.
The Amphion Theatre was demolished in 1940 as part of a slum clearing project. Today the land is occupied by the Bedford Playground.
By the time the wolf had made its escape, Edwin Knowles had been dead for eight years. He died in his home in April 1902 following an almost yearlong bout with severe paralysis. His cremated remains were placed in the family vault in Rhode Island.
Sarah Knowles continued to do charity work in Brooklyn until her death in March 1924 at the age of 75. The couple never had children; Ko-Ko, of course, would have been long gone, but there was no mention of any feline survivors in Mrs. Knowles’ obituary.
These are not the Abrahams, but with a pet cat, dog, and parrot, they very well could be!
But for an alarm of fire sounded by the three pets in the household of Bernard Abrahams at 90 St. Marks Place in Brooklyn, the members of three families may have lost their lives on August 23, 1899.
That day, Mrs. Abrahams was awakened by the barking, screeching, and meowing of the family’s brindle bull terrier (Pilot), parrot (Polly), and an unnamed kitten. The pets were prone to causing a ruckus in the middle of the night, so Mrs. Abrahams was accustomed to putting a stop to the quarrels.
But on this occasion, the dog and parrot didn’t respond to her orders. Polly was trying to force open her cage so she could get out. The kitten, who usually hid quietly under the washtub during the dog and parrot squabbles, was also mewing pitifully.
“There must be something wrong, Bernard,” she told her husband. “I wish that you would get up and see what is the matter.”
The Abrahams lived on St. Marks Place, pictured here in 1942. Their home would have been toward the far right in this photo. NYPL digital collections
When he got out of bed to investigate, Abrahams, who owned the brick three-story and basement home, discovered that the framework of a kitchen window was ablaze. After trying in vain to extinguish the fire, Abrahams got his wife and daughter out of their ground-floor apartment; then he shouted out a warning for the two other families on the second and third floors.
William Shaw and his wife and brother made it out of the building. Mrs. Abrahams, her daughter, and three family guests also reached the sidewalk safely. But Mrs. Emily Smith, whose son, Robert, was away at the time, didn’t come down the stairs.
Abrahams ran up to her rooms, where he found the seventy-year-old woman in her kitchen frozen in fright. Smoke was curling from the window trim; the fire was now in the walls.
Abrahams tried to carry her down the smoke-filled stairs, but Mrs. Smith put up a struggle as she tried to go back upstairs to her apartment. Then he tripped and fell down the entire flight with Mrs. Smith in his arms.
The woman was not injured, but Abrahams received burns to his arms, legs, and feet. After carrying Mrs. Smith to safety, he was taken by an ambulance surgeon to the Seney Hospital (aka Methodist Hospital).
According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the three hero pets also survived the fire.
In 1881, George Ingraham Seney, one of Brooklyn’s most generous philanthropists, donated $100,000 and a large plot of land encompassing 16 lots bounded by 7th and 8th Avenues and 6th and 7th Streets. Plans were drawn up for a new hospital, which was incorporated as the Methodist Episcopal Hospital of the City of Brooklyn, and known as the Seney Hospital, in memory of George’s Methodist minister father. Today it’s called the New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, although none of the original nine buildings of the complex remain.
Incidentally, two years later, in November 1900, a man ran into M.T. Michaelson’s drug store at Fifth Avenue and Park Place and asked for some poison to kill a mad cat. He told the druggist that the very large cat had suddenly become crazed, springing onto his wife and biting her.
Apparently, the man had first gone to the police to ask if he could shoot the cat. When they told him he could do no such thing, he went to the drug store. The druggist said he could not sell poison to the man.
The man told the druggist that he lived at 90 St. Marks. He didn’t specify if that was 90 St. Marks Avenue, which was a tenement house, or 90 St. Marks Place, which was the Abraham’s residence.
Police checked both places and learned that no mad cat incident had taken place. A reporter for the Brooklyn Standard Union observed, “The natural inference is that the man wished to use the poison with suicidal intent.”
A Brief History of St. Marks Place
The Abrahams’ house at 90 St. Marks Place was located on the former property of Thomas Poole, who owned a considerable amount of property along the road to Gowanus (along present-day Fifth Avenue). He resided in a low, one-story house on the west side of the street between Dean and Bergen Streets.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 22, 1880
Although the newspapers had been referring to the section of Wyckoff Street between Third and Fifth Avenues as St. Marks Place since about 1872, the name wasn’t made official until 1880.
