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.
The following story of the Brooklyn Robins feline mascot is featured in my book, The Cat Men of Gotham. It’s a great “Did You Know?” story to share with the cat lovers and baseball fans in your life.The tale also has ties to the Old Stone House of Gowanus, which played an important role during the Revolutionary War.
“A sudden rise from rags to riches in 48 hours–cat-egorically speaking–is not the lot of every coal black kitten…Doubtless Victory will high-hat the cats that knew him before he was adopted by a big league ball team.”–Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 30, 1927
This vintage kitten is not Victory, but he looks like he’s giving the high-hat to the other cats on the block!
On the evening of April 28, 1927, the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers (then called the Brooklyn Robins) baseball team was in a bit of a conundrum. Just 14 games into the season, the downtrodden team–also called the Flock, the Daffy Dodgers, and Uncle Robbie’s Daffiness Boys–had won only 2 games.
In the past week, the Brooklyn Robins had lost 5 straight games to the Boston Braves, New York Giants, and Philadelphia Phillies. Tasked with pulling a rabbit out of the hat, “Uncle Robbie” Wilbert Robinson, the team manager, was desperate for some good luck.
Enter stage right not a rabbit but a 3-month-old, all-black vagrant kitten that grew up in the shadows of the Brooklyn Bridge.
According to a report in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Robinson had been in his apartment parlor when he heard a tapping noise outside his chamber door. When he opened the door to investigate, he met a stranger holding a coal-black kitten.
“Mr. Robinson, here is something to break the jinx,” the man said. “I found it outside.”
“Black cats are bad luck,” Robinson said with a gasp.
“Sometimes,” the stranger replied. “But it takes a thief to catch a thief and maybe it takes a jinx to lick another jinx.”
The stranger convinced him. The next day, Robinson created quite a stir when he strolled into the Ebbets Field clubhouse with the kitten perched on his left shoulder. The players were horrified at first, but Robinson explained about the jinx and suggested that the team give the cat a 3-day trial.
“And you’re going to treat him right in the meantime,” he added. The team listened.
As the Brooklyn Robins team prepared for its game with the Phillies, the kitten calmly explored each corner of the clubhouse. The lefty pitcher William Watson “Watty” Clark prepared a little soapbox house in a corner behind some trunks and asked Babe Hamberger, the clubhouse boy, to buy milk.
The 1926 Brooklyn Dodgers, aka Brooklyn Robins, one year before Victory the kitten joined the team.
Clark also brought the kitten over to the southpaw pitcher Big Jim “Jumbo” Elliott and ordered him to pat the kitten’s head for good luck. Elliott held the cat in his right palm and stroked him with his left fingers. The tiny kitten all but disappeared enveloped in the large man’s hands.
In that evening’s game against the Phillies, Elliott was practically unhittable. Not one opposing-team player reached third base. Only one player reached second. The Brooklyn Robins had 10 hits and beat the Phillies 7-0.
Following the shutout, the Brooklyn Robins christened the kitten Victory, going as far as breaking a bottle of milk over a chair and letting the milk pour down on the poor cat. The players then carefully groomed Victory and prepared him for the third and last game in the Philadelphia series.
The Brooklyn Robins went on to win the next 4 games against the Phillies and the Giants.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle had fun with the cat, even going as far as interviewing a man who claimed to be the cat’s interpreter. The man, Lee Ehret, ran the cigar and candy department at the Yaffa brothers’ drug store adjacent to the Hotel St. George on Clark Street, which was nowhere near the stadium.
According to Ehret, Victory’s real name was Oswald, and the cat was a very respectable feline who spent much of his time near the Hotel St. George (the cat especially loved the drug store’s catnip department.)
“I’ve never been a vagrant cat. Nor have I ever associated with bums,” Ehret said in the first person, as if the cat were speaking through him. He also denied rumors that Victory was born in Australia. “How could an Australian black cat pull a ball team out of a slump? They play cricket there.”
About a week after Victory arrived, a Brooklyn Robins fan slipped another cat to right fielder Floyd Caves “Babe” Herman prior to a game at the Polo Grounds. Babe put the cat in his locker and went on to hit two home runs during that game. The following day, though, he did not get one hit in five at-bats.
Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca, April 13, 1951. Brooklyn Public Library Digital Collections.
Asked about the feline interloper following the Polo Ground games, Victory said (through his human interpreter) that the new cat “lacked consistency” when it came to luck and was probably just an alley cat who could not hold a candle to him.
The Amsterdam Evening Reporter also “interviewed” the cat about how he brought luck to the downtrodden team. “I did it for the wife and the kitties,” was Victory’s response.
I don’t know how long the rags-to-riches kitty remained with the Brooklyn Robins, but I do know he lived in luxury during his time as the team’s mascot, enjoying milk every day and fish on Sundays.
Alas, not every cat can be a miracle worker. The team finished the season in sixth place out of 8 National League teams, with a record of only 65 wins and 88 losses.
Incidentally, Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca brought a black cat to Ebbets Field on April 13, 1951. By holding the cat and displaying the number 13 on his uniform, Branca was reportedly sending the New York Yankees a message that his team was not afraid of any bad-luck signs on that Friday the 13th.
The Brooklyn Dodgers were lucky that day, winning the game by a score of 7-6.
This concludes the story of Victory and the Brooklyn Robins; the following two sections are for those who appreciate baseball or Brooklyn history.
Charles H. Byrne
The BrooklynBase-Ball Cluband Washington Park
Semi-pro and pro baseball in Brooklyn goes back as far as 1855, when the Brooklyn Atlantics (named for Atlantic Avenue) formed as one of 16 clubs–all from Manhattan and Long Island–comprising the National Association of Base Ball Players. But Victory the cat was associated with the team that originated as the Brooklyn American Alliance Base-Ball Club (aka the Brooklyns) in 1883.
The team would go by various other nicknames, including the Brooklyn Bridegrooms, Superbas, and Robins until 1932. From 1932 to 1958, the team was officially known as the Brooklyn Dodgers.
In 1883, a real estate tycoon and baseball enthusiast named Charles H. Byrne set up grandstands on Fifth Avenue between Third and Fifth Streets in what was then called South Brooklyn (now Park Slope). He named it Washington Base-Ball Park in honor of the site’s historical ties to George Washington and the Revolutionary War.
The new ball park was built on what was once a swampy hollow of grasslands near the shoreline of the old Nehemiah Denton Mill Pond and the Gowanus Creek. This marshland was part of a larger parcel of land then owned by the estate of Edwin C. Litchfield, a prominent Park Slope developer.
The marshy grounds, littered with the city’s ash can waste and spongy from stagnant water, were drained, graded, and leveled; a fence was also erected around the parallelogram-shaped field. The park had a grandstand for about 2,000 paying spectators on Fifth Avenue and large open stands for another 2,000 non-paying fans on Third Street.
The main entrance to the park was on Fifth Avenue, but wooden steps on Third Street led down to the colonial-era farmhouse that had been on the site for almost 200 years.
The Washington Base Ball Park on Fifth Avenue between Third and Fifth Streets is marked on this 1886 Robinson map. NYPL Digital Collections
Washington Base Ball Park, May 30, 1887. Wikipedia.
Back then, people referred to the old house as the old Cortelyou house or as Washington’s headquarters, even though Washington never based his operations here (I don’t even think he slept in the home). In later years, it would be known as the Old Stone House of Gowanus.
In 1883, the old farmhouse no longer had doors, windows, or a complete roof, but the team fixed it up and put up a new tin roof, and used the dilapidated building as their clubhouse (or dressing room, as they called it back then).
The Old Stone House, 1850s, about 30 years before the Brooklyns turned it into their clubhouse. The house still had its windows and doors at this time. Brooklyn Historical Society
Fifty years after the park opened, Brooklyn old-timer Thomas Fox told a reporter for the Brooklyn Times Union that the Old Stone House was in line with home plate on the right field side, and many foul balls bounced off its sloping roof. He also said there was a carriage entrance on Fourth Avenue that buggy owners could use to drive onto the center field.
According to Fox, it was a common to see peddlers’ wagons in the park, and many doubles and triples became home runs when the ball went under the horses’ legs. One day a ball hit a horse in the neck, and the horse bolted toward home, almost beating a base runner to home plate.
