Posts Tagged ‘New York City History’

The Home for Friendless Domestic Animals In 1891, Broadway actress Julia Marlowe boarded her cat Princeton at the new “Home for Friendless Domestic Animals” in Washington Heights. Julia reportedly paid 50 cents a week for Princeton to stay at the home while she was out of town touring with various theater groups throughout the country. […]

In August 1904, Charles J. Nielsen, one of the most prominent cigar manufacturers in Brooklyn, acquired a black cat for his Bushwick cigar shop on the southeast corner of Broadway and Gates Avenue.

Leonidas Arniotis had about three dozen trained circus dogs and cats that performed in New York City and other cities throughout America in the late 1890s.

In 1904, an East Village man was charged with disorderly conduct for serving catnip powder to cats, causing them to become intoxicated in public.

Alberto Gaston de Bassini, aka the Chevalier, was a man who truly loved and cared about cats. He fed them, bathed them, and sang to them, and named them after heroes and heroines from famous operas.