Modern day Inwood is likely the most dog friendly neighborhood in all of Manhattan.  But, there was a time when man’s best friend instilled terror in the hearts of the few residents of northern Manhattan.   Below is a 1919 account of the hunt for a pack of wild dogs and a young boy who unwittingly set foot in their den:

Wild Dogs Headline, The Sun June 16, 1919

“It was on Saturday afternoon that Jimmy Gail made his thrilling discovery, stumbling into the lair of the wild dogs that have coursed at night, savage and fierce tongued, over the great sweep of ravines and hills and forests rising northward between the ramparts of the Hudson and Broadway from 181st street to the rock pinnacle which juts out over Inwood Valley on a line with 202nd street.

That was forty-odd hours ago, but the widely separated residents of the Rockefeller Park and the former Bennett estate, who know what it is to leap from bed in the middle of a bitter winter’s night to fire vainly at gray wolves marauding in the heart of New York City, were still talking yesterday about Jimmy’s adventure, hoping that it means the end of probably the most extraordinary plague of wild beasts that a city ever knew.

Sculptor George Grey Barnard

The whole district, which is roughly a mile long and from a quarter to half a mile wide, is the wildest and most naturally beautiful in all New York and above 188th street, as one approaches the studio of George Grey Barnard, the Cloisters, and the Sacred Heart School, on the other side of Fort Washington Avenue, there are scarcely a dozen houses in the primitive expanse.

Tryon Tower, on the site of the old Fort Tryon, the former mansion of C.K.G. Billings, overlooks the tract of wild land, and still further north, hidden among the gigantic boulders and the tall trees, is Hill Cottage, the country home of G. Axson Jones, manager of the Harlem branch of the United States Mortgage and Trust Company; the Abbey Inn, overlooking the Hudson at 200th street, and finally, on the pinnacle overlooking Dyckman street and the Inwood Gorge, are the greenhouses of A.N. Kinney, Captain, U.S.N. retired. And among these few and far separated houses are woods and gullies and cliffs as rude and untamed as northern Maine or the Adirondacks, alive with small game and a happy hunting ground for dogs gone wild and reverted to savagery.

VEXED AND OFTEN ALARMED

Sculptor Barnard, Mr. Jones, Capt. Kinney and others living in the tract have been vexed and often alarmed by the night prowlings of the pack whose long hidden den was found on Saturday by Jimmy Gail, and they long ago lost count of the blue ribbon chickens and prize ducks, not to mention pet dogs and cats, and even a calf, that have been snatched by night from coop and dooryard. Mr. Jones, the banker, mourns a dozen fine white ducks, which the wild dogs made off with last month, while he sent bullet after bullet after them through brush and timber.

There have been times when there was greater cause for alarm than the safety of cherished fowls. More than once as guests of Capt. Kinney or Mr. Jones have struck out over the snows on winter nights to make their way down hill toward the Dyckman street subway station they have seen dim shapes slinking ahead of them, circling like wolves; and once, only a few weeks ago, a gaunt, gray brute more resembling a timber wolf than any dog that ever gnawed bone made a sudden rush at Mrs. A.E. Hetzner and the man escorting her as they hurried along the Hudson bastion just north of Hill cottage. The man happened to be carrying an automatic pistol and let drive with it, but he missed in the dark and the dog wolf was over the cliffs toward the river rocks out of sight almost before report followed flash.

The Abbey Inn, Fort Washington Avenue and 198th street

Policemen have fired at the pack innumerable times, usually without result, but Mr. Jones, a first rate shot with pistol or rifle, and Capt. Kinney, whose navy experiences taught him something about the swift, accurate handling of firearms, have had better luck. The banker has bagged four dog wolves, one a mighty brute apparently half collie, half mastiff, and the Captain has five to his credit. Hugh Pechar, manager of the Abbey Inn, has shot three at long range by the trick of hiding out at night in the timber and patiently waiting until he could draw a bead on the night prowlers.

HAD MANNER OF WOLVES

Wolves they are, whatever of dog blood is left in them, and they begin their coursings every night after the manner of wolves, their leader, a great brute which has never been hit, though he has been fired at a hundred times, beginning with one ringing call to the pack, a midnight chorus of howling which echoes till dawn. How many are left in the pack can only be surmised by the vexed residents of the park, but there are at least a score in spite of the good shooting of Kinney, Pechar and Jones.

