PotW from the Vault: Cat named “Lazybones”

This From the Vault post was originally written by Tess Colwell and published on January 9, 2019 by the Brooklyn Historical Society. To see the latest Photo of the Week entries, visit the Brooklynology blog home, or subscribe to our Center for Brooklyn History newsletter.

The photo of the week depicts a cat named “Lazybones,” likely in the backyard of a Park Slope home, around 1910. I often come across a similar scene in my Brooklyn neighborhood of Ditmas Park, with cats spotted on porches, fences, hidden in bushes, and peering out of windows. This photograph comes from the Ralph Irving Lloyd lantern slide collection. Lloyd photographed several neighborhood cats in this collection, with a variety of names including, “Puss,” “Alert,” and “Well.”

The Ralph Irving Lloyd lantern slide collection consists of roughly 400 black-and-white lanterns slides documenting 19^th and 20^th century street scenes in Brooklyn, as well historical houses, churches, homesteads, and schools in Brooklyn. Ralph Irving Lloyd was a Brooklyn ophthalmologist and an avid amateur photographer. He resided in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn at 14 8^th Avenue (near Flatbush Avenue). 

Interested in seeing more photos from CBH’s collections? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images, or the digital collections portal at Brooklyn Public Library. We welcome appointments to research our entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections. Our reference staff is available to help with your research! You can reach us at cbhreference@bklynlibrary.org.