In May 1880, property owners and residents on this section of the block submitted a petition to the Law Committee requesting the name change. Mr. Sidney Cowell appeared before the committee to present the petition.
He stated that Wyckoff Street had a bad reputation, and the name was preventing people from moving to the block. The residents believed that by changing the name to St. Marks Place, the value of their property would increase.
Alderman Donovan moved that the petition be granted. The name change was officially adopted by the Common Council in June 1880.
The St. Marks Place property owners may have gotten the idea to change their street name from an earlier petition in 1872. That year, property owners on Wyckoff Street between Fifth Avenue and Flatbush Avenue requested that portion of the street be renamed St. Marks Avenue. Alderman Bergen moved that the change be granted.
In any event, the name change caused some confusion on the Third Avenue streetcar line. Sometimes the conductor would call out “Wyckoff Street” and other times he’d call it St. Marks Place. For newcomers or visitors to the area who were not aware of the name change, they often missed their stop.
The circa 1652 Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House, now known as the Wyckoff House Museum, is the oldest house still standing in New York City. As of 2016, the house even had a resident cat, Statler.
Wyckoff Street may have had a bad name in the late nineteenth century, but it has a great history. The street is named for Pieter Claesen Wyckoff, who set sail from Amsterdam on the Rensselaerswyck in 1636. He arrived in New Amsterdam on March 4, 1637.
Following six years of labor on Killiaen van Rensselaer’s patroonship (farm) on Papscanee Island (near Albany), Peter married Grietje van Ness. Enticed by an offer to obtain free land, they moved to the Flatlands-Flatbush area of Brooklyn, then called Nieuw Amersfoort, where Peter Stuyvesant appointed Pieter as a magistrate in the village government.
Old 1645 map showing the position of Nieuw Amersfoort (Flatlands)
In 1655, Pieter, Grietje, and the first three of their 11 children moved into the farm house that is now the Wyckoff House Museum. Following Pieter’s and Grietje’s deaths in the late seventeen century, son Nicholas inherited the house.
The Wyckoff farm house remained in the family until 1901, and continued to be occupied into the 1950s. After years of neglect, a fire, and a short life as a gas station storage shed, the house at 5816 Clarendon Road was finally restored to its former glory in 1982.
Ralph Irving Lloyd, 1905. Brooklyn Visual Heritage. Low-resolution image.
Dr. Lloyd; from The Chironian, Vol 16, October 1899.
One of my favorite things to do while walking through various neighborhoods with my mother is to look for cats in windows, on porches, on the sidewalk, or in the grass. Sometimes I take photos of the cats to keep track of them, especially on days when all the neighborhood felines are making themselves visible. I guess one could say I’m a modern-day Ralph Irving Lloyd.
Dr. Ralph Irving Lloyd was an eye doctor who also had an eye for cats. Lloyd created dozens of lantern slides of cats in his Park Slope neighborhood, where he lived for a good chunk of his 93 years of life.
Born in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1875, Lloyd moved to New York City after high school to begin his medical studies with Dr. Charles E. Lane. From 1893 to 1896, he attended the New York Homeopathic Medical College and Hospital, graduating with honors as Class Valedictorian.
“Interested.” Ralph Irving Lloyd, 1910. Brooklyn Visual Heritage.
Dr. Lloyd completed his training at the New York Ophthalmic Hospital, and by 1899, he was operating his own private practice in Brooklyn.
In 1905, Dr. Lloyd married Nettie Hesson Limberg. Shortly thereafter, he began taking photographs of Park Slope cats on fences, roofs, and window ledges. Perhaps, just a thought, he was taking walks with his wife, who may have pointed out these cats to him.
Following additional medical studies in Europe in 1926, Dr. Lloyd went on to become a professor at the New York Homeopathic Medical College and Hospital. He also wrote and lectured on ophthalmology (he published 40 papers), and was a founding member of the Brooklyn Ophthalmological Society. His contributions to the field were extensive.
In 1910, a year that Dr. Lloyd took several cat photos, he and Nettie were living at 450 Ninth Street in Park Slope, about a dozen blocks from the Washington Baseball Grounds, where the Brooklyn Dodgers got their start in 1883. But for most of his adult life, Dr. Lloyd lived in a brownstone house at 14 Eighth Avenue in Park Slope, only one block from the Grand Army Plaza at Prospect Park.
About five years after the death of his first wife in 1937, the doctor married Carrie Orr Fleming. He retired in 1959 and focused much of his spare time on the New York Times crossword puzzle and photographing local historic homes and other buildings in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan.
“The Spy.” Ralph Irving Lloyd, 1905. Do you see the third cat? Brooklyn Visual Heritage.
Dr. Lloyd died in Brooklyn on May 9, 1969, and was buried alongside his parents, two brothers, and first wife at Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery .
At the end of this historical portion of the cat tale, I have posted a few more cats of Park Slope from the Brooklyn Visual Heritage collection. I wonder if any of these cats ever appeared in any of my cat stories of Old Brooklyn?
A Brief History of 14 Eighth Avenue
Dr. Lloyd lived at 14 8th Avenue in Park Slope (center brownstone with arched doorway) for much of his life. NYC Department of Records, 1940.
Prior to the late 19th century, only a few families, including the Hoyts, Cortelyous, and Pooles, owned large farms in what is now called Park Slope, Brooklyn. Toward the end of this century, Eighth Avenue and Prospect Park West competed for the grandest of freestanding mansions and most prestigious of residents.
The four-story and basement Romanesque Revival brownstone at 14 Eighth Avenue where Dr. Lloyd lived was built in 1890 by owner-builder William Gubbins, who also built No. 12 and No. 16 (Gubbins later resided in No. 16).
The brownstones at No. 8-10 were constructed a year later by Brooklyn architect John Mumford. Prior to this time, the lot was occupied by a large frame building, as noted in the 1884 map below.
In 1884, when this Sanborn map was drawn, 10-14 Eighth Avenue was a large frame structure. The other buildings on the block were the rowhouses at No. 20-26, built in 1883 by owner-architect William Flannagan. The large frame building between St. Johns Place and Flatbush Avenue was on the former lands of John Lefferts.
The west side of Eighth Avenue between St. John’s and Lincoln Place (No. 8-26) was called Sportsmen’s Row because several of its residents, including brothers Phillip and Michael Dwyer (who owned the corner houses), James Rowe, and popular jockey Jimmie McLoughlin, were all rich and famous horsemen.
The homes were also across from the Montauk Club, a gentlemen’s club founded in 1889. The clubhouse at 25 Eighth Avenue was designed by renowned New York architect Francis H. Kimball and completed in 1891.
The Montauk Club (center of photo) backed onto the Grand Army Plaza. The roofs of the Sportsmen Row brownstones are just visible to the left of the clubhouse in this image. NYPL digital collections
The Montauk Club was rather progressive in that, unlike similar organizations of that time, membership was open to Jews as well as both Democrats and Republicans. If you had money and power, you could join the club.
The Montauk Club also allowed women, although it was not necessarily progressive when it came to females: Kimball designed a ladies’ entrance to the left of the main entrance, which led to a staircase that only women used to access a set of elegant rooms just for them. In these special rooms, the wives of the club members could hold luncheons, teas, bridal showers, and other events without ever interacting with the men.
When Sportsmen’s Row was first built, residents, who paid up to $25,000 or more for their homes, had a clear view of the Grand Army Plaza. The row was on the highest point of Park Slope and considered one of the most desirable of residential homes in all of Brooklyn.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 1901
But then in 1896, Charles G. Peterson, who owned the vacant lot on the east side of the street, caused a ruckus by proposing to erect a row of four houses fronting Plaza Street.
The Brooklyn Standard Union reported, “As Mr. Peterson owns flush up to the street, he can have a back board fence, with doors and bells for the butcher, the baker, the grocer, etc., or he can leave it all open, with a skeleton fence around it, exhibiting all of the domesticity common to the rears of houses, all of which makes the people of Sportsmen Row shudder when they think of it.”
Residents–almost all them members of the Montauk Club–tried to raise enough money to pay Peterson off, but the trustees of the Montauk Club refused to help out. Little by little, the original residents began canceling their Montauk Club memberships and moving out. In 1900, George J. Brown, a dry goods merchant who lived at 14 8th Avenue, killed himself with a gun in his front parlor on the second floor.
After Peterson’s white, stone-front homes were completed in 1901, not only was the view of the Grand Army Plaza completely obstructed, but the new residents of Sportsmen Row now looked out onto the backyards of the new houses. Some of the locals began calling this new row of houses “Spite Row.”
The Montauk Club, about 1905. The homes of “Spite Row” are to the left. NYPL Digital Collections
The Thomas Poole Farm
The Thomas Poole farm is noted on this 1874 J.B. Beers map. NYPL Digital Collections
Sportsmen Row was once part of the Thomas Poole farm, a pie-shaped parcel bounded by the old road to Gowanus (established in 1704) and the Grand Army Plaza and Prospect Park West between St. Johns Place and President Street.
Poole was a farmer, milkman, and owner of a small grocery and tavern. He had purchased this land from Thomas Baisley, who once owned a large farm on what was known as Battle Hill (now Prospect Park).
Poole owned a considerable amount of property along the road to Gowanus. He resided in a low, one-story house on the west side of the street between present-day Dean and Bergen Streets. The home was still standing in 1869, when it was occupied by a milkman named Van Houten.
Speaking of milkmen, here are a few more milk-loving felines from the collection of Dr. Ralph Irving Lloyd. I don’t think any of these cats had the luxury of living in Sportsmen Row.
“Alert.” Ralph Irving Lloyd, 1910. Brooklyn Visual Heritage.
Ralph Irving Lloyd, 1905. Brooklyn Visual Heritage.
“Lazybones.” Ralph Irving Lloyd, 1910. Brooklyn Visual Heritage.
Dr. Lloyd; From Transactions of the American Ophthalmological Society, 1970.
In the spring of 1899, 18 years after the Windermere opened at 400 West 57th Street, a war broke out between the cat-loving and cat-hating tenants. The war began when someone shot and killed about 13 pet cats. That someone was allegedly Charles Beard, the Windermere’s resident carpenter and a member of the building’s Anti-Cat Club.
I must warn you that this true story involves gun violence against cats, but it also provides a unique insight into life at the Windermere (one of the city’s oldest apartment buildings) and life in Old New York. Before I tell the story, a little history about the Windermere–one of New York City’s oldest known apartment buildings–is warranted to set the stage.
The Windermere. NYC Department of Records, 1940 tax photo
A Brief History of the Windermere
The story of the Windermere begins in 1879, when a young clerk, a builder, and a lawyer joined forces to purchase a plot of land on the southwest corner of 57th Street and Ninth Avenue. The land had once been part of the 200-acre Cornelius Cosine farm at Bloomingdale, which spanned from present-day 53rd to 57th Streets between the North River (Hudson) and the “common lands” near Sixth Avenue.
The men–William E. Stewart, William F. Burroughs, and Nathaniel A. McBride–hired architect Theophilus G. Smith to construct a luxury apartment building featuring 39 apartments of seven to nine rooms each. The seven-story, three-winged building had state-of-the-art features such as hydraulic elevators, telephone service, communal kitchens in the basement (for those who did not wish to cook in their own apartment), electric fire indicators, marble fireplaces, parquet floors, mirrored parlor walls, dumbwaiters, and steam heat. There were also hall boys on duty day and night and a private passageway on Ninth Avenue for use by bakers’ and grocers’ wagons.
The going rent was $600 to $1,100 — a year.
The three “wings” of the Windermere are noted on this 1916 Bromley map. Note the large inner courtyard, which is where the cat fight began in 1899.
The building first attracted wealthy families, but as newer and nicer apartments such as the Dakota and the Osborne opened, the Windemere began emptying out. Around 1884, under the ownership of James R. Keene (who purchased the building in 1882), a newly divorced teacher and school principal named Henry Sterling Goodale (1836-1906) took over as the building superintendent and made some dramatic changes.
Henry Sterling Goodale
Goodale, who had three daughters and a son with his former wife, Dora Hill Read, came up with the idea to market the apartments to single and financially independent women who did not wish to live with their parents. The New York Times referred to these women as “the new woman,” and noted that thirty years earlier, these women “with a latch key and no chaperone” would have been called “a poor little old maid.”
Two of his daughters, Elaine and Dora, were independent poets, so he was familiar with how difficult it was for single women to find acceptable living arrangements other than in the old and dangerous boarding and lodging houses. When women began asking him for just one or two rooms, he agreed to making arrangements to accommodate their needs.
Under Goodale’s plan, the women–many of whom were described as “Bohemian” artists, painters, actresses, and writers–rented one to three rooms within each original apartment. In that way, Goodale did not have to spend a fortune reconfiguring the building.
Elaine Goodale (later, Elaine Goodale Eastman), third from left, with some lady friends on a picnic in 1887.
The tenants of each flat lived independently of one another, but they shared the kitchen at the end of the hall and the one bathroom (a few woman had their own small suite with a small gas stove). A former eight-room apartment could accommodate five women, for example, or seven women could share a former ten-room apartment. As the New York Times noted, it was sort of an experiment to see if so many women could live under one room in peace. (Maybe not.)
New York Times, April 10, 1898
One lucky female artist shared a three-room studio with her mother on the top floor; they even had a skylight. There was also a duplex on the top floor with a tiny kitchen and stairs that led to a small room built on the roof. One well-known literary woman had her own separate “house” on the roof where she lived on her own for some time.
The grandest of apartments in the Windermere was Goodale’s suite of about three small rooms on the top floor. In addition to these rooms, several steep, carpeted stairs led to a one-room study that Goodale built by himself on the roof using second-hand materials. Goodale called this study “Sky Parlor,” in honor of his family’s farm in Massachusetts, Sky Farm.
The study had windows on all sides, and held two tables, a couch, and several chairs. There was also a small alcove featuring stained glass windows and a pair of andirons with a gas log that Goodale could use when the steam heat was not enough to keep him warm. (This was perhaps not such a great idea.)
A younger Henry Goodale
Just outside the windows of this little roof conservatory was a henhouse and a garden with evergreens and pink morning glories. From the roof, one could see the Statue of Liberty and Hudson River, and as far as the Long Island and New Jersey shores.
Not only did Goodale keep chickens and pigeons on the roof, but he also allowed the residents to own cats and dogs and birds. By the late 1890s, about 80% of the building’s 200 residents were women, many of whom loved and owned cats.
Unfortunately, a few dog owners who disliked cats also lived in the building, including a few male tenants who made up the minority of the population. One of the female residents who owned a trouble-making Willoughby pug named Puggy also had an aversion to cats.
The Fight Begins
One of the features of the Windermere was a large, 30-foot-square inner courtyard for the residents and their pets. Puggy would amuse himself by chasing the cats around the court, despite multiple protests from the cats’ owners.
When his owner refused to remove Puggy from the courtyard, the cat owners sought revenge by introducing “a large, well-trained, meat-fed cat from a neighboring butcher shop” into the volatile mix. The New York Sun gives a vivid account in May 1899:
When Puggy saw the new arrival he undertook to give it a little exercise. Exercise was what the meat-fed cat was there for. It met Puggy with a few well-chosen swings, jabs and uppercuts, and the rest of the performance consisted in his tearing around the courtyard uttering horrid shrieks, while the cat leisurely removed the cuticle from his back in parallel streaks.
When the show was over, and his mourning mistress had got Puggy away, he looked like a rag doll that had been struck by lightening. Thereafter the cats had it all their own way, and used to come out nights and sing paeans of victory on the field of battle.”
From that point on, the cats ruled the courtyard, and no dog dared intrude on their territory. For weeks on end, the felines held nightly concerts. Despite protests from several male tenants, the residents consented to suffer in (the lack of) silence and do nothing to stop the courtyard concertos.
According to the New York Press, pet cats with names such as Mousie, Sweetheart, Angeline, and Toddlekins “lifted up their voices in song often, alas, too often. Modesty might have saved them. But, no. Nothing but ‘Casta Diva,’ with trills, roulades, a toccata, sforzato and never a trace of decent pianissimo in the lot.”
In response to the courtyard jam sessions, one first-floor tenant began cursing out his window every night. This greatly offended a woman whom a reporter referred to as a “literary lady,” and she chastised him one morning at the communal breakfast table. The man darkly hinted at killing the cats, which caused two other women to take the literary lady’s side. A few men took the cursing man’s side.
New York Sun, May 23, 1899
The next morning, residents found a dead tabby in the courtyard. In his stiff paws was a card that said, “Riddle: Why is a Cat Like a Swan?” The inference–that this was the feline’s swan song–was not missed on anyone.
The cat-loving women formed a committee to keep watch of the men who wanted to harm the nocturnal singers. They poked holes in their window shades and spent hours at night peering into the courtyard with hopes of catching the cat killer in action. A few days later, however, a dead brindle tabby cat was discovered in the courtyard next to a broken pitcher.
At the breakfast table, a newspaper artist who lived on the third floor admitted the pitcher was his, but he claimed he had left it on a window ledge filled with milk. He said the cat must have gotten her head stuck in the pitcher and fell out the window. He then asked the owner of the dead cat to reimburse him 18 cents for the broken pitcher.
When the cat’s owner refused to reimburse the artist for his pitcher, he announced he was forming an Anti-Cat Club. Two lawyers, a bicycle agent, and an accountant swore allegiance to the club. The women swore at the men.
Only one man at the Windermere loved cats, and that was Gus Johnson, the elevator boy. Gus (this is not him but it very well could be, and the photo is fantastic!) owned a large cat named Black Paul.
Things got nasty from this point on. Some of the men began bragging about striking the cats and lofting them over the roof with their golf clubs.
Someone hung a cloth cat stuffed with sawdust outside one of the women’s windows, which sent her into a full-blown panic when she peered from her peep hole that night. (The cloth cat had a placard that read, “Presented for autopsy by the Anti-Cat Club.”)
Another night, someone tossed firecrackers into the courtyard, sending all the cats scurrying for cover with their tails between their legs.
Over the next few days, 13 cats–with names like Margherita, Arline, and Santo Espiritu–were found dead by gunshot in the courtyard.
Then one day someone made the mistake of taking a shot at Black Paul, a large cat owned by Gus Johnson, the building’s elevator boy. One of the woman heard the crack of the rifle and was able to track the weapon to the basement. The Windermere’s carpenter was hanging a Flobert rifle on the wall when the cat-loving detective squad walked in on him.
Charles Beard told the women that while he was not, in fact, a member of the Anti-Cat Club, he now had every intention of joining it. The women summoned the police and Agent Evans of the Bergh Society (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), who charged Charles and sent him to the West 54th Street Police Court.
The WIndermere cat killer was tried at the 7th District Police Court on West 54th Street, also known as the West Side Court. The building was constructed in 1896 and opened on November 4, 1897.
Unfortunately, the elevator boy refused to press charges, as Black Paul was beginning to recover from his injuries. The women had no proof that Charles had shot and killed the other cats, and so the magistrate had no other choice but to dismiss the charges.
Due to his injuries, Black Paul was no longer able to swell up his tail when confronted by other cats. The women said he would probably die of a broken heart, and that when his end came, they would “bury him with full honors and an inscription declaring him the victim of a murder plot of the Anti-Cat Club.”
The Hammock Races
When the residents weren’t fighting over cats, they were fighting over hammocks on the roof.
According to the press, men and women often gathered on the roof to watch the sun set over the Palisades and smoke cigars. The members of the “Roof Club” would hang hammocks on the roof during the summer months, only to find them taken by others when it was time to retire for the evening.
After-dinner scrambles to the roof to claim the hammocks were quite common (I imagine these were similar to the way cruise ship passengers rush to the pool deck every morning to snag a coveted lounge chair by the pool).
Goodale wrote a poem about the hammock races:
A hammock swings light in the breeze of the night ‘Tis yours, Judge, you ought to be in it; But alas! Yes, the loveliest Windermere lass Lies a-dream in its meshes this minute.
The Windermere Fires
Cats and hammocks may have led to residential scuffles, but a series of fires in the building may have very well led to the Windermere’s decline and demise.
Even before the Windermere was completed, a fire in what was then Austin P. Gibbins’ five-story apartment building at 402 West 57th Street spread to the unfinished Windermere in the early-morning hours of February 6, 1881. With the flames growing in intensity and spreading through the Windermere’s unfinished doors and windows, the firemen were forced to focus on the existing building and let the Windermere burn.
The fire’s glow lit up the west-side neighborhoods, from 42nd to 72nd Streets. The rear wall of the Windermere fell down during the fire, and police deemed the front wall unsafe. Party walls saved the entire building from destruction, but McBride and Smith reportedly lost $30,000 and had to basically start over again.
An early-morning fire of mysterious origin in 1893 sent residents scurrying to the streets with their pets and night robes and Mackintosh jackets. The fire caused little damage, but the press had a field day detailing the fleeing residents’ “scarcity of wearing apparel.”
In 1896 and 1897, several fires took place, including one on April 19, 1897, which caused more excitement than damage. The fire originated in a common bathroom on the second floor, perhaps from an overheated steam pipe. Goodale was able to keep the flames in check using a pail of water while Thomas Wright, the night watchman, warned the occupants.
One woman who lived on the top floor ran into the hallway barefooted and in her nightgown, screaming at the top of her lungs. Another woman ran from her apartment on the sixth floor with a parrot under her arm. The woman shouted, “Fire!” The parrot shouted, “Shut up!” The parrot’s command silenced everyone’s screams.
Two years later, in July 1899, another fire created much drama at the Windermere. This fire started in Goodale’s rooftop study (probably caused by the gas log).
According to the New York Press, an engineer on the Ninth Avenue elevated railroad saw the flames first, and sounded an alarm by tooting the whistle of his engine. A patrolman who heard the whistle sounded the fire alarm and rang the electric bells in the building to awaken the residents.
The Ninth Avenue elevated train tracks, Ninth Avenue and West 57th Street. The Windermere is on the left. New York Historical Society.
As the Windermere residents began running through the halls and pounding on doors, Charles Beard (the alleged cat killer) took command of the elevator and made about 20 trips to get all the tenants safely to the street.
Although the fire never reached the main building, it did destroy Goodale’s apartment. The hens and roosters on the roof also died in the blaze.
Shortly after this fire, the Windermere was overhauled and its name was changed for a few years to the Winchester. Goodale also left his position about this time (perhaps because his apartment burned down.)
The Windermere made the news again in February 1907 when a fire started in a trunk room in the basement. Abraham Quinn, who worked in a decorator’s store in the basement, alerted elevator boy Edward Merley (aka Scrappy) of the blaze, who sent someone to sound an alarm while he and Quinn attempted to put out the fire with a hand fire extinguisher.
The fire spread into an elevator shaft, where it burned from the third floor to the roof. Merley ran the elevator up to the third floor to rescue several residents, including Mrs. Dorothy Dean and her maid, Laura Kinson. Also rescued were Dorothy’s dog, Dan, her gray cat, Bum, and her unnamed fur coat. Reverend Clinton Eddy, a male cat lover, carried out his two cats in a bag.
Due to deep snow and frozen hydrants, the firemen were delayed in extinguishing the blaze. The fire caused extensive damage to the sixth and seventh floors; a young man found carrying a hammer in the building was arrested and charged with arson.
As for the pets, Dan the dog escaped and was not seen again. The cats survived.
The Windermere today, via Google Earth.
The Fall of the Windermere
In the 1970s, as the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood headed into a downward spiral, the Windermere was reduced to low-income housing with more than 160 single-room-occupancy (SRO) units (in other words, single rooms with shared kitchens and bathrooms). These rooms were often a magnet for drug dealers and prostitutes.
In the 1980s, owner Alan B. Weissman began trying to evict tenants by way of extreme harassment. Residents charged the managers with ransacking their rooms, blocking doors shut with cement, and even issuing death threats.
Building manager Jerome Garland was arrested and sent to jail for threatening to kill tenants if they didn’t vacate. Weissman was also jailed for mistreatment.
In 1986, a Japanese company, Toa, bought the Windemere. The building sat empty for years until it was designated a Landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission on June 28, 2005.
Toa never redeveloped the property; in 2008 the company was charged for willfully failing to maintain the building. The final tenants moved out in 2009 after the fire department deemed the building unsafe: city inspectors had issued 649 violations.
In 2009, developer Mark Tress acquired the Windermere for $13 million. Tress said he would turn the Windermere into a boutique hotel with 175 rooms and a rooftop restaurant (a second option was to convert the building into office space). The storefront on Ninth Avenue is currently undergoing renovations, but the final fate of the Windermere is still to be determined.
