Baltimore the fire dog. From Fire Fighters and Their Pets, 1907
At 10:50 a.m. on February 7, 1904, Fire Patrolman Archibald McAllister discovered smoke coming from the basement of the wholesale dry goods house of John E. Hurst and Company in downtown Baltimore, Maryland. Ten minutes after he turned in an alarm, the roof and floors of the Hurst building had fallen.
By the time firemen arrived, the building was engulfed in flames, and the harbor winds were fanning the fire toward the downtown district. For more than two days the fire raged eastward, consuming an area of more than 140 acres, destroying fifteen hundred office and manufacturing buildings, and leaving twenty-four blocks of Baltimore’s business district “a graveyard of smoking black embers.”
As the fire spread, Baltimore Fire Chief George W. Horton sent telegrams to Washington and Philadelphia requesting the neighboring cities to rush all available apparatus to his city. The following day, David J. Smyth, Philadelphia’s Director of Public Safety, contacted FDNY Acting Fire Chief Charles Washington Kruger at his headquarters on Great Jones Street with Engine 33. He explained that Philadelphia’s fire engines were incompatible with Baltimore’s salt-water hydrants, and all help was needed.
With orders from New York City Mayor George B. McClellan, who told the chief to round up as many engine companies as he thought he could spare, Chief Kruger alerted the Pennsylvania Railroad and Jersey Central that flat cars would be needed at a moment’s notice. Then he assigned the following companies to the Baltimore detail: Engine 5 on East 14th Street, Engine 7 on Charles Street, Engine 12 on William Street, Engine 13 on Wooster Street, Engine 16 on East 25th Street, Engine 26 on West 37th, Engine 27 on Franklin Street, Engine 31 on Elm (Lafayette) Street, Engine 33 on Great Jones Street, and Ladder 6 on Charles Street.
The first six companies were under the command of First Battalion Chief John P. Howe. The other four companies were under the command of Foreman Behler of Engine 33. Both crews took special boats to Jersey City, where trains of the Central Railroad of New Jersey and Pennsylvania Railroad were waiting for them. The firemen boarded coaches, the horses boarded box cars, and giant steam cranes loaded the engines, tenders, and ladder truck onto flat cars.
Baltimore Fire of 1904. Library of Congress
In total, 105 men responded with about 19 pieces of apparatus, 60 horses, and 12,000 feet of hose. It took three hours and 34 minutes for the express trains to reach Baltimore.
When the men arrived in Baltimore, they headed to West Falls Avenue on the waterfront. There, they helped stop the fire from jumping across Jones Falls to the factories and lumber mills on the other side of the narrow neck of water.
It was during their brief time in Baltimore that a stray dog began following the members of Engine Company 26. The men called him Baltimore and decided to make him their mascot.The dog seemed agreeable to the arrangement and traveled back to New York via train to his new firehouse home.
Baltimore Fire of 1904. Library of Congress
When the firemen arrived back in Jersey City the following evening, the dog was with them. As the members of Engine 26 boarded the ferryboat to return to New York, Baltimore ran ahead of the horses, who seemed pleased to share his company. The ferryman tried to corral the dog, but the firemen yelled, “Let Baltimore alone!” as they explained that the dog belonged to them.
During his first few days at the firehouse on West 37th Street, Baltimore refused to eat any kind of meat except ham. The men thought he might be a seafaring dog who only ate oysters. But then a dog fancier suggested dog biscuits, which he took to “like a child to ice cream.”
The men determined that he must have been the dog of an aristocrat. As one man noted, “A dog reveals the manners of his master.”
Engine 26, 220 West 37th Street. NYC Department of Records, 1940.
On February 13, the reporters who had traveled to Baltimore presented the dog with a collar of heavy leather, decorated with brass studs. The collar had a plate bearing the inscription, “Baltimore, Feb. 9, 1904. A Waif from the Flames.” The firemen told the reporters that Baltimore was a foxhound, “or if he ain’t that, he is of a breed not to be questioned, because if he is different from standard breeds he is a breed all to himself.”
Baltimore was afraid of the reporters at first, perhaps because they didn’t look or smell as they did on the train, covered in soot and reeking of smoke. He hid behind his firemen friends until he saw them welcome the strangers into their firehouse. When a reporter placed the collar on his neck, he strutted around to show it off in front of the horses.