In their inaugural season, the Brooklyn Base-Ball Club played in the minor Interstate Association of Professional Baseball Clubs. Their first home game, which was also the grand opening of the Washington Base Ball Park, was Saturday, May 12, 1883 (they beat Trenton 13‑6). The players included Kimber and Corcoran and Terry and Farrow (batteries); Householder, Greenwood, Warner, and Geer (infielders); and Smith, Walker, and Doyle (outfielders).
The press noted that the “gentlemanly team” and large number of women in attendance at the opening game boded well for the beautiful new park and the non-offensive yet “manly sport” of baseball. As Byrne told the press that year, “no contract-breakers, drunkards, or crooks” would be allowed to join the ranks of his team.
The Brooklyns went on to win the league championship in their first season.
That winter, the field was flooded with 2 million gallons of water to create a lake for ice skating (it was common to flood Brooklyn’s old ball parks to create skating ponds in the 19th century). The grandstand was partially enclosed with a glass front to serve as a ladies’ reception and lunch room from which they could watch their children skate. The Old Stone House was fitted up as a restaurant and a lounge for the men and boys.
The Old Stone House in the 1870s. Notice the missing windows and holes in the roof. Brooklyn Public Library
The following year the team joined the American Association (AA), a competitor to the more established National League (NL). The Brooklyn didn’t do too well, finishing ninth in the league.
A large fire in May 1889 destroyed the grandstand and fencing, but the fire did not burn the free stands or the Old Stone House, where the men kept their uniforms and other belongings. However, the fire did prevent the team from playing at their home field that year.
The Brooklyns would play only two more seasons at Washington Base Ball Park before heading to Brownsville, where they’d get a new nickname: The Trolley Dodgers.
In my next post, I’ll tell you how the team got this nickname and share a story about some cows, goats, and pigs that lived on the land that would become the team’s new home park in 1898.
If you’re interested in Brooklyn’s colonial era or the city’s role in the Revolutionary War, continue on. I dug up (pun intended, as you’ll see later) quite a bit of information about the historical Old Stone House, including firsthand reports from those who lived in the neighborhood in the mid-1800s.
A Comprehensive History of the Old Stone House
The Old Stone House, 1699-1897
The Old Stone House was built for Hendrick Claessen Vechte (van Vechten) in 1699. Hendrick was the son of Claes Arentse van Vechten of the Province of Utrecht, Netherlands. When Claes brought his wife and three children to America in April 1660, Hendrick was about six years old.
The Vechte farm, established sometime around 1670, was along the Gowanus Creek, near the village of Gowanus. The large farm of about 150 acres extended from the present-day Gowanus Canal, between First and Sixth Streets, to the western edge of Prospect Park, where the 1855 Litchfield Villa still stands.
The Vechte homestead and property is circled in blue at center bottom on this 1766 map of Brooklyn and Long Island. Notice all the lowlands under water at this time.
Much of the Vechte land was in the lowlands, which was mostly grassy salt marshes where the family’s cows could roam. According to records, the family had 28 acres of cultivated land as well as a horse and seven or eight cows in the mid 1670s. They also had at least one servant boy and one African slave.
Hendrick married Gerritje Reyniers Wizzelpennig in 1680, and the couple had 9 children (only 6 survived into adulthood). In addition to working as a farmer, carpenter, and wheelwright, Hendrick was a Justice of the Peace, appointed by William III. The family was quite well off, and their elegant stone house–the only stone house in the area–was a noticeable display of that wealth.
All of Hendrick and Gerritje’s children save for their son Nicholas moved away from the area, leaving the house and land to Nicholas and his wife, Cornelia Van Duyn, when Hendrick died in 1716. Gerritje lived in the home until her death at the age of 94 in 1754.
Prior to the Revolutionary War, Nicholas was a prosperous farmer and fisherman, selling oysters and fish from the bay and crops from his orchards and gardens to the New York markets. He took advantage of the surrounding ponds and springs to dig canals on his property for transporting the produce to Manhattan.