But Jimmy Gail’s exploit and adventure may mean the end of the pest, for luck gave the kid a chance to uncover the den where they have been hiding and breeding. Jimmy is a town boy who knows a lot about tame dogs, but who has a good deal to learn about dogs gone bad, otherwise he would never have poked his stub nose into the cave which runs back among the rocks and woods in the precipitous hillside between Bennett and Fort Washington avenues, a stone’s throw north of “The Cloisters.”

He went with his big sister Jane from their home at 160 Madison avenue on Saturday to visit his godmother, Mme. Marie Herbet, and her son-in-law and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, at Hill cottage. In the early afternoon, while sister was sketching from the cliffs behind the Billings garage, Jimmy wandered downhill and southward in a tangle of underbrush and small trees that clung somehow to the crags behind “The Cloisters.” He started a rabbit and was pursuing cottontail with whoops of glee when his ear caught the queer melody of sounds—whinings and short barks—coming from the hillside only a few feet from the hole into which the indignant bunny had dived.

The kid promptly investigated, following the sounds, and presently broke through a small. Close clump of briars, which had concealed a three-foot opening to a cave in the rocks. Without a thought of possible danger Jimmy crawled into the hole and saw the sight of a lifetime—thirty or forty puppies in various stages of growth romping, snarling, biting at each other, complaining from hunger, all scatted over the bed of broken sticks and dead leaves which carpeted the shallow cave.

OLDER PUPPIES HOSTILE

The older puppies, a few of which were a third to a half grown, were distinctly hostile and showed their teeth at Jimmy, but the littlest bundles of fluff climbed all over him and fought to lick his cheeks. He was having a lot of fun when a shadow darkened the cave mouth and he looked up to see a big and angry mother dog, which snarled menacingly. Jimmy threw sticks and stones until mother backed away and whisked out of sight, and then he, too, with a puppy in each arm, scrambled out of the cave and ran for sister Jane.

Later in the evening, when Mr. Jones came home from the bank and heard the news, he called Capt. Kinney by phone, and the pair, with revolvers, went to the cave guided by the excited Jimmy and his no less excited sister. When they got there they found that more than half of the puppies were gone, the larger ones, but fifteen were still romping and frisking among the sticks and the dead leaves. Both men had suffered enough from the depredations of the pa’s and ma’s of these babies to warrant lethal action, but they couldn’t bring themselves to shoot. The puppies were too pretty. Several seemed to be almost pure collie, but the most were cross breeds of half a dozen blood mixtures, in which bulldog, setter, mastiff and plain hound showed clearly enough.

So Mr. Jones and Capt. Kinney gathered up the puppies and took them home after first blocking the cave entrance with big rocks, and yesterday they were wondering just what to do with their prizes. They may keep two or three of the best looking breeds, and they expect to give away a few, but, in the end, one supposes, painless execution will be the fate of the unfortunate offspring of the outlaws.

MAY HAVE FLED IN ALARM

The important thing is, however, that the lair of the wolf dogs has been found, though why it was that more of the big hunters were not in or around the cave when Jimmy blundered into it is a mystery. Probably the half dozen or more of the brutes that may have been in the den when Jimmy came along crashing through the brush and rocks took alarm and fled when they heard him approaching. But the discovery means very likely the wiping out of the wild pack.

Mr. Jones and Capt. Kinney told a reporter for The Sun yesterday that they will ask permission from the agents of Mr. Rockefeller to organize a wild dog drive, which will take in the whole district, and if that sporting event comes off it will be the most exciting wild animal hunt in these parts since the effort was made two or three years ago to drive deer on Shelter Island.

Estate of C.K.G. Billings

Where the dogs came from originally is something of a puzzle, but Capt. Kinney told yesterday one story he had heard of their origin. Five or six years ago a woman was motoring in Fort Washington avenue, near the Billings mansion, and with her in the car was her collie, a splendid specimen of his breed. She stopped the car to look about at the scenery and suddenly the collie sprang from the car and was gone in a flash over the east side of the road and down among the rocks and underbrush. She called vainly to him for hours and came back day after day to hunt for him, but it was never any use. That was the last she ever heard of Laddie. He was a lost dog from that day to this. Capt. Kinney and Mr. Jones reason that Laddie just went wild for some reason that human beings simply cannot fathom, and that as time went by he established a family and, perhaps, became the leader of the pack. They think that the big wolf dog they have often seen slipping like a ghost over the snows and among the trees, the leader they have sent many a bullet after, is none other than the lost collie.”

