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.
The following is a fun tale about Mike, the female Williamsburg Post Office cat. Not only was Mike misnamed, she was “missent.” If there had been an Internet back then, this story would have surely gone viral.
The Cat Is Out of the Bag
You’ve no doubt heard the term, “Letting the cat out of the bag.” In Old New York, it was more like getting the cat out of the bag. The mail bag, that is.
This is Kelly, who spent 8 days without food and water in a sealed mail sack on board the RMS Aquitania, which sailed from England to New York in December 1920. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 2, 1921
None of these cats, however, were post office cats. Sure, postal workers at the City Hall Post Office often sent kittens through the mail to other post offices in need of a few good mousers. But Mike was a post office cat who should have known better than to take a cat nap in a mail bag.
No one could tell the press where Mike came from, or why the mother of so many kittens should bear such a name. But she purred her way into the hearts of everyone working at the post office many years earlier. And so the “whole office was chopfallen” when she disappeared.
The story began on March 14, 1895, the day Mike disappeared from the Williamsburg Post Office (aka Station W) on the northwest corner of Bedford Avenue and South 5th Street. That day, a sack of newspapers destined for a foreign port arrived at the General Post Office in Manhattan. The origin of the mail bag was Station W.
As clerks began setting set aside a large pile of mail sacks for the next journey on a steamship, clerk A.J. Eamley heard some faint “meows” coming from somewhere in the room. Upon investigation, he discovered that the pathetic cries were coming from inside a large newspaper bag. When he opened the sack, a disheveled black and white cat jumped out.
Had this not been a federal post office, Eamley would have probably tossed the cat aside and went on with his work. But because it was illegal to send live cats through the mail, Eamley submitted a short and sweet official report to Postmaster Charles Willoughby Dayton: “I have to report that a live cat was forwarded to this office in a sack of newspapers under the accompanying label.”
Postmaster Dayton forwarded the report to Superintendent R.C. Jackson of the New York office, along with his own note stating, “Evidently this has been missent.” Superintendent Jackson responded, “What information can be furnished by your office regarding the missending of this cat?”
Mike, the Williamsburg Post Office cat. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 25, 1895.
Postmaster Dayton forwarded the correspondence to the Williamsburg Post Office with a request that a report be submitted at the earliest possible moment. Meanwhile, as all these notes were passing back and forth, Mike feasted on the milk that the clerks provided for her and napped in a sunny spot on the mailroom floor.
When Station W Superintendent Francis A. Morris received the correspondence from Postmaster Dayton, he prepared the following report:
This inquiry relates to our office cat, a highly prized animal. She was of an inquiring turn of mind and happened to be in the foreign paper sack at the time of dispatch. Clerk Taylor did not know of her presence there and tied up and forwarded the sack to your office. We will very cheerfully pay all expenses incurred by the present custodians for board, maintenance, etc., if they will return her in good condition to this office.”
Postmaster Dayton sent Morris’s report to Superintendent Jackson, who in turn sent the following communication to Dayton:
To Postmaster Dayton, inviting attention to the information furnished by the postmaster at Brooklyn, N.Y.–Can the request of the superintendent of Branch W be complied with?
Postmaster Dayton replied:
In accordance with the request of the superintendent of Branch W (Brooklyn), I have to inform you that the cat has been returned by special messenger free of all charges.”
The following day, Superintendent Morris sent a note to Superintendent Jackson:
The cat came back in an improved condition. Please convey to the honorable postmaster of New York, N.Y. my most sincere thanks for the courtesy shown this office.”
Upon Mike’s return to the Williamsburg Post Office, Superintendent Morris issued an order that extra care be taken to see that the cat was not accidentally shipped abroad. Mike didn’t have much to say about her adventure (although she may have warned her kittens about the dangers of mail bags), but the clerks said she appeared to be more careful about taking naps in mail pouches.
This concludes the story of Mike the cat. If you are interested in learning more about the history of Williamsburg and its postal services, the next section is for you.
History of the Williamsburg Post Office
When Mike was serving as a post office cat, the Williamsburg branch post office was in its fourth location, occupying a large, one-story domed building at 378-380 Bedford Avenue. The building also had an annex with an entrance on South 5th Street.
