Posts Tagged ‘New York City History’

The Winter Garden Theatre was home to the original Broadway production of Cats from 1982 until the production closed in 2000. But about 50 years before the creepy human cats appeared on stage, the theater was famous for its real cats. Cat mascots, that is.

Dolph the cat could do many tricks, but his skills did not come in handy when a goat led him into the Ice Palace Skating Rink on East 107th Street, where he was stuck without food and water for eight days.

Greenwich Village in the early 1900s was home to many notable cats that made the headline news. There were the Bohemian cats led by Crazy Cat, who reigned supreme around Sheridan Square during the 1910s. And there were the more refined gentlemen cats like Old Timer, Mr. White, and Jonathan, who occupied the feline throne on Greenwich Avenue in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Miss Clementine Anderson and Miss Mary J. Anderson were two wealthy, educated, and refined “spinsters” who turned the Poverty Hollow neighborhood around Broome and Pitt Streets on the Lower East Side into a paradise for cats.

“This is a tale of a cat. Of a cat with a tail fourteen inches long. It is a true tale. It is vouched for by a fireman, a policeman and the appearance of the cat. A woman, a basket, a hole in a ceiling, a doctor and some medicine also figure into the tale.”—The New York World, January 5, 1894