The tenement and alley cats of old New York

Lolcats they are not: They’re not cuddly, expressive, or internet-friendly. They don’t play the keyboard on YouTube. They’re not even the cute mousers who live in many of the bodegas in our contemporary city.

These felines are old-school apartment and alley cats who caught the attention of photographers—perhaps impressed by their toughness and ability to survive on the city’s mean streets.

This cow-spotted furball is lounging on a fence post in 1937 at Rhinelander Gardens, a beautiful stretch of circa-1850s homes with decorative cast-iron torn down in 1957 to make room for P.S. 41.

Two years earlier, a similar-looking kitty hangs out on a window frame. No protective screens in that walkup.

On Catherine Street in 1952, thanks to residents who failed to put their trash in cans, a hungry alley cat is sniffing out his dinner.

[Photos: MCNY]

Rhinelander Gardens: then and now

Designed by James Renwick—architect of Grace Church on Tenth Street and Broadway and St. Patrick’s Cathedral—these “three-decker” row houses stood at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 11th Street since 1855.

I’m not sure what connection they have to the Rhinelanders—an old New York family—but the family probably owned the land they were built on, hence the name.

Another Rhinelander real estate site is just around the corner on Seventh Avenue.

Berenice Abbott took the photo in 1937. Rhinelander Gardens only lasted another 20 years. Amazingly, the city tore them down (and their lovely front lawns and cast-iron balconies!) to build P.S. 41.

The school is very 1950s. The tenement apartment building on the far right, the Unadilla, still exists.

Lost New York, by  Nathan Silver, published in 1967, has this to say:

“The setback fronts of the houses were the result of the imperfect match of the old Greenwich Village street pattern with the upper Manhattan grid. Some deep fronts can still be seen on 11th Street, but the Rhinelander row was demolished in the late 1950s.”