We’ve seen photos documenting the splendor of old Northern Manhattan. Breath-taking mansions of a grander time, now gone except for a forgotten arch or lost driveway meandering around a city park. That these architectural wonders were photographed at all is remarkable.

But to step inside one of these homes, to see the art, the table settings, the beds in which these Captains of Industry slept….Well, for that you would need a time machine.

Luckily, a publishing fad erupted among the rich and famous near the turn of the century in which  the millionaire set  showcased their wealth in thick, expensive, leather-bound volumes printed in limited, private runs. Cornelius Vanderbilt himself commissioned a twelve volume set documenting his physical wealth. “These volumes were presented to his admiring friends at first, though I think, in later years this distinction was reserved for his enemies.” (Valentine’s Manual, 1928)

Estate of C.K.G. Billings

Such was the case with the private realm of Cornelius Kingsley Garrison Billings who in 1910 commissioned just such a book allowing a privileged few to inspect his inner sanctum.

Above slide-show of Billings’ home from privately published book.

Beginning in the 1901, the forty year old President of the People’s Gas, Light and Coke Company of Chicago retired, pulled up stakes and moved to Manhattan where he would shower New Yorkers with his eccentricity for years to come.

Indulging in yachts and, perhaps most importantly for this story, fast horses, Billings followed the recently opened Harlem River Speedway uptown and quickly fell in love with Manhattan’s northern edge.
He soon set to work on a 25,000 square foot lodge and stables, in what is now Fort Tryon Park, for entertaining guests.

In 1903, his lodge complete, Billings ordered an indoor, full-service, horseback dinner catered by the then famous Sherry’s Restaurant. By popular demand Billings relocated the dinner to Sherry’s midtown ballroom where 36 guests sat atop living, breathing, whinnying horses while waiters dressed as grooms catered to their every whim.

More at ease in Fort Tryon than his 53rd Street home, Billings had architect Guy Lowell build him a proper French-style mansion accessed by an S-shaped driveway that snaked up the bluff looking over the Hudson River.

Completed in 1907,  Billings magnificent home had all the trappings of the modern capitalist, a heated swimming pool, a two story squash court lined in maple and even a “fumed oak” bowling alley.

In 1916, Billings sold his beloved estate to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who planned on destroying the home before donating the land to the City for the creation of Fort Tyron Park. The home was spared the wrecking ball after loud local protest. But like so many monuments to old New York, the home was leveled by a 1926 fire so great the Times reported, it “spouted fire and smoke like a volcano.”

This article on the Billings’ estate would not have been possible without the help, generosity and even encouragement of Inwood enthusiast Don Rice. The book, likely one of only a handful in existence, comes from Don’s private collection. Don, thank you again for sharing this book with me, and, now, the public.

Click here for more Inwood hstory.

In the 1890’s the Harlem River Speedway, currently the Harlem River Drive, became the private playground of New York’s elite. On this taxpayer funded stretch of road, the fabulously wealthy of a bygone era raced horses away from the “riff-raff” of the newly bustling metropolis.

One turn of the century playboy, C.K.G. Billings, even designed a Wizard of Oz like estate complete with a 25,000 square foot stable, so he and his champion trotters could be close to the action on the Speedway.

As with most spectator sports, the uptown racing scene was as much about socializing as the races themselves. And for twelve glorious years, that social scene was based in Inwood’s Seaman mansion, which was leased by the now legendary Suburban Riding and Driving Club for use as the club’s headquarters.

Entrance to the Suburban Club. The marble arch still stands near 216th and Broadway.

The Seaman mansion, once located in today’s Park Terrace Gardens, had seen its share of characters through the years and the members of the Suburban Riding and Driving Club included a who’s who list of New York families whose names are familiar to this very day. A quick glance at the membership roll reveals Stuyvestants, Pfizers and Beekmans passing through the marble arch that once led to the palatial estate.