During the 1890s, the Williamsburg Post Office was at Bedford Avenue and S. 5th Street, directly across from a hotel that was at this time called the Hotel Andrews. 1898 map, NYPL digital collections.
In the 17th century, this part of Williamsburg was known as the Keike or Lookout, in reference to a high point of land along the East River from the Wallabout Bay north to present-day North 4th Street. One of the first settlers on this land was a ship carpenter named Lambert Huybertsen Moll, who had purchased some land from Cornelis Jacobsen Stille.
Moll received a land grant for the triangular tract from the West India Company on September 7, 1641. The West India Company had purchased the land from the natives in 1638.
When Moll moved to Esopus, New York, in about 1663, the land became the property of Jacobus Kip (of today’s Kip’s Bay in Manhattan). Over the years, the land was split up into north and south sections and passed from Kip’s estate to James Bobin, Abraham Kershow, Jean Meserole, David Moleanaer (Miller), and Frederick Devoe, among others. The Kershow and Miller farms on the east shore of the Wallabout Bay are noted on the 1767 map below.
In 1828, Devoe had his property of about 12 acres extending from the river to 7th Street (now Havemeyer Street) and along South 5th and South 6th Streets surveyed into village lots and mapped. It was on this land that Mike the cat made her home in the 1890s.
The origins of postal services in Williamsburg date to the mid-1800s, when there were only 3 post offices in all of Brooklyn, including a branch at Greenpoint and the General Post Office that served all the other neighborhoods.
Post Office hours from Brooklyn City Directory, 1857-62. At this time, there were only three post offices in Brooklyn.
The Brooklyn post offices did not occupy government-owned buildings at this time, but rather leased space in storefronts, hotels, and other places of business. In the 1840s, the Williamsburg post office was located in the drug store of Chauncy L. Cooke on First Street (Kent Avenue) between Grand and N. 1st Street. This post office served the Eastern District, which included Williamsburg, Bushwick, and North Brooklyn.
In the 1850s, the post office was centrally located at what was then 141 Grand Street, between Fourth and Fifth Streets (present-day Bedford and Driggs Avenues). Back when the district extended only from Bushwick Creek to Broadway, Grand Street was a significant central street. All the principal stores were on this street, and the ferry station at the foot of Grand Street created much foot traffic comprising residents and travelers alike.
With its ferry landing and prominent shops, Grand Street was the main street of Williamsburg in the early 1800s. By 1835, there was a new ferry from S. 7th Street to Peck Slip, Manhattan.
As the district extended to Flushing Avenue (South Williamsburg), Grand Street was no longer considered a central location. Now the majority of the people in the district were travelling down South 7th Street (which merged into Broadway in 1860) to take the ferries to Peck Slip, Manhattan. Husted and Kendall’s stage ran every half hour from the ferry along Broadway to the Franklin Hotel at the corner of Broadway and Myrtle Avenue.
William Wall
One prominent resident who recognized this shift was William Wall (1800-1872), the second and last Mayor of the City of Williamsburgh and the owner of a rope walk at Bushwick Avenue and Marshall Street. Wall, who had served in Congress during the Civil War, realized that an executive hotel in the finest section of Williamsburg was necessary.
So in 1855 he founded the Wall House hotel on the northeast corner of Fourth Street (Bedford Avenue) and South 5th Street. The hotel, which was the first and only hotel in the Eastern District for many years, opened in May 1856.
The 75×50-foot, four-story with basement hotel featured 40 rooms, a large dining room, and a cafe. Many of the early guests were families who “did not care to encounter the cares of house-keeping.” The first proprietor was A.H. Bellows.
Sometime around 1862, plans were made to move the post office to a more central location. Government agents listened to all the objections of residents who were furious that the post office was moving “to an obscure corner of Williamsburgh,” but a decision had already been made.
There are no photos of the old Wall House Hotel, but this was William Wall’s house at 66 South 9th Street near Wythe Avenue. The circa 1850 home was torn down in 1914. NYPL digital collections.
A new Williamsburg Post Office (aka Station W) opened in the Wall House hotel in May 1862, under Postmaster John S. Allen. The post office occupied a small space, about the size of a small store, on the ground floor of the brownstone hotel.