The Old Stone House and Vechte gardens prior to the Revolutionary War. Note the woman near the small creek, which was one source of water on the idyllic property. There also appears to be a dirt road, perhaps what later became Third Street. From Old Stone House & Washington Park
The Battle of Brooklyn
The Old Stone House was the scene of one of the largest and deadliest battles of the Revolutionary War, during the Battle of Brooklyn (aka Battle of Long Island).
On August 27, 1776, American General William Alexander (aka Lord Stirling), led a regiment of 400 Maryland soldiers against British troops who had occupied the house and were shooting at American troops trying to cross the Gowanus Creek. The Maryland troops made five valiant charges at the Old Stone House, but they were no match against 2,000 British soldiers.
William F. Matthews featured the Old Stone House of Gowanus during the Battle of Brooklyn in a mural in 1933, as part of efforts by the Brooklyn Park Department to unearth and restore the old home.
Most of the Maryland soldiers were killed on Nicholas Vechte’s lands this day, turning the green grass and clear waters crimson. But their brave efforts allowed General Washington and the bulk of his troops to escape across the Gowanus Creek and East River.
Nicholas Vechte died during the midst of the war on September 9, 1779. He was buried on the farm, possibly near Third Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. The farm passed to his young grandson, Nicholas R. Cowenhowen.
Following the war, the Old Stone House, now bloodied and battered in battle, stood deserted for several years. In 1790, Cowenhowen sold the homestead and farm to Jacques Cortelyou, whose family would occupy the home for more than 50 years.
The last of the Coretelyous to own the property were grandsons Jacques and Adrian, the children of Jacques’ late son, Peter I. Cortelyou.
The brothers split the property in half, with Jacques conveying his portion to Sandford Coley in May 1851 and Adrian conveying his half to Park Slope developer Edwin C. Litchfield on November 1, 1852. Five days later, Coley sold his land to Litchfield, making Litchfield the sole title holder to the old Vechte farm, at a total cost of about $150,000. The only house on all this land was the old Vechte-Cortelyou house.
Litchfield had no intention of living in the house or maintaining the farm, but he was able to rent the home for a decade or so. One of the occupants was Nathan Collins; his son Ferdinand A. Collins also lived in the home sometime prior to 1865.
It would be many more years before Litchfield would start developing the marshy lowlands that he had purchased. With taxes fairly low for the soggy marshland, he probably thought it best to hold onto the empty land and allow the value to grow until the right opportunity–like a city park or baseball organization–came along.
Skating and Ice Baseball at the Old Stone House
In January 1860, 18 residents, including E.B. Litchfield and Edwin C. Litchfield, submitted a proposal to the Park Commissioners of the City of Brooklyn suggesting that the city purchase some lowlands to create a public park bounded by Third and Sixth Streets and Fourth and Fifth Avenues. The abundance of water on the property, they said, would be ideal for creating a pond for swimming and skating, and the Old Stone House could serve as an historical museum. They suggested calling the park Stirling Square.
The park proposal would have relieved Litchfield of that portion of his lands that would be most costly to improve. No action was taken on this forward-thinking proposal (that wouldn’t happen for another 72 years), but park or no park, the public did use the land for swimming, baseball, and skating.
Thousands of people took advantage of the large skating pond by the Old Stone House. Notice how the old house is in a sunken hollow with a set of wooden steps leading down from the much higher street.
During mid-1800s, all the lowland from Third to Butler Streets between Third and Fourth Avenues would flood over and freeze (the ground was 15 to 40 feet below street level then), creating plenty of opportunities for skating. As one old Brooklynite wrote in a letter to the Brooklyn Chat in February 1924:
“It was my good fortune to live in South Brooklyn–almost country then–way back in the ’60s, and we children did most of our skating on the big pond between Fourth and Fifth Avenues. We would take our skates to school with us in the morning; then at 3 o’clock, books under one arm, skates dangling from the other, would run off to the pond.
We always went into the house to get a bit warm and leave our books with ‘Grandpa’ and ‘Grandma,’ as we called the kind old couple who lived there. I do not think these folks received any remuneration for looking after the children–may have had rent cheap or something like that. They just wanted to be nice to us, and we adored them!”
