The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1889-03-23
OUR NEW YORK LETTER.
INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF LEADING
CLUB HOUSES.

sErrstic Enrique" Gives Some Interesting
Facts About the Social. Literary. A.
tistic, Muscular and Mixed Coterics ON
Manhattan Island-Handsome Buildings.
Especial Correspondence
NEW York, March 1s-To be or not to be
n so much of a life problem in Gotham that
almost every man and woman OF business or
social notoriety belongs to a club For many
years the distinctive arena of those whose
names are oftenest in print has, by common
election and selection, been the club house
Alphabetically, decoratively and incontest-
ably, New Yorks club houses are the most
mmptuous in the world. Although London
has O resident population more than double
that of Americas commercial metropolis, the
number of permanently established clubs in
each city is now about equal. In the wealth
and influence of members, however; in valu-
able real estate, commodious, ornate build
ings, superb furnishing, and perennial,
generous hospitality, New York clubs lead
all Others
II given in detail, the histories Of these
organizations would fill many columns Of
type. Even complete roster is not part of
this sketchy record. The earliest instituted
. were literary clubs. In 1872 Anthony
Blocker, James Kent (the famous chancel-
lori, Samuel Latham Mitchill, Charles Brock
den Brown and their associates of taste ana
culture, formed the Drone club. Just prior
TO the Revolution there had been a coterie OF
eminent lawyers, known as the Moot, at the
meetings of which purely technical questions
were debated with sober, intense earnestness.
The Krout club, organized by lineal descend
ants of the Dutch settlers of Manhattan, and
the Turtle club, which held its annual feast
and revel in the Elysian Fields at Hoboken,
became in time very strong rivals OF the
Drone A Tuesday evening assembly of New
Yorks solid men and intellectual giants was
the Friendly club broken and scattered by
political clashngs, after many years of har-
monious fellowship. During Washington's
administration the Friendly club was social
power. -
In 1924, James Fenimore Cooper, Fitz
Greene Halleck, Gulian e. Verplanck, Will
liam Cullen Bryant, Robert Sands, Philip
Hone De Kay the then celebrated natural
ist), Professor Renwick and Judge Duer orig
mated the Bread and Cheese club, which en-
tertained savants of all countries, diplomats,
members of our national congress and other
distinguished sojourners in this city. Among
Neuville, Daniel Webster and William Beach
Lawrence, the great American jurist. Bry-
ant, Sands and Verplanck founded the Sketch
club. a mixed aesthetic fraternity. Philip
Hone, mayor of New York in 1926, was lib
eral promoter of club of twenty gentlemen
organized ten years later and named in his
honor. He was also one of the Union clubs
projectors A local historian says that for
q long while the Union club represented
merely old families-'the Van Cortlandts,
Iivingstons Van RensselaerS, Suydams,
Schuylers, Griswolds and Stuyvesants filling
I'D it's membership list with aristocratic mo-
notony."
The Kent club, founded in 1888, was fore
shadowing of that unique and influential
body now 50 popular as the Down Town Law
yers' club Prominent at meetings OF the
Kent were Ogden Hoffman, oaldheaded,
dreamy mainland Charles O'Conor, both
esteemed for the breadth and profