Oh, have we got archivey goodness for you—a form of reparation for not bothering to visit the park today (no reason but sloth). We have the tale of The Night of the Great Cat's Meow Fire and Horse Stampede—surely one of the most bizarre and exciting episodes to occur on the periphery of Prospect Park, exactly 79 years ago yesterday. (Picture at left, same ethos and era, but not Brooklyn; see credit below.)
On July 28, 1929, Prohibition was still in force and the Crash was a few heedless months away when the New York Times reported this ripping yarn in what we now call Kensington:
"Three night clubs in Coney Island Avenue, between Hermit [sic] Place and Caton Avenue, Brooklyn, were destroyed by fire soon after closing time yesterday morning, with a property loss of about $150,000. From the riding academy next door 135 horses stampeded from the fire into the Parade Grounds of Prospect Park across the street, where they galloped for four hours or more.
"The fire, of unknown, but, officials said, possibly incendiary, origin, apparently started about 4 A.M. in the Cat's Meow resort at 338 Coney Island Avenue. This place had been under padlock for several months as the result of a raid by Prohibition agents. The last of the patrons of the Caton Inn and the Barking Dog, adjoining the Cat's Meow, the other two places burned, had left an hour before. All were one-story frame structures.
"By the time four alarms had been turned in and before 200 firemen with 30 pieces of apparatus had arrived on the spot the flames had eaten through the walls of the Cat's Meow and were rapidly consuming the adjoining resorts. One hundred and thirty-five horses, including seven police traffic horses, were stamping in their stalls in Murray's Riding Academy next to the Barking Dog.
"Edward Markey, mounted police sergeant, was roused from sleep in his home at 399 Coney Island Avenue. Arriving at the fire only partially dressed, he fought through the smoke and flames and released the maddened animals. 
The seven police mounts lined up in the street in perfect order, as befitted veteran police horses.
"The rest, however, which had kicked down a plaster wall of the stable in their frantic efforts to escape the heat and smoke, broke away from the hands of the reserves of the Tenth Division police and stampeded through the neighborhood. Most of them headed for the green fields of the Parade Grounds in Prospect Park, just across the street, where they galloped about for hours.
"The police reserves...mounted the seven police horses and, swinging improvised lariats, set about rounding up the frenzied beasts..."
The fire was under control by the next morning, and no injuries were reported. Today, the site of this row of gin joints is now a grotesque luxury condo called "Park Circle," with half-million-dollar apartments overlooking the Parade Grounds where the "maddened animals" galloped after their brush with an inferno. There is still one surviving stable nearby, the Kensington Stables, and a neighborhood group called Stable Brooklyn is fighting to resist the onslaught of more high-rises. The immediate area still feels a bit raffish and isolated, and during the Roaring Twenties, stopping in at a "resort" like the Cat's Meow or the Barking Dog must have felt like a pit stop on the outskirts of town (or the badlands, perhaps). Perhaps the residents of the Park Circle could commemorate the inspiring history of their locale with a member's-only juice bar named after the immolated establishments.
Images: Top: The Krazy Kat Club, 1921, off Thomas Circle in Washington, D.C.; prints available from www.shorpy.com. Middle: Speakeasy; image found often, and unattributed, on the Web. Horse: Photo of Frontier Days, Cheyenne, Wyoming, 2008 by Brenda L. Becker. Bottom: Brownstoner.com.
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