Baseball on ice, Brooklyn 1867. From Harper’s Weekly.
In the early 1860s, skating clubs such as the Brooklyn Skating Club and Washington Skating Club attracted thousands of people to the frozen waters around the Old Stone House.
The Washington Skating Pond (comprising about 7 or 8 fenced-in acres) originated as a private skating pond in 1860 and was run by Major Oscar F. Oatman, a journalist and advertising agent who also ran several other skating rinks. The Major often arranged “fancy dress skating carnivals” at the frozen pond.
Some of these skating events combined the game of baseball, which created an exciting winter sport called ice baseball or baseball on ice. Because the players couldn’t easily stop on ice, a new rule that baseball still follows was formed: base runners were safe at first base simply by over-skating (overrunning) the baseline.
Much of the Litchfield property was still undeveloped when this 1886 map was drawn.
By the end of the decade, the pond had all but disappeared, courtesy of street grading and paving–much of the work done by Litchfield at his own expense to improve his land. In three years, the value of Litchfield’s land would quadruple.
From 1866 to 1869, 60 new brownstone-front and brick mansions went up on Litchfield’s land, mostly along Fifth Avenue near Third Street and on Third Street from Fifth to Seventh Avenues.
It was also Litchfield, who, as president of the Brooklyn Improvement Company, created three branch canals leading from the Gowanus Canal during this time period. These canals still exist between Fourth and Eighth Streets.
The End of the Old Stone House
After the Brooklyns moved out of Washington Park in 1891, P.T. Barnum’s circus pitched its tents on the grounds along Fourth Avenue and Third Street for many years. During this era, the former ball park then became a dumping ground, “where clowns and monkeys prance[d] over the graves of our heroes.”
Around 1894, the city began filling in the site as part of another street grading project. According to James K. Macartney, who wrote about the site in 1933, part of the house was buried, but the second story was still accessible on Third Street; a large door was cut into a wall to allow a butcher to use the building as a stable.
Sometime between 1897 and 1899 the sturdy walls that still remained above ground were partly demolished, and some of the stones from that demolition were used to form a retaining wall around the buried remains of the building. The old willow tree–planted by James Cain and his young son Samuel about 1840–continued to flourish, though almost completely buried, until it fell down during a storm around 1910.
Over the next decade, the old house would disappear completely underground.
Undated photo of the Old Stone House. Note the bare willow tree, which outlived the house. I wonder who the two men in top hats are? Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn Citizen, May 14, 1922
Although the Brooklyn League proposed building a playground on the site in 1910, no action was taken. In fact, the earth over the Old Stone House wouldn’t begin to move until 1922, when word got out that the Litchfield estate was going to auction off the old Washington Base Ball Park.
The Kings County Historical Society, led by president Charles A. Ditmas, asked the city to purchase the land for use as a public park. But the Brooklyn Edison Company had already jumped in, purchasing all 107 lots for $126,000 before the auction even took place. The company planned to construct a large power plant and storehouse on the historic property.
As the movement to save the Old Stone House gained momentum, Brooklyn Edison agreed to put their plans on hold until the city could ascertain whether there was a strong sentiment for its “rescue and perpetuation as a shrine of American patriotism.” Patriotism won out. A year later, on July 1, 1923, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that the ground would be dedicated as a park called Memorial Park.
In 1926, plans to build a shrine on the site of the Old Stone House were approved. Note the location of the model house, facing at an angle at Fifth Avenue and Third Street. This model was constructed before the old house was uncovered about 30 feet underground. New York Sun, August 18, 1926
Although the city purchased the site in 1925, the park, including a proposed shrine, didn’t materialize. In 1927 the Polytechnic Institute announced its desire to purchase the land back from the city for a new building.
The Kings County Historical Society jumped in again, and a group of citizens led by William J. Dilthey brought a suit against the borough to prevent the institute from building there.
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 4, 1933
Following years of controversy and numerous appeals, the city (and Parks Commissioner Robert Moses) finally agreed to undertake an emergency work project and build a playground on the site as part of the Emergency Work and Relief Bureau. On April 17, 1933, 130 previously unemployed workers began digging in search of the Old Stone House.
After weeks of unsuccessful digging, several old-timers came forward to point toward where they believed the house was buried. On May 4, 1933, the diggers struck its northwest corner about 12 feet down. It turned out to be the top of the old house, minus a roof.
The workers had to dig down about 30 feet to unearth the complete structure. They salvaged the old stones to build a new house modeled on the original Vechte farmhouse.
Workers begin exhuming the Old Stone House. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 11, 1933
On August 11, 1935, JJ Byrne Playground opened to the public. The playground was one of 203 playgrounds opened that year as part of Robert Moses’ playground construction program.
In addition to ballfields, handball and basketball courts, and a wading pool, the playground featured a two-story community center, previously known as the Old Stone House of Gowanus.
Today, the Old Stone House and Washington Park is part of the Historic House Trust of New York City and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The replica of the Old Stone House, sometime prior to 1965. Brooklyn Historical Society.
This month I will be providing some content from my website for the LinkNYC communication kiosks in New York City. The theme for this month is Go Wild NYC, to tie in with National Wildlife Week.
National Wildlife Week was established in 1938 and runs from April 3 to 9 in 2023. Most people do not associate New York City with wildlife, but if you read my website, you know that Old New York was filled with amazing true stories of lions, tigers, bears, and more!
For those not familiar with it, LinkNYC is a communications network that has replaced pay phones across the city’s five boroughs. Each LinkNYC kiosk provides fast and free public Wi-Fi, phone calls, device charging, and a tablet for people to easily access city services, maps, and directions.
From Link.nyc
Each kiosk also has fun facts that change throughout the day, such as my Go Wild NYC fun animal facts of Old New York! So while people are charging their phones or checking a map, they can pick up a few tidbits about NYC and its history. Way more fun and informative than the old pay phones.
I won’t be able to get into the city until later this month (and even when I’m there, I may not see one of my blurbs since the kiosks change all the time). So if you are in New York City and come across one of these kiosks with a Go Wild NYC animal fact, please take a picture and either send it to me by email (pgavan@optonline.net) or–better yet–tag my Twitter account, @HatchingCatNYC, or my Facebook account with the hashtag NYCAnimalFacts
Everyone who sends or posts a photo will be entered to win an autographed copy of my book, The Cat Men of Gotham. The drawing will take place during the first week of May.
The Leigh family’s tortoiseshell Angora kitten disappeared from the Wareham apartment building in the Kips Bay neighborhood in January 1907. (This is not the missing cat; this cat was named Foxy.)
Missing Kitten Creates a “Cat Line” Down Lexington Avenue in Kips Bay
Two days after the pet kitten of Dr. Charles Neal Leigh and his wife Mollie Carpenter disappeared from their Kips Bay apartment at the Wareham on Lexington Avenue, Charles placed an ad in the newspaper. The ad was supposed to say that he was offering a $5 reward “for a tortoiseshell long haired kitten.”
The Wareham, New York Tribune, October 23, 1911
Imagine his surprise when he opened his newspaper the following day to find that he was offering a $500 reward! That’s some expensive typo.
Several reporters went to see Charles about the grand reward. Not only did he refuse to answer questions, but he also wanted to know “who in thunder could believe that any cat was worth $500.” (Charles was obviously not a true cat man.)
The kitten may not have been worth $500, but in 1907, but she was living in middle-class style at the new Wareham apartments at 231-233 Lexington Avenue, on the northern edge of Manhattan’s Kips Bay neighborhood.
Designed by architect James E. Ware and built in 1905, the Wareham attracted the professional upper middle class who were priced out of the more luxury buildings rising up in mid-town Manhattan. The $40,000, six-story, red brick building featured an elevator and three flats per floor, for which residents could pay about $600 to $900 a year for three, four, or five rooms.
Charles Leigh was a druggist and chemist who specialized in perfumes and women’s toiletries. In 1890, he founded his own company, Leigh’s Cosmetics, which was acquired by the Shulton Company around 1943. According to Cosmetics and Skin, Charles’ company may have developed the fragrances used in Shulton’s Early American Old Spice, Early American Friendship’s Garden and Desert Flower lines.
An old Charles N. Neal Chemist bottle
Aside from his perfume company, Charles’ other “claim to fame” was losing a lawsuit in 1902, when Poland Spring Water charged him with re-filling their bottles with tap water and re-selling them in his Park Avenue Hotel drug store. He received a $250 fine and lot of publicity for this incident, which is perhaps why he shunned the reporters who tried to interview him about his missing kitten.
The Angora kitten, described as a chestnut-brown cat with kinky fur, shared the family’s apartment with a fox terrier named Jimmy (the Leighs, who married in 1891, did not have any human children).
According to the New York Sun, “The gossip of the Wareham was that the dog…was treated with more consideration than most children. He wore a coat of Persian lamb’s wool and little boots to keep his feet dry and warm in inclement weather.”
The Angora kitty was reportedly the smartest cat on Lexington Avenue. And Jimmy was also famous throughout the neighborhood. One of the pets’ biggest fans was the family’s West Indian housemaid.
The Leighs’ kitten disappeared on a Thursday, after failing to respond to her dinner bell. The next day, family and friends searched high and low for the cat throughout the neighborhood. They checked every stray cat and looked in every hiding place from where they had ever heard a cat yowl.
New York Times, January 7, 1907
With all hope of finding the cat on their own, Charles placed the ad on Saturday. (He may have gotten the idea to place an idea by reading an old story about Snooperkatz, a shop cat whose owner had offered a $1 reward for the cat’s safe return.)
The first of the many gold diggers seeking $500 arrived at the apartment house carrying a cat in a bag. The New York Sun described it this way: “It was a long haired cat that looked as if it had seen better days and many of them. It was about as far from kittenhood as it could get and be alive.”
“That ain’t our cat,” the Warham’s janitor told the young reward seeker. “That’s just a common everyday tramp cat. Ours was a regular diamond turtle-back Angora goat cat.”
Two older woman, described by the New York Sun as “spinsters,” tried to pawn off two long-haired cats as the missing Angora. The janitor told them that the Leigh kitten was not twins, so they would have to take their cats away. The women commented that any man who could pay $500 for a kitten could pay $100 “for the fine specimens they had.”
Many more people tried to claim the reward throughout the day, creating a “cat line” down Lexington Avenue. As one newspaper noted, everyone simply left their dejected cats in front of the Wareham, “and the Sunday night concert in the neighborhood was unusually strong.”
While everyone’s attention was focused on finding the missing kitten, poor Jimmy moped about the apartment in dismay over losing his feline friend. He was so distraught, he wouldn’t even touch his food.
On Sunday evening, Jimmy died in a bathtub in the apartment. The Wareham elevator men surmise that Charles had given the dog a bit too much medicine in the hope of reviving his spirits.
Ironically, if true, the druggist’s dog died of an overdose. The press did not report on the outcome of the missing Angora kitten.
Charles died only 9 years later, at the age of 49, on April 10, 1916. The cause of death was listed as a brain hemorrhage.
Apparently, Charles had eaten a large dinner the night before, and then returned to his shop at 158 Madison Avenue to review some paperwork. His associate and fellow chemist, Patrick A. Fox, found him dead at his desk when he opened the shop the following morning.
Funeral services for Charles Leigh were held at his residence at 122 East 34th Street. He was buried at the Pine Hill Cemetery in Middletown, New York.
The crest on the Leigh perfume labels.
Incidentally, one year later, Patrick was issued a restraining order to prevent him from using the Leigh name on his products.
According to a 1920 article in the Middletown Daily Herald, Patrick, who was now the company’s secretary, was the only other person who had access to all the company’s product formulas. After Charles died and Mollie had taken over the company, Patrick copied the formulas and used the “Leigh” label without the family’s permission.
Makes you wonder about Charles’ death…
A Brief History of Kip’s Bay
The story of the Leigh family and their Angora kitten took place in the Wareham apartment building, which was constructed on the east side of Lexington Avenue at East 34th Street. This land was once part of the large Kip family farm, in what is now called Kips Bay (or Kip’s Bay).