There are no further reports of Baltimore, albeit he was featured in Alfred Downe’s “Fire Fighters and Their Pets,” which was published in 1907, and he will also be featured in my upcoming book, “The FDNY Mascots of Gotham.”
Professor Welton and his Boxing Cats, Sullivan and Corbett. Film by Thomas Edison.
Forget the light bulb. Let’s talk about Thomas Edison’s short film starring Professor Henry Welton and his famous Boxing Cats, Sullivan and Corbett! It may very well be the first ever funny cat video (albeit, it was a film.)
In the 1890s, the renowned inventor began experimenting with a new technology–the kinetoscope–by creating a series of odd short films in his Black Maria film production studio in West Orange, New Jersey (the first in the country). The kinetoscope reproduced photographs taken at the rate of 46-per-second and preserved them in their order in a long film. Almost every major city in America had at least one theater with an Edison kinetoscope.
The Black Maria was Thomas Edison’s film studio in West Orange, NJ. It was here that Boxing Cats was filmed.
One of Edison’s bizarre short films was Boxing Cats, featuring the main attraction of Professor Welton’s traveling Cat Circus. Click here to watch the film.
(Edison’s studio also produced a film about the electrocution of Topsy the elephant, which was incredibly disturbing and inhumane. The cat video was not humane under today’s standards, but the elephant film would receive an R rating today for its graphic violence.)
To be honest, it wasn’t Edison who created the Boxing Cats film, but it was produced in his studio. The film was directed by William K. L. Dickson and cameraman William Heise. Reportedly, it took the men only one, interrupted try to capture the pugilist felines in their battle of the paws.
“A glove contest between trained cats. A very comical and amusing subject, and is sure to create a great laugh.” (by Edison Films)
Sullivan and Corbett, the cats that starred in this film, were part of Professor Welton’s Cat Circus, a troupe of up to 40 cats that rode bikes, jumped through double hoops of fire (Pasha was the calico cat who did this), stood on their heads, walked across a tight rope, rode a see-saw, shook hands, did somersaults, and pulled a fire engine to a “fire” that they put out with a hose.
Like the cats of Professor Leonidas Arniotis’ Great Dog and Cat Circus and the performing cats of George Techow, Welton’s cats also performed at various vaudeville venues throughout the country during the late 1800s and possibly early 1900s.
Herr George Techow’s trained felines could walk on their front feet, jump through hoops of fire, jump over each other on a tight rope, and perform other acts that astonished vaudeville audiences in the late 1890s and early 1900s. In later years, George’s wife, Alice, took over the act.
The King of Cats
Henry Welton was known as the “King of Cats.” He thought that cats had a language of their own–all those cats that howled at night on back fences were in fact just having loud conversations with each other. One of his cats reportedly cost him $1000. She was so intelligent, she was able to learn every new trick right off the bat in one lesson.
Welton came from an animal-training family–all of his near relatives had trained one animal or another. In 1891, he told the press that it took him about two years to train his cats before he went public with them.
Professor Welton in “Cockfight, No. 2” in 1894.
Welton explained that while the Maltese cat was the easiest to train, this breed was not strong enough to stand for all the travel and live performances. The trick, he said, was finding one very intelligent cat that would take the lead. Because many of the cats had short lives–owing to all the travel on the rail cars–he had to have a constant supply of new cats that he could train.
The most intelligent cat in Welton’s troupe in 1891 was a large gray female who could leap 10 feet and then jump through a paper hoop. The best hurdle jumper was a kitten who was Welton’s own pet–and thus was born into the business. She adored all the cats in the troupe and treated them all as if they were her own kittens.
In addition to playing the “referee” in the Boxing Cats film, Welton also made an appearance in “Cockfight, No 2” as one of the betting men, and went on to make film appearances in several other Edison films.
Huber’s Palace Museum
One of the venues where Welton’s Boxing Cats and cat circus performed during their American tour was George H. Huber’s Palace Museum on East 14th Street (prior to this time, Welton toured in London).
