Brooklyn's Dog and Horse Parade

The Thanksgiving holiday often revolves around food, family, and friends, but awaiting those holiday mainstays brings its own traditions. For some, one of these might be tuning into the National Dog Show.

With a nod to that event, this week’s Photo of the Week takes us back to June 1935, when Brooklyn’s four-legged friends marched along Eastern Parkway competing in their own dog show of sorts: the Brooklyn Dog and Horse Parade, sponsored by the Brooklyn office of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Classes included happiest dog, smallest dog, largest dog, and dog with longest ears. Those competing for the title of “oldest dog” had earned the privelege of riding on a float.

The protection of horses had historically been an important part of the ASPCA’s work, and, as the parade’s name implied, horses joined the procession from Utica Avenue to Prospect Park as well, including horses from Brooklyn’s riding academies and carriage horses from its breweries, bakeries, and coal companies.

Sheffield Farms and Borden, two dairy giants who then were fighting for superiority in the lucrative New York City milk market, also took advantage of the opportunity to parade their brands in front of the crowds. Sheffield Farms entered a goat pulling a miniature Sheffield Farms wagon and a float carrying “dairy maids,” while Borden entered their own float carrying a cow and a six-foot-high milk bottle (the following year Borden upped its game by inventing Elsie the cartoon cow).

Relics of these dairy companies’ presence in Brooklyn survive in the form of two bottling plants: a Sheffield Farms building on Fulton Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant decorated with terra cotta milk bottles and cow faces, and the landmarked Borden plant on Atlantic Avenue in East New York (originally the Empire State Dairy Company), featuring dairy-themed terra cotta murals. The old Brooklyn office of the ASPCA at 233 Butler Street, also landmarked, stands opposite the head of the Gowanus Canal and still bears the ASPCA’s medallion over its entrance. CBH’s Brooklyn animal welfare organizations collection helps document the organization's efforts to protect Brooklyn's animals.

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