The Wareham apartment building at Lexington and 34th (located at left blue arrow) was built on the former Kip family farm. The Kip’s mansion (right blue arrow) was at the intersection of today’s Second Avenue and East 35th Street. John Randel map, 1818-1820.
The history of the Kip (aka Kuype, de Kype, Kipp) family in New York begins with Ruloff Ruloffzsen de Kuype, a French knight from Bretagne, France, who removed with his father into Holland in 1562.
In 1576, Ruloff’s son, Hendrick Rullofzen, was born. Hendrick married Margaret De Marneil, the the couple had three sons: Hendrick, Jacob, and Isaac. (It gets confusing because the family had a lot of boys with the same names.)
Hendrick and Tryntie Kip built their home on Bridge Street, just west of Broad Street. The homes of Isaac and Jacob Kip are also noted on this map, on Stone Street.
Hendrick and Margaret’s son Hendrick was born in 1600 in Nieuwenhuishoek (Netherlands). This third Hendrick married Tryntie (anglicized Catherine) Lubberts in 1624. The couple had six children: Cornelia, Isaac, Baertje, Jacobus, Hendrick, and Tryntje.
Sometime around 1637, the de Kype family came to New Amsterdam. Hendrick (the third) worked as a tailor and also served as one of the nine members of Governor Peter Stuyvesant’s Council.
He established a home with a large garden on Bridge Street (at left). In later years, his sons Isaac and Jacobus (aka Jacob) would build their own homes on adjoining land on Stone Street.
Jacob Hendricks Kip was born in Amsterdam in 1631, just four years before the family came to America. As a teenager, he worked as a clerk in the New Amsterdam Provincial Secretary’s office; in 1653 he became the first secretary to the Court of Burgomasters and Schepens of New Amsterdam.
The Kip houses in Lower Manhattan may have looked similar to these homes built about 40 years later. New York Public Library
Jacob married Maria De La Montagne on March 8, 1654. They lived in the Stone Street house until 1660, when Jacob purchased a larger residence on Broad Street. The couple had 11 children over the next 27 years. (You guessed it, one of his sons was named Hendrick.)
In addition to their city home, Jacob and Maria established a summer estate along the road to Kingsbridge and East River a year after their marriage. The 150-acre estate, which Jacob called Kipsberry (it was also known as Kip’s Farm and Kipsborough), abutted the Murray Hill estate of Robert Murray to the west and the Beekman estate to the north (about present-day 26th to 44th Streets).
By 1655, Jacob had completed a mansion house on the property at what is now Second Avenue and 35th Street. It faced the bay on the East River, called Kip’s Bay. The farm became famous for its plum, peach, pear, and apple trees, as well as its fine rose gardens.
According to Frederick Ellsworth Kip, the Kip mansion was “a double house built of small yellow bricks imported from Holland, with a wing almost as large as the main building, and a steep peaked roof surmounted by a weathercock. Over the door was the Kip arms sculptured in stone, and on the gable the date of its erection.” Parts of the house were rebuilt in 1696.
Kips Bay House, located at todays’ Second Avenue and 35th Street (approximately No. 308 and 310 East 35th Street).
Over the years, the Kips Bay house passed to Solomon (aka Samuel) Kip and then to his son, Jacobus, born in 1706. Jacobus was in his 70s during the Revolutionary War and too feeble to take up arms. So when the British used the house as their headquarters during the Battle of Kips Bay, he and his wife Catharina and their daughters took refuge in the cellar.
The next owner was another Samuel Kip, born at Kips Bay in 1731. Samuel was the one occupying the house when George Washington paid the family a visit following the war.
The last illustration of the Kips house before it was demolished in 1851.
The Second Avenue elevated train station at 34th Street, the former site of the Kips Bay house.
The Wareham, 231-233 Lexington Avenue.
The Kips would continue to occupy the old house until 1851. That year, the city planned the extension of 35th Street, which prior to this time was a winding lane leading from the home to the river. To accommodate this progress, the city tore down what was then the oldest house in the city.
From 1878 to 1942, the Second Avenue elevated train ran over the site of the old house. Today, the el train is gone, but 35th Street still runs over the actual spot where the mansion stood. The Wareham apartment building still stands in all its red brick glory.