The theater had its beginnings in 1888, when Huber, a museum man from Lockport, Ohio, and his partner, E.M. Worth, a longtime showman, purchased the lease for three adjacent buildings on East 13th Street that ran through East 14th Street. The buildings, owned by the estate of Jacob A. Geisenhainer, housed boarding rooms and what was called Prospect Hall, a music hall and restaurant.
Huber and Worth knocked down the connecting walls and created a five-story, L-shaped theater that took up five city lots. The new museum featured 5,000 square feet of glass cases in eight rooms known as the Curio Hall. Most of the articles, which included old uniforms and bullets, stuffed birds, strength-testing devices, and more, had been collected by Huber during his eleven years as a museum proprietor.
Huber’s Museum is shown top center on this 1897 map. NYPL Digital Collections
George Huber’s museum was at 106-108 East 14th Street. Here, Harry Houdini reportedly performed when he was 17 and several wild wolves appeared in a performance called “Little Red Riding Hood and her pack of tamed wolves.”
The museum, which was first called Worth’s Museum, opened on August 13, 1888. The men advertised it as a museum for ladies and children looking for wholesome entertainment, and it featured a million rare curiosities and continuous stage performances from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. Admission was a dime (hence, the term dime museum).
Some of the features during the early months included Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy; Baby Bunting, the Smallest Living Horse; and Ajeeb, a mechanical chess player. On the top floors, Huber and Worth provided rooms where the performers could live with their spouses, children, and servants.
On April 12, 1890, the men dissolved their partnership, and the venue was renamed Huber’s Palace Museum (or just Huber’s Museum). Huber remodeled the museum and reopened on August 17, 1891.
Following the 1910 season–a season which saw the death of leopard trainer Pauline Russell, who was attacked by one of her three leopards at Huber’s in January of that year–Huber sold the lease for the museum to Albert Luchow, who used the property to expand his popular restaurant, which was at 110-112 East 14th Street. As the New York Times noted in July 1910, the bottled snakes, stuffed lizards, and fat women were replaced by German food and beer.
Luchow told the press he was going to tear down the old buildings, but that does not appear to have happened. In later years, the buildings were leased to various and sundry retail establishments.
Following the sale, Huber told the press he did not know what would become of his collections, noting he would probably try to auction the items. After 33 years in the business, he said he was finally ready to retire.
Luchow’s restaurant in 1975. The former Huber’s Museum building, where the Boxing Cats once performed, is to the right.
Here is 106-108 East 14th Street in 1940. New York Department of Records
The Palace Museum was not Huber’s only venture. In 1886, he purchased Gabe Case’s Roadhouse on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx for $25,000. In 1901, after having dissolved his partnership with Worth, he then expanded the roadhouse to accommodate vaudeville performances and a casino. I’m not sure if the Boxing Cats performed in the Bronx; by that time, the feline circus act may have already been a thing of the past.
Gabe Case’s hotel and roadhouse on Jerome Avenue. Surrounded by woodlands and close to Fleetwood Park and Cromwell’s Creek, it was a popular rendezvous spot for horsemen and fishermen. In later years, George Huber opened his second vaudeville venue here.
On June 12, 1912, a fire caused considerable damage to a wing that had been added to the old roadhouse on Jerome Avenue. Ironically, the building was occupied at this time by a fight club where human boxers could train and compete. The main building, including the lookout tower, was not damaged in the fire.
Three years later, Huber decided to sell all of his vast holdings on Jerome Avenue, which included 56 lots between 162nd and 170th Streets. He died on June 24, 1916, at his home at 1919 Seventh Avenue. He was 73 years old.
Huber was survived by his second wife, Emma Matilda Huber (his much younger adopted daughter and niece of his first wife, Wilhelmina Schultz), and George Huber Thomson, a foster son. His estate was valued at more than $1 million. The will was hotly contested.
George Huber’s Jerome Avenue holdings included Gabe Case’s old roadhouse (building with tower at left) and all these other buildings pictured in 1910.
A few months ago, my friend Laurie Gwen Shapiro, a New York City author and documentary film maker, alerted me to a mystery story about a dog named Julia who was buried at Maple Grove Cemetery in Kew Gardens, Queens. All she had was the following, from a list of those buried at the cemetery. I told her I loved a good animal mystery and would have to look into it. What I found was a remarkable story about a woman named Marie Antoinette Nathalie Dowell Pollard and her lifesaving coach dog, Julia.
