Knickerbocker Club
 | |
| Gentlemen's club | |
| Predecessor | Union Club of the City of New York |
| Founded | 1871 |
| Headquarters |
2 East 62nd Street New York, NY United States |
The Knickerbocker Club (known informally as The Knick), is a gentlemen's club in New York City founded in 1871.
The name "Knickerbocker", mainly thanks to writer Washington Irving, was a byword for a New York patrician, comparable to a "Boston Brahmin."[1][2]
Clubhouse
The Knick's current clubhouse, a neo-Georgian structure at 2 East 62nd Street, was commissioned in 1913 and completed in 1915.[3] It was designed by William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich,[4] and has been designated a city landmark.[3]
History
The Knick was founded in 1871 by members of the Union Club of the City of New York who were concerned that the club's admission standards had fallen.[4]
By the 1950s, urban social club membership was dwindling, in large part because of the movement of wealthy families to the suburbs. In 1959, the Knickerbocker Club considered rejoining the Union Club, merging The Knick's 550 members with the Union Club's 900 men, but the plan never came to fruition.[4]
The Knick was the location of a fictional murder in Victoria Thompson's 2012 whodunit Murder on Fifth Avenue: A Gaslight Mystery (Berkeley 2012, ISBN 978-0425247419).[3]
Notable members (past and present)
- Frederick Baldwin Adams (1878–1961), businessman and philanthropist
- H. Montagu Allan (1860–1951), banker, ship owner, lieutenant-colonel of the Canadian Expeditionary Force
- Chester Alan Arthur II (1864–1937), sportsman, art connoisseur, and son of President Chester A. Arthur
- John Lambert Cadwalader (1836–1914), lawyer, United States Assistant Secretary of State
- Alexander Cartwright (1820–1892), author of the rules of an early version of baseball, from which the present game evolved
- Finn M. W. Caspersen (1941–2009), attorney, corporate chief executive, philanthropist
- William A. Chanler (1867–1934), explorer, soldier and New York politician
- Henry Ives Cobb, Jr. (1883–1974), architect and artist
- Edgar G. Crossman (1895–1967), lawyer, soldier, diplomat
- Frank Crowninshield (1872–1947), journalist, developer of Vanity Fair
- H. B. Hollins (1854–1938), financier, banker
- Woodbury Kane (1859–1905), yachtsman, bon vivant
- Joseph Florimond Loubat (1831–1927), philanthropist
- Anthony Dryden Marshall (b. 1924), theatrical producer, former ambassador — current member
- Frederick Townsend Martin (1849–1914), writer and anti-poverty advocate
- J. P. Morgan (1837–1913). banker and financier — resigned when a friend he had sponsored for membership was blackballed and founded the Metropolitan Club.
- David Rockefeller (1915–present), banker
- Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945), President of the United States — joined in 1903 upon his graduation from Harvard University. Resigned from the club in 1936 amid the furor surrounding his re-election campaign attacks on the "malefactors of great wealth."
- William Watts Sherman (1842–1912), businessman
- Craig Wadsworth (1872–1960), diplomat, steeplechase rider, and member of Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders
- James Montaudevert Waterbury, Sr. (1851–1931), businessman, industrialist
- Henry White (1850–1927), diplomat
- Robert Winthrop (1833–1892), banker
- James T. Woodward (1837–1910), banker
- Jerauld Wright (1898–1995), Navy Commander-in-Chief
Relationship with other clubs
The Knick has reciprocal arrangements with clubs around the world, such as the Australian Club, Brooks's Club and the Turf Club in London, the Jockey-Club de Paris, the Melbourne Club, the Kildare Street & University Club, and the Círculo de Armas de Buenos Aires.
See also
References
- ↑ "Knickerbocker". Dictionary.com. Random House, retrieved 2008-1-3.
- ↑ Frederic Cople Jaher, "Nineteenth-Century Elites in Boston and New York", Journal of Social History Vol. 6, No. 1 (Autumn 1972), pp. 32-77.
- 1 2 3 Pollak, Michael. "Was Anyone Killed at the Knickerbocker Club?" New York Times (FEB. 21, 2014).
- 1 2 3 Gray, Christopher. "Inside the Union Club, Jaws Drop", New York Times (Feb. 11, 2007).
External links
- Information about the building at TheCityReview.com
Coordinates: 40°45′57.23″N 73°58′17.28″W / 40.7658972°N 73.9714667°W