The post office made another move in June 1874, this time across Fourth Street to the former home of Dr. Lucius Noyes Palmer on the northwest corner of S. 5th Street (later known as 382 Bedford Avenue). Dr. Palmer, a beloved physician, had lived in this home until about 1860, when he moved across the street to a frame house on the southwest corner, where he died in June 1885.
Under Postmaster Talbot, the 25×75-foot post office was refurbished with swinging doors and a plate-glass front, and featured black walnut fittings. Talbot surmised the new space would be more than adequate to meet the demands of the district for some time to come.
In 1874, the district had 20 mail carriers and 5 clerks. By 1892, there were 61 carriers and 16 clerks. The old Palmer house was too small to accommodate the post office.
The home of Lucius N. Palmer and the Williamsburg Post Office is shown on this 1884 map. The Wall House hotel is across the street.
In June 1892, under a contract with J. Culbert Palmer, workmen began tearing down the four old buildings owned by the Palmer estate, including those occupied by the post office, a book shop leased by D.S. Holmes, the Republican Club headquarters (known as Old Homestead Hall), and Eureka Hall. Three one-story buildings of "fancy stone" with domes and skylights were erected and rented to the Station W post office for $2,500 a year. It was about this time that Mike the cat moved in.
From about 1900 to 1928, this building served as the Williamsburg Post Office. NYC Department of Records tax photos, 1940
In 1899, the post office moved again when Palmer offered the Bedford Avenue building for use as a new library branch for the Eastern District.
The Station W post office moved into a two-story brick and limestone building at 236 Broadway, just opposite the Williamsburg Bridge plaza. I don't know if Mike was still around, but the building does not look like it would have been welcoming to a cat and her kittens.
During this time period, the old Wall House hotel changed hands a few times. For several years it was owned by Paul Wiedmann and known as the Hotel Boswyck. It was renovated in 1890 and leased to Frank B. and Fred G. Andrews, who took over as proprietors in July 1895 and renamed it the Hotel Andrews.
But in 1896, construction began on a new East River bridge (Williamsburg Bridge). By 1901, all the buildings along S. 5th Street in this area, including the post office, Hotel Andrews, and St. Mark's Church, were being razed to make way for the approach to the new bridge.
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on the southeast corner of Bedford Avenue and S. 5th Street was one victim of the Williamsburg Bridge. The whitewashed frame and stone chapel was built in a cornfield surrounded by a wall of huge boulders in 1838. Back then, the land in this area was filled with gardens and fields where cows, goats, and pigs roamed freely.
In April 1928, under Postmaster Albert Firmin and Superintendent Edward Thompson, Station W moved for the last time (as of now) to 263 South 4th Street at Marcy Avenue. Neither of these buildings look like they'd make a good home for a cat like Mike and her kittens.
The post office moved into its current building in 1928. NYC Department of Records tax photos, 1940
Butch, mascot of Fort Hamilton Fire Department. Brooklyn Public Library Digital Collections (low-res file).
During World War II, the United States Army Garrison at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn was an important staging area for the New York Port of Embarkation.
At the start of America’s involvement in the war, more than 100 new structures sprang up within the fort limits, including temporary barracks, warehouses, a theater, service club, signal office, hospital buildings, and even a new fire station for the Fort Hamilton Fire Department.
The Fort Hamilton Fire Department, installed in December 1941, was one of many military installations within New York City that had a paid civilian fire department and fire apparatus during and after World War II, including Fort Jay on Governor’s Island, Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island, and Camp Rockaway in Queens.
Courtesy, Harbor Defense Museum
These federal fire departments cooperated with the FDNY and operated at fires with FDNY units. Chief Gustav R. Moje, a former FDNY captain with Engine 88 in the Bronx who had retired in 1936 after 32 years of service (including several years as a lieutenant with Engine Company 8), took charge of organizing and overseeing the department.
The department started off with 10 city firemen who were on the FDNY appointment list, but for whom city funds had not yet been allotted. These men received a 6-month leave of absence to help organize the army post department, after which they returned to the FDNY. Following this period, Chief Moje was responsible for training enlisted men as firefighters.
Butch and Chief Gustav R. Moje of the Fort Hamilton Fire Department. Brooklyn Public Library Digital Collections (low-res file).
By 1947, the Fort Hamilton Fire Department had a force of 27 enlisted men plus 4 civilian assistant and senior firefighters. The company also included a mascot dog named Butch.