In an age of male dominated clubs, and sports in general for that matter, the Suburban Riding and Driving Club was ahead of its time. Women were not only allowed in the club, they were active participants both on and off the racetrack.

The club closed its doors in 1906 as the lure of the automobile became irresistable.

While the club, and the Seaman house itself, no longer exist, a beautiful description of both survive.

The below excerpt from Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, published in 1895, takes us into the club in its heyday when membership swelled to some 300 equine enthusiasts.

THE SUBURBAN RIDING AND DRIVING CLUB

By Frances M. Smith.

“One of the most popular establishments in Gotham Town—or, rather, just out of town—is the Suburban Riding and Driving Club…

Little wonder that the Suburban Club is so much in vogue ; for not only are the roads and the scenery along the routes, of which there are several, as beautiful as any whip could desire, but the club itself is a most attractive place. Every accommodation has been provided for ladies, so that members may take their families along to enjoy the ride or drive and stop for refreshment, or make a day of it ” in the country,” and yet be easily within an hour of the central part of the city. It is a youthful organization— scarcely a year old—and yet it is already as powerful as it is popular.

The headquarters are the spacious premises formerly known as Seaman Castle, situated on the Kingsbridge Road. The mansion is a beautiful structure of white marble, with a view from any part of the house or grounds across the Hudson to the Palisades. A lawn sweeps down from the main entrance to the edge of Spuyten Duyvil Creek.

Entering through the hospitable porch, the visitor finds himself in a hall, baronial in proportions and extending from front to rear. The dining room, formerly the drawing room, at the right, is also spacious, and it is made to seem even larger than it is in reality by a delightful arrangement of mirrors that reach from ceiling to floor and which stand in deep niches on one side and at one end of the room. White and gold are the colors of this apartment. There are many fine oil paintings and several charming pieces of marble statuary. Opening out of this grand salon, and also on the right or southerly side of of the house is another room, once the library. This is used as a dining room when a member of the club wants to give a dinner party to a few friends. The mahogany bookcases still remain and the marble busts-Homer, Plato, Shakespeare, Byron and Scott among the number. Opening from this room is the conservatory, in which grow all the choicest plants known to the tropics, as well as many of our own zone, and beautiful flowers of every description.

The ladies reception room, at the left of the main entrance, is furnished in a style to correspond to the rest of the house, although somewhat more luxuriously than appears in the illustration, as the photograph was taken before the full complement of easy chairs and sumptuous divans were in place. Felix, the steward, sees to it that dainty jardinières are constantly kept filled with fragrant flowers, both winter and summer.

Another spacious apartment has been fitted up as a café. It is especially designed for the male members of the club. Small tables are distributed throughout the room, the walls are hung with sporting prints, some of which are fine old coaching scenes presented to Colonel Kip (the club’s president) by James Gordon Bennett many years ago. One print represents Mr. David S. Hammond’s famous trotter’s Tot, Frederica, Nellie S., Corona and Roberta.

On the upper floor, over the main porch, is a quaint room originally used as a chapel, and in the northeast corner is a large and handsome room; this has been set apart as a dressing room for the ladies. All the rooms on this floor are beautifully furnished, and complete in every appointment.

All the members of the club are naturally enthusiastic on the subject of their charming quarters, and one who is something of a poet speaks of it in the following terms, which will not seem at all extravagant to one who visits the place:

‘With such a palatial edifice; with all the luxuries and the finest restaurant in the world; with all the comforts of a fireside; with all the companionship and social jollity of a selected membership of ladies and gentlemen; with all the breezes that blow from any direction to cool the heated brow on a summer’s day; with all the perfumes of the wildflowers that grow in the meadow and climb on the rocks and creep up the hillside to greet the nostrils and by their beauty to enchant the eye; with the sloping lawns, winding driveways of an eighth of a mile leading up to the doorway, and the marble staircases ascending the terraces, and with gravel pathways that beckon one into the gardens—who, if he were a member and permitted to enjoy the privileges of membership, would hesitate to take a drive of an hour from Fifty-ninth Street to the portals of the Suburban Riding and Driving Club?’

On the roof of the castle a flagstaff has been erected, from which the American flag and the club streamer, bearing the name ‘Suburban,’ in big red letters, float on the breeze.”

Read more Inwood History here.