Knickerbocker Club

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. Its current location, a neo-Georgian structure at 2 East 62nd Street, was commissioned in 1913. It was designed by William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich.[1]

The Knick, like other clubs of its type, such as the Australian Club, Brooks's Club and the Turf Club in London, the Jockey Club of Paris, the Melbourne Club, the Kildare St & University Club the Círculo de Armas de Buenos Aires and the Harmonie Club, has reciprocal arrangements with clubs around the world.

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.[1]

The name "Knickerbocker", mainly thanks to writer Washington Irving, was a byword for a New York patrician, comparable to a "Boston Brahmin".[2][3]

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.[1]

Notable members (past & present)

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Gray, Christopher. "Inside the Union Club, Jaws Drop", New York Times (Feb. 11, 2007).
  2. ↑ "Knickerbocker". Dictionary.com. Random House, retrieved 2008-1-3.
  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.

External links

Coordinates: 40°45′57.23″N 73°58′17.28″W / 40.7658972°N 73.9714667°W