Next to Chief Moje, Butch had the longest record of service with the department. He had showed up shivering and without a license outside the chief’s quarters on a frosty winter night shortly after the department was organized.
Described as a “waddling fox terrier” with a stumpy tail, Butch was a fighting fireman—albeit he didn’t fight fires, but rather other dogs on the post. “That’s why he hasn’t hardly any teeth left,” Assistant Chief Adolph Salvano told the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. “He’ll tackle any dog regardless of size.”
Fort Hamilton Fire Department. Brooklyn Public Library Digital Collections (low-res file).
Aerial view of Fort Hamilton Army Garrison, 1944. Courtesy, Harbor Defense Museum
Some of the frame houses protected by Butch and the men of the Fort Hamilton Fire Department.
Fort Hamilton: Origin of the Bronx Cheer?
The Rodman Gun, aka Old Big Mouth. Brooklyn Public Library Digital Collections (low-res file)
During his 6 years as head of the Fort Hamilton Fire Department, Chief Moje collected many anecdotes about the post. One such trivial anecdote involved the origins of the term “Bronx cheer,” which Merriam-Webster defines as a boo, catcall, hiss, hoot, jeer, or raspberry.
The story refers to a large cannon, the Rodman gun (named for ordinance pioneer Thomas Jackson Rodman), still standing outside the fort limits at Fort Hamilton Park, in John Paul Jones Park.
Once called “Old Big Mouth” and heralded as the biggest gun the world for its 20-inch bore, the mammoth cannon was constructed in 1864 at the Port Pitt foundry, Pittsburgh. Soon after its construction, it was mounted at Fort Hamilton overlooking the Narrows to protect New York Harbor.
The 20-caliber Rodman gun reportedly inspired author Jules Verne’s conception of a cannon that could shoot men into space in his book “From the Earth to the Moon” (1865).
The Rodman gun in transit to Fort Hamilton on a Pennsylvania Railroad flatbed train car, 1864. Library of Congress.
On October 26, 1864, at the cannon’s first firing trial, the Department of Charities and Correction steamer Bronx cruised by with about 1,000 passengers aboard. The cannon’s first discharge was a blank cartridge fired by 100 pounds of power. The gun boomed, recoiled a bit, and that was it.
Expecting a much bigger noise, the Bronx passengers were quite disappointed. For its second trial firing, the men aimed the cannon—crammed with 50 pounds of powder and a solid iron ball weighing 1,800 pounds—toward Staten Island. The shot traveled a quarter of a mile, bounced a few times on the water, and sank.
The Bronx crowd booed and jeered at the unsatisfactory display. As a reporter for the New York Daily News concluded after sharing this tale of Old Big Mouth, history does not say if this incident was in fact the origins of the “Bronx cheer.” But it could be, and that, in fact, makes it a fun story to share.
Jack was a bona fide fire dog of Old New York, but the 10-year-old Dalmatian was also called a professional tramp. That’s because in his early days, before he became a hero, Jack was not completely loyal to his official company, Ladder 9 on Elizabeth Street.
Sure, Jack stayed close to his men and the truck at every fire scene, but once the chiefs began releasing companies, he’d choose whichever one packed up and returned to quarters first. In this way, Jack visited about every firehouse in the city.
Though he didn’t have a license, Jack was never at risk walking throughout the city: dog catchers had strict orders from the Bergh Society (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) to give him free reign, and they could tell Jack from other Dalmatians because he was “much larger and fatter and also handsomer than the majority of that clan.”
Michael F. Lyons operated his popular restaurant on the Bowery from 1872 to 1905. Lyons died in November 1921 at the age of 78.
Following these visits, the tramp fire dog would return to the Ladder 9 firehouse at 209 Elizabeth Street “and slink into his home like a culprit.”
Described as a “stocky-built dog with jet black head and saddle,” Jack was not only a tramp, but he was also a big eater, sometimes eating eight times a day at Michael F. Lyons’ restaurant at 259 Bowery. Lyons’ restaurant was a popular rendezvous during the Bowery’s halcyon days, so no doubt Jack came to know many movers and shakers.
