Brooklyn's Alligator Has Nothing On Harlem's 1935 Sewer Gator

HARLEM, NY — The four-foot long alligator pulled from Prospect Park in Brooklyn Sunday may be good for a few days' headlines, but Harlem's sewer gator is the stuff of which urban legends are made.

East Harlem's alligator — found nearly 90 years ago by a group of kids near East 123rd Street — has since inspired an epic myth, some truly great old-school headlines and a now tabled movement to name the intersection "Sewer Gator Park."

Here is the eye-catching 36-word headline that ran about the uptown gator from the New York Times on Feb. 10, 1935.

"ALLIGATOR FOUND IN UPTOWN SEWER; Youths Shoveling Snow into Manhole See the Animal Churning in ICY Water. SNARE IT AND DRAG IT OUT Reptile Slain by Rescuers When It Gets Vicious — Whence It Came Is Mystery."

The story goes that a group of local kids were shoveling snow into a manhole, when the sewer suddenly became clogged, the New York Times reported 88 years ago.

Salvatore Condulucci, 16, got onto his hands and knees to check out the stoppage, and popped back up in disbelief.

"Honest, it's an alligator," the New York Times reported. The gator was thrashing around in the ice and the boys decided to try to save it, the Times added.

"Young Condulucci, an expert on Western movies, fashioned a slip knot," the New York Times reported. "With the others watching breathlessly, he dangled the noose into the sewer, and after several tantalizing near-catches, lopped it about the gator's neck."

"Then he pulled hard. There was a grating of rough leathery skin against jumbled ice. But the job was too much for one youth."

The story continues that the group of boys all pitched in and were able to pull the alligator out of the 10-foot deep sewer, according to the New York Times.

The rescue mission quickly took a sad turn, when the alligator "opened its jaws and snapped, not with the robust vigor of a healthy, well-sunned alligator, but with the fury of a sick, very badly treated one," the New York Times wrote.

The group then took the shovels they had use to dig the alligator out — and beat the animal to death — before carrying it to the Lehigh Stove and Repair Shop in the neighborhood, the New York Times reported.

Police at the time struggled with an explanation for the alligator's appearance but surmised that it had fallen off a steamer from the everglades that had been passing 123rd Street at the time, the New York Times reported.

New York City Alligator Sewer Mythology

The Harlem legend is one New York City historian Michael Miscione hopes the five boroughs will never forget.

That's why, in September, he pitched Community Board 11 his proposal to name the site of the discovery "Sewer Gator Park."

The myth of New York City sewer alligators "fascinated me since my youth" Miscione told the board, even though it's "generally speaking, not true."

The board decided not to vote on the proposal in the September meeting, though, and Miscione told Patch he recently decided to withdraw it.

East Harlem's alligator wasn't the only one found in New York City.

In 1932, two boys brought a dead alligator to the Bronx River Parkway Police station, and also said there were three more along the river, according to UntappedCities. An expedition the next day did not recover more alligators.

Gothamist's recent history of alligators in New York City also reports an alligator found in Newtown Creek, between Brooklyn and Queens, in 1815.

More recently in 2010, a smaller 18-inch alligator was spotted in Queens that had fallen off a ship and traveled through the East River.

The NYC Department of Environmental Protection tells Untapped Cities there is no gator nest underground.

“We have no record of alligators in the NYC sewer system."