The Home of the Rat Pit
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Manhattan’s third-oldest building, 273 Water Street, was built during the British occupation, no later than 1781. When new, its back door faced the East River, and its owner, Captain Joseph Rose, moored his brig, Industry, behind the house. It has since known many uses. But no plaque commemorates 273’s most famous – or infamous – occupant.
Shortly before the Civil War, Christopher “Kit” Burns, also known as Keyburn, leased the building as “Sportsmen’s Hall.” He promoted bare-knuckle boxing matches – which, though then illegal, were thoroughly covered by the press. After painting 273 a “vivid and bilious green,” he hung a huge gilt sign above the door. Sportsmen’s Hall was reportedly dedicated to “every variety of vice.” But Burns was renowned for ratting: turning one terrier loose against up to 100 rats in his first floor amphitheatre before as many as 100 roaring spectators who wagered heavily on how quickly the dog would kill its prey.
The rat pit was roughly eight feet square, with zinc-lined wooden walls about four feet high. Admissions ranged from $1.50 to $5.00 – then a skilled worker’s daily wage – depending on the dog’s reputation. The terriers’ instincts were honed by training, and a good ratter could kill its 100 in half an hour (the record, set in Secaucus in 1898, was under 12 minutes). Some historians called Sportsman’s Hall “the Madison Square Garden of dog fighting.” None of this was unusual in the neighborhood: Until the 1890s, practically every house on Water Street contained at least one dive, and some had a saloon, dance hall, or brothel on every floor.
Among the toughs who favored Sportsmen’s Hall was George “Snatchem” Leese, so called because he could steal almost anything from anybody. A “beastly, obscene ruffian, with bulging, bulbous, watery-blue eyes, bloated face, and coarse swaggering gait,” Snatchem usually carried two revolvers in his belt, a knife in his boot top, and a bludgeon in his hand. A self-described “rough-and-tumble-stand-up-to-be-knocked-down-son-of-a-gun” and “kicking-in-the-head-knife-in-a-dark-room-fellow,” when not engaged in violent crime, Snatchem provided half-time entertainment by jumping into the pit to bite off the heads of live rats for a quarter.
In 1868, clergymen began leasing space in local dives for daily prayer services to reform the neighborhood. They worked hard on Snatchem. “He was easily aroused,” wrote Herbert Asbury, “by the fiery exhortations of the preachers and the emotional appeal of the shouting and hymn singing. He asked for prayers at every meeting, and frequently embarrassed the ministers by publicly inquiring when they would receive the barrel of water from the river Jordan, which he had been assured would wash away his sins.” But even the missionaries gave up after Snatchem admitted that he wanted to enter Heaven only to bite off the Archangel Gabriel’s ear.
Burns allowed the ministers his pit from noon to 1 p.m. daily (5 to 6 p.m. on Sundays) for a monthly rent of $150. The preachers falsely claimed Burns had surrendered his premises for religious services because he had been converted. But the lie was easily disproved: Reporters only had to interview Burns, who usually stood outside the pit during services, cursing the missionaries for running late.
As the preachers and choristers arrived, Burns closed the bar and sluiced the blood from the pit floor. Few local toughs attended. Rather, respectable uptown businessmen filled the seats. Reporters noted the stench from the dogs kept in the cellar and the debris of rats’ carcasses in the dirt beneath the seats. During services held on September 24, 1868, a reporter overheard Burns telling his regulars, “No, gentlemen, the games of the house will go on the same as ever. As soon as those fellers leave, we’re going to have a ratkilling – a bully time – and all the fun you want.” Then the dogs, whose yelps had interrupted the service, were brought upstairs for the games.
In January 1870, Burns leased most of the building to a Williamsburg Methodist church as a home for fallen women. He opened a new rat pit at 388 Water Street, raided by the NYPD on November 21, 1870, during a contest he had advertised as “A Good Night’s Sport and No Humbug.” But he died within the month, not yet 40, on December 19, 1870.
After a 1904 fire, the building was a warehouse. Two years after a 1974 fire gutted its interior, the city seized 273 Water Street for unpaid taxes. Only in 1997 did developer Frank Sciame take the old wreck off the city’s hands – for $1. He restored the house within the year for $1.1 million. Today, its residential apartments rent for up to $4,700 a month.
Snatchem vanished after Burns leased Sportsmen’s Hall. Some claim he wandered to New England where, after a rat-biting exhibition, he died of “food poisoning.”