One of the most prominent patrons of the restaurant during Jack’s reign at Ladder 9 was Police Commissioner Teddy Roosevelt, who ate most his meals at Lyons’ place while he was carrying a big stick at police headquarters on Mulberry Street (his favorite dish was a slice of roast beef with vegetables, pie, and a mug of ale). Roosevelt loved animals and served as police commissioner from 1895 to 1897, so one can be sure that Jack did some hobnobbing with the future president while they were both dining at Mike Lyons’ place.
Unlike most patrons who had to pay for their meals, Jack dined at Lyons’ restaurant for free as his lifetime award for saving the life of a veteran volunteer fireman. The rescue came during a fire on December 20, 1895, at Military Hall, an old and historic meeting hall, ballroom, and lodging house at 193 Bowery.
Military Hall was an historic assembly hall dating back as early as the 1820s.
According to the New York World, Policeman Farley of the Eldridge Street police station had discovered the fire in George Groveling’s saloon at 3:15 a.m. When Ladder 9 arrived at the four-story building one minute later, Foreman Charles W. Kruger and Fireman Pat Hanberry could hear shouts coming from the lodging rooms upstairs. They broke through the front door and rushed through the saloon toward the stairs, but the thick black smoke drove them back.
As the janitor of Military Hall and another man came hurrying down the steps, Jack began howling. He headed up the stairs and into a large dance hall. There he found James Hogan—also known as the Bowery Wonder (because everyone wondered what the disabled man did for a living)—asleep on a bench.
Here’s what Hogan, a Civil War veteran and veteran fire laddie, told a reporter about the fire and his rescue:
Right on top of me, snarling and growling, was a big fat dog, rolling me over and over. The room was pitch dark and full of smoke, and I thought I was done for and on the other side of eternity. Just then a flame shot up a few yards away, and it was only then that I was able to take in the situation.
The house was afire, and the dog had been trying his level best to make me understand it. I jumped to my feet, but for the life of me I wouldn’t have known which way to run if it hadn’t been for the pup. He’s a corker, he is. He just took my sleeve between his teeth and began pulling me in the direction of the flames.
I made up my mind that the pup was sent by Providence, and so I followed him right clean through the blaze and the smoke, and he led me safe and sound to the street.”
Ladder 9 was stationed in the circa 1883 firehouse at 209 Elizabeth Street until it relocated to 42 Great Jones Street in 1948. NYC Department of Records tax photos, 1940
After Jack and Hogan reached the ground floor, the firemen hustled Hogan outside and poured a tub of ale over him to cool him off. When a reporter sought to interview the dog, the men told him to go to Lyons’ restaurant, where he’d find the dog in the kitchen eating “a luxurious dinner.”
Although Jack declined to talk about his good deed, the men of Ladder 9 were more than willing to praise him, believing that the dog was the reincarnation of a dead fire vamp. Lyons rewarded Jack for his lifesaving heroics by giving his employees a standing order to feed the dog at no charge.
From that day on, Jack cut back on his tramping ways so he could stay close to the Bowery and his favorite firehouse and restaurant.
When this photo was taken in 1951, 209 Elizabeth Street was home to Police Emergency Squad 2. Note the old frame buildings to the right–they would have been there in Jack’s days. Museum of the City of New York Collections
Four years after saving Hogan, on August 17, 1899, Jack met his sudden death at Elizabeth and Prince Streets. One of the new horses attached to the four-ton ladder truck accidentally kicked Jack, sending him rolling on the street. Before he could get up, the wheels of the truck ran over his neck, killing him instantly.
Foreman Green had no choice but to pull his lifeless body onto the truck and continue to the fire. The men told the grieving visitors that they would have his body stuffed and placed in the Ladder 9 firehouse.
Bum in June 1914, after winning a lifesaving medal at the annual Workhorse Parade.
One New Yorker who was especially touched by the death of Jack was Jefferson Seligman, a New York banker whose wealthy family took great interest in the fire department. He was so affected by the firemen’s loss that he presented a new Dalmatian to Ladder 9. The firemen named their new dog Swipes and immediately began training him in the art of four-legged firefighting.
About 10 years after Jack’s reign, another dog named Bum ran with Ladder 9. Bum was actually a police dog attached to the 12th Precinct on Mulberry Street, but he loved nothing more than responding to the big fires with Ladder 9 and Engine 13.
Like Jack, Bum was a lifesaving dog. You can read his full story by clicking here.
