Posts Tagged ‘The Bowery’

The cat of the Sunshine Hotel is not a cat of Old New York. But the building where this resident mouser made his home in the 1990s, 241 Bowery, has an interesting history dating back to the 1830s with ties to much larger animals and old-time Bowery characters with names like Beefsteak John and Chick Tricker.

In the 1600s, the island of Manhattan comprised New Amsterdam and Harlem. These settlements were separated by wilderness inhabited by Native Americans and wild animals, including wolves. According to James W. Beekman, president of the New York Historical Society in 1869, as late as 1685 there was a proclamation granting the permission to hunt and kill the wolves found on the island. But by 1891, no one expected to see a wolf roaming Manhattan, especially on the Bowery in the crowded Lower East Side.