Tom and his brother cat were born in Gage & Tollner’s restaurant in 1917, when the famous oyster bar and chophouse was on the ground floor of the circa 1875 Craft building at 372-374 Fulton Street. No one knows what happened to his mother and brother, but Tom “apparently recognized his proper sphere in life” and stayed on at Gage & Tollner, where he dined on scallops alongside great icons like Mae West and Jimmy Durante.
Posts Tagged ‘Cats of Old New York’
1915: Bouncer, Nellie, and Willie, the Cats and Goat of Fire Patrol 3
Posted: 1st April 2022 by The Hatching Cat in Cat Mascots, FDNY Horses/MascotsTags: 240 West 30th Street, Cats of Old New York, FDNY history, FDNY mascots, Fire Patrol No. 3
Five years after their new house opened, the patrolmen were still without a mascot. They wanted one, but they did not want a canine mascot. As a salvage corps, the men of Fire Patrol 3 had an immense territory to cover—from river to river and from 14th Street to 57th Street—which made it impractical for them to have a dog trained to follow the apparatus to fires.
So, when the opportunity to acquire a proper mascot presented itself at a fire at Seventh Avenue and Twenty-Eighth Street in October 1900, the men acted immediately.
1936: Tige, the NYPD Cat Who Gave Birth in the Fingerprint Room
Posted: 19th March 2022 by The Hatching Cat in Cats in the Mews, Feline MascotsTags: 240 Centre Street, Cats of Old New York, John A. Lyons, NYPD history, police cats
One day after Tige, the police cat of the NYPD headquarters building, gave birth to four kittens, a detective recorded their paw prints on official NYPD fingerprint sheets.