Julia was described as a coach dog. Could she have been the traditional fire mascot Dalmatian like this dog pictured here?
On January 29, 1885, Mrs. Marie Antoinette Nathalie Dowell Pollard, a lecturer, author, and widow of author Edward A. Pollard, was sitting up late writing in her home office on the second floor of 35 West 14th Street.
One floor above, C.Y. Turner, the proprietor of the artists’ studio on the top floor of the building, and his brother Thomas G. Turner, an electrician, were sleeping. Professor B.P. Worcester, in charge of the New York Choir School, was also in his apartment next to Mrs. Pollard on the second floor.
On the ground floor was E. D. Bassford & Co., a home furnishing store with storage in the basement. Other business tenants included the American Temperance Union, Keystone Lodge No. 230, the Mozart Music Union, and the New York Choir School.
On this winter night, Mrs. Pollard was working on her latest lecture, “The Glorious South of 1885.” She was so absorbed in her work that she lost all track of time. She also failed to notice that Julia, who was sitting next to her, was acting nervous and restless.
At about 1:30 a.m., Julia began barking and howling. At the same time, Mrs. Pollard noticed a slight haze in the front hall room. There was also a faint smell of smoke in the room.
Mrs. Pollard was living in the three-story building at 35 West 14th Street, pictured here in 1940. The long but narrow, three-story, brick mixed-use building was owned by the Baldwin estate and leased by W. Jennings Demarest. NYC Department of Records.
She tried to open the door leading out of her office, but it was locked. In her panic, she could not find her key, which was in her pocket. So, she began pounding on the wall adjacent to Professor Worcester’s apartment.
The pounding aroused the professor, who opened Mrs. Pollard’s door and helped her into the hallway. Professor Worcester ran into the street and called in the alarm.
The pounding also woke up C.Y. Turner, who opened his door and found smoke and flames in the lower hallway. Convinced there was no way out via the stairs, he returned to his apartment and waited for the firemen to rescue him and his brother. In no time at all, the roof was in flames.
When the firemen arrived on the scene, they found Mrs. Pollard standing on the landing with her manuscript and Julia in her arms. The men helped her down the burning stairs while other firefighters set up ladders to rescue the Turner brothers from the top floor.
The fire had reportedly started in the furniture store, possibly from an overheated stove in the basement, and moved up the stairs. The furniture store sustained the most damage, while the apartments above sustained smoke and water damage.
Had Mrs. Pollard gone to bed earlier that night, or had she not owned a dog named Julia, the residents of 35 West 14th Street may not have been so lucky that night.
In January 1889, someone poisoned Julia. Mrs. Pollard hired undertaker Stephen Merritt to create a pink satin-lined casket for her beloved dog. She also reportedly hired professional mourners.
The funeral at Maple Grove Cemetery in Kew Gardens Queens, was kept secret, because burials of animals–such as the burial of Fannie Howe in Green-Wood Cemetery in 1881–was frowned upon. Thus, Julia was listed as a “secretly buried dog.”
Julia Pollard was buried in January 1889 on the southern born of Maple Grove Cemetery in Queens.
Someday, when I go to Maple Grove Cemetery to visit the graves of my maternal grandparents and great-grandparents, I will search for this old grave of Julia, the lifesaving dog of Mrs. Pollard.
A Brief History of Mrs. Marie Antoinette Nathalie Dowell Pollard
Born on March 4, 1839, in Norfolk, Virginia, Marie Antoinette was the daughter of Colonel Pierre Joseph Granier (a French nobleman) and the Countess de Boussoumart. The family was driven from San Domingo and settled in Norfolk, where Marie Granier received training under the guidance of a governess.
Four years after her mother passed, when Marie was only 14, she married James Dowell, a division superintendent of what became the Western Union Telegraph Company. Marie and James had four sons and one daughter.
During the Civil War, Marie separated from James because of political differences. Their divorce followed a sensational trial. (Dowell reportedly kept a young man on watch at his office for fear that Marie would keep her promise and try to kill him.)
