The cat rescued from a Hell’s Kitchen mailbox

Cat antics and exploits make for irresistible clickbait—come on, who doesn’t love keyboard cat? But felines were huge media stars in the pre-Internet era too.

Case in point: Blackie, a sleek inky furball who ended up inside a mailbox in Hell’s Kitchen just before World War II. Here she is, posing for renowned crime and police photographer Weegee.

The story of her misfortune and rescue is a bit of a tearjerker. “A garage worker called the cops when he heard meows issuing from a box in Hell’s Kitchen, but they couldn’t do anything about it, April 29, 1941,” the original photo caption states, per Getty Images.

“They had to call the Post Office. A mechanic opened the box and found Blackie. Whoever threw her in also tossed in a couple of clams and some pretzels.”

No word on what happened to Blackie after her rescue and turn as a media darling—or who tried to mail her.

[Hat tip: researcher extraordinaire History Author. Photo by Weegee (Arthur Fellig)/International Center of Photography/Getty Images]

A posh Nolita alley’s rough and tumble past

Centre Market Place is a charming New York alley that’s easy to miss.

It’s just a one-block sliver of pavement behind the old Police Headquarters (now a luxurious residence) on Centre Street.

The alley is all very contemporary Nolita, with brightly painted townhouses topping expensive boutiques. But for the past 150 years or so, it was just another crowded strip in a poor stretch of the East Side.

It’s a block now mostly scrubbed clean of its rougher edges, which included a public bath at number nine on the Broome Street end.

Called the People’s Bath House and built by a private charity in the 1890s, it used to be crowded with mostly Italian immigrant tenement dwellers.

The site where it once stood is now an empty lot.

Centre Market Place also had an illustrious resident in the 1930s: crime photographer Weegee.

His one-room apartment, perfectly located near all the police action, was at number five.

A gritty industry thrived on the street as well: guns. Several gun shops were located there through much of the 20th century, fueled by the NYPD.

The gun dealers are gone, but the sign (below) still exists at number seven for Sile, a gun distributor with a branch in Brescia, Italy.

Weegee: life and crime in black and white

Photographer Weegee—born Usher Fellig in 1899—got his nickname thanks to his Ouji Board–like ability to arrive at crime scenes almost as fast as the bullets flew and the bodies fell.

But Weegee, at left at his 5 Centre Market Street apartment, wasn’t psychic.

The Austria native, who grew up on the Lower East Side, had a shortwave radio that let him listen in on police calls.

He also built a darkroom in his car so he could get his photos to New York’s tabloids in record time.

Weegee didn’t earn his iconic status simply because he was quick. His stark black-and-white shots of gangsters, street kids, regular joes, trashy women, and crowds defined the New York noir style of the 1930s and 1940s.

[At left, “Joy of Living,” 1942, chronicles a hit and run death outside a Third Avenue movie theater]

His 1945 book of photos was even the inspiration for the 1948 classic crime drama, The Naked City.

He wasn’t all about blood and grit. Weegee had a Fellini-esque eye for the weird and wonderful, as well as a soft spot for the tender—such as his 1938 photo of city kids sleeping on a tenement fire escape.

In his 1961 memoir, Weegee wrote: “Crime was my oyster. I was friend and confidant to them all. The bookies, madams, gamblers, call girls, pimps, con men, burglars and jewel fencers.”

He died in his Hell’s Kitchen apartment in 1968. Here’s more on Weegee’s life and photos, from the International Center of Photography.

[Above: “Crime Scene of David ‘the Beetle’ Beadle” 1939]

Summer on the Lower East Side

Photojournalist Arthur Fellig, aka Weegee, is best known for his raw crime-scene photos.

But he also captured some tender moments of street life in New York City—such as this photo of a ragtag group of kids cooling off under the spray of a fire hydrant in 1937.

It must have been hot that day . . . so hot, some of these kids didn’t even bother taking their clothes off to cool down.

How New Yorkers survived hot summer nights

The city in July and August is supposed to be insanely hot and sticky. And when an oppressive heat wave strikes, New Yorkers suffer, sweat, and ask the same question: How did city residents handle it years ago without air conditioning or even fans? 

Well, there was always the fire escape. It looks like a ridiculously dangerous place to sleep in this 1938 Weegee photo, but it must have been better than baking in a tenement bedroom.

You could also spend the night in a park, on the street, or sprawled out on the beach, as thousands did.

“In Central Park the lawns were crowded before darkness with family groups,” reported the July 10, 1936 New York Times; the temperature had reached an astounding 106 degrees the day before. “On the Lower East Side traffic was seriously impeded as small armies of persons emerged from tenement houses with chairs, boxes and even beds which they set up in the streets.”

And from the Times on August 4, 1938, when the mercury hit 93 degrees:

“More than 3,000 persons slept on the sand at Coney Island and Brighton Beach to escape the heat last night, the police estimated. Ten additional patrolmen were assigned to the area to prevent molestation of the sleepers, many of whom brought blankets and sheets.”