According to several news reports, Marie was a prisoner of war under Union General Nathanial G. Banks in New Orleans, charged with being a spy. Wearing men’s attire, she was able to escape to the swamps of Louisiana, where she survived on dry bread and stagant water for a week. After enduring many hardships and escaping death a few times, she finally returned to her home in Richmond, Virginia, only to find her home in flames.
Two years after her divorce, she married Edward A. Pollard (1828-1872), an author and wartime editor of the Baltimore Examiner who was a Confederate sympathizer and an advocate for white supremacy. After his death in 1872, Mrs. Pollard began her career as a lecturer and reader, touring Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco, and other cities around the country.
Edward Albert Pollard
Mrs. Pollard was best known for her lectures on temperance and for her satires on social life in Washington. She also toured California on behalf of the Democratic Party ticket in 1876.
I would ask you to sum up, if you can, the amount paid in a single day for drink alone. Now let the mind go out, extend the vision and the sum to all the cities, towns, villages, hamlets and waste places in the republic, and put the sum total in figures and multiply it by the days in the year, and you have a sum greater than the revenue of the United States Government. And paid for what? For that which is related to no good and which is wholly and utterly bad.
Add the yearly waste for drink of all the years of human life on this continent and, if the mind can carry it forward, estimate the cost of drink for all the years of modern Europe, and you reach a sum which can hardly find expression in words and figures.
Give me what is thus expended in fifty years, with wisdom to rightly use it, and what would I not do? I would feed and clothe, nurse and house every wretched child of wretched mortal man and woman on the broad earth. I would build up schoolhouses on all hillsides, in all the pleasant valleys, on all the smiling plains known to man. I would hire men to do good until they should fall in love with goodness. I would banish that nameless sin, for every female child should be placed above want and be made mistress of herself, to be approached only for her purity; and man should come to seek and love woman for that alone.
In 1890, a year after Julia’s death, Mrs. Pollard opened a broker’s office in the Consolidated Exchange Building at 60 Broadway for women who wanted to buy and sell stocks. Although she was a small woman, she had large ambitions to become the female Jay Gould, believing that women should be able to trade in stocks as well as men.
At the time she opened the office, Mrs. Pollard was still awaiting admission to the floor of the Consolidated Stock Exchange (she was the first woman to apply for a seat on the exchange, also called the “Little Board”). While she was waiting for the men’s decision on her application, she hired a man to execute her stock orders. She knew that the men were jealous of her early success (she reportedly made $20,000 mining “wildcat” stocks in California a few years earlier), and was worried they would not approve her application because of this.
The following is from the Pittsburgh Daily Post, August 15, 1890:
Mrs. Marie Antoinette Nathalie Granier Dowell Pollard
I can’t confirm whether Mrs. Pollard was accepted to the floor of the exchange. However, I can confirm that she was feisty (perhaps this is why the press often referred to her as a “burlesque lecturer”). Not only did she reportedly attack Democratic Senator Graham Vest with a horsewhip while she was living in Richmond, she was also charged with shooting a druggist in Baltimore.
Apparently the druggist, Mr. Moore, had caused her late husband (Pollard) to separate from his second wife (Marie was his third wife). She went to the druggist’s office to save her husband from getting into bad habits again. The druggist interfered and tried to hurt her, so she took out her pistol and shot him in the hand. She was fined $100 for shooting the druggist.
Sometime around 1893, Mrs. Pollard moved to Europe. She died on December 6, 1900, following a carriage accident in Paris (the carriage ran over her). At the time of her death, she had at least two surviving sons and several grandchildren in America. Maybe one of her great-great grandchildren will come across this story some day.
Alfred Dinely, a steward about the S.S. Vestris, saw to it that Tiger Lil was saved and returned to New York on the American Shipper.
“No disaster story is quite complete without the rescue of at least one cat.”–Ithaca Journal, reporting on the sinking of the S.S. Vestris, November 15, 1928
On November 10, 1928, just around 4 p.m., the S.S. Vestris of the Lamport and Holt Line left her pier on the East River in Brooklyn. The steam ocean liner, which transported passengers from New York to South America and Liverpool, was bound for the Rio de la Plata with 128 human passengers, 198 crew members, and one feline mascot.
Nearly one-third of the people on board would not survive the trip. The cat would make it.
According to reports, not only had the ship’s ballast tanks not been pumped out before she headed out, the ship was overloaded below the load line marks. The ship may have even listing a bit.
To make matters worse, a severe storm storm the following day flooded the boat deck and swept away two lifeboats. Because some of the cargo and coal had shifted in the storm, the ship began listing to the right (starboard). A heavy wave that pushed the ship over even more put the proverbial nail in the coffin.
By Monday morning, the ship was taken on water faster than the pumps could pump it out. While the ship was off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia, the captain gave the order to abandon ship. Because the ship was listing heavily starboard, he ordered the port lifeboats to be launched first.
The first boats were loaded with 13 children and 37 women. Unfortunately, the horrors continued. One boat was never released and was dragged down with the ship, one was cut away but sank, one damaged while being lowered and sank, and another was sunk by a davit that broke free from the deck. All 13 children and 27 of the women were killed.
Photograph of the S.S. Vestris as it was listing starboard and about to sink.
Mrs. Earl Devore and her dog survived; her husband did not.
The S.S. Vestris sank about 200 miles off the coast of Hampton Roads, Virginia, at about 2 p.m. on November 12, just two days after leaving Brooklyn.
Many of the passengers and crew who survived floated in the water for up to 22 hours waiting for the rescue ships to arrive and get everyone on board. Because the water was a bit warmer than the air, some people even opted to stay in the water rather than deal with the cold rain and winds in the lifeboats.
Among the Vestris survivors was Tiger Lil, the ship’s striped tiger mascot cat. She was saved by her owner, assistant steward Alfred Dinely, who held Tiger Lil in his arms all night in the lifeboat until they were both picked up by the American Shipper.
A wire-haired fox terrier named Speedway Lady, owned by Mr. and Mrs. Earl Devore, was also rescued after spending the night in an open boat in the arms of Mrs. Devore. Mr. Devore sacrificed his own life to save the life of his wife and dog, who were lowered in a lifeboat without him.
The American Clipper returned all the survivors to Pier 7 on the Hudson River. Once back at New York, passengers received $20 from Lamport and Holt officials for hotel expenses.
All total, 111 people died in the wreck of the Vestris, including 68 passengers and 43 crew members. None of the children on board and only 10 of the 33 women on board (which included 8 passengers and 25 stewardesses) survived. Captain William J. Carey and Chief Officer John Bolger also went down with the ship.
Only 22 bodies were recovered and returned to families. The first body was brought to New York on the rescue ship Berlin; the others were returned by several Coast Guard destroyers. It is thought that the wreck of the S.S. Vestris lies about 1.2 miles beneath the Atlantic Ocean.
Morris was described as a husky, grey-striped cat. This is not him, but this vintage cat fits the description.
For fifteen years, Morris served as the ever-watchful feline mascot and mouser of the Sheepshead Bay police station, which was located in the Homecrest neighborhood of Sheepshead Bay. As official police cat of the 68th Precinct, it was his job to nab the rats and other vermin with which the rural district was infested.
Morris, described as a “husky gray-striped guardian of the law,” was donated to the Sheepshead Bay station in 1903 by members of the Sheepshead Bay Racing Association. The men christened him Morris in honor of his godfather, John Albert Morris, who conceived and built the Morris Park Racetrack in the Bronx in 1889.
If in fact Morris arrived at the Sheepshead Bay station in 1903, he would have spent his first three years in the old police station of what was then the 28th Precinct , which was located on Voorhies Avenue, just west of Sheepshead Bay Road (next to Mrs. Josephine Mason’s St. Elmo Village boarding house).
This station would have been problematic for Morris, because the basement of the old, two-story frame building would always flood at high tide. However, the old frame station also had a one-story barn, so that would have been a perfect place for Morris to do his mousing duties.
In July 1904, construction commenced on a new Sheepshead Bay station adjacent to the tracks of the Brighton Beach Railroad, on the northwest corner of Avenue U and East 15th Street. The large, Renaissance Revival-style station could accommodate 100 men, and featured electric lights and steam heat (a luxury for the suburbs). The station also had a two-story stable in the rear, where the Sheepshead Bay mounted squad kept their ten horses.
The new station was completed and furnished in May 1906.
The former Sheepshead Bay station house was located at the northwest corner of Avenue U and East 15th Street, in the suburb of Homecrest. This grand building was demolished in 1979.
During this era, no doubt, there was plenty of work to keep Morris busy for fifteen years. As this 1907 map below shows, the police station was surrounded by many vacant lots, even while new homes of Homecrest continued to rise atop the old farmland. As the Brooklyn Standard Union noted in 1918, “Always on the job, he was never on trial before the Commissioner, charged with violations.”
The Sheepshead Bay police station in the Homecrest community is noted at the right center of this 1907 map. All the yellow boxes represent the original Homecrest houses, which were all built on double lots. New York Public Library Digital Collections.
On September 6, 1918, Morris was seated at his usual post, alongside Sergeant Ira Ferris at the desk, when he spotted a large rat trying to break into the precinct. With a “tremendous spring he landed on the intruder, but the exertion was too great, and the grim reaper claimed him for his own.”
Captain John Falconer, Sergeant Ferris, and the entire force of the precinct held “appropriate services.” Morris was buried in the front yard of the police station, his grab marked by a handsome marble slab, “suitable inscribed.”
The police station was demolished in 1979. Today the site of Morris the police cat’s grave is covered by a Duane Reade pharmacy.
A Brief History of the Superb of Homecrest
The Sheepshead Bay police station was located in a brand-new superb called Homecrest. Following is a brief history of this community.
In 1898, a new suburb of Gravesend proper began to rise from the grounds once occupied by potato patches and tomato vines. The development was three-quarters of a mile long a half mile wide, and was bounded by Coney Island and Ocean Avenues and Avenues V and S.
The Homecrest community was built atop the old farms of John Voorhies, Jane Stillwell, and Letty Ann Stillwell, all noted on this 1890 map.
This tract formerly comprised the farms of Jane E. Stillwell, Letty Ann Stillwell, and John J. Voorhies—all descendants of the founding families of Gravesend. The first large parcel of land was purchased in November 1897 by the Harbor and Suburban Building and Savings Association, who had offices at 34-36 Wall Street. According to the 1890 map below, the police station was located on the former farm of Letty Ann Stillwell.
By 1899, about 50 houses—each costing $3,000 to $5,000—were occupied, and another 50 were nearing completion (the plans called for nearly 1,000 homes in total). Original residents included William Bennett, a Manhattan caterer; G.L. Smith, a Manhattan insurance broker; H.C. Hasselbrook, a Brooklyn Police Department official; and George A. Woods, a Brooklyn Fire Department official. Click here for a complete list of original residents, published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
In the late 1890s, numerous ads for Homecrest appeared in the Brooklyn and New York City newspapers.
By 1903, eight miles of graded roads, concrete sidewalks, gas mains, and sewers were in place. The neighborhood also had electric lights in the streets and 2,000 silver maple trees to create “a shady retreat.” Advertisements like this one at left and below promoted the new community as a place to get a breath of fresh air after a hard day in the city.
In the beginning, developers had strict rules for the Homecrest community. No house could stand on less than two lots, and no house could cost less than $1,800. Buyers did not have to put much money down, and they had a whopping twelve years to pay for their new home.
A typical Homecrest home had ten rooms. On the first floor, arranged on either side of a spacious hall, were a parlor, foyer, reception room, dining room, and kitchen. A broad stairway led to the upper floors.
On the second floor, there were typically three rooms and a bathroom. The third floor had an additional three large sleeping rooms (not sure if the bathroom on the second floor was all for the entire house.)
Most of the homes in Homecrest had a hot air furnace, and all the homes had gas. Every house had terraced, graded lawn and a full view of the Lower Bay and Atlantic Highlands. According to the ads, it was a thirty-minute, five-cent trolley ride to Manhattan.
All in all, not a bad place for a faithful, hard-working police cat to spend his life and career.
In this 1908 photo of Homecrest, at Avenue U and East 14th Street, No. 2068 East 14th Street is just to the right of center. Until recently, this house was still standing; scaffolding now blocks its view.
Homecrest Public School 96 was located on the northeast corner of Ocean Avenue and Avenue U. In 1906, this school was ordered to be abandoned immediately. A new school with 32 classrooms was constructed at Avenue T and East 15th Street.
One of many large ads for the new houses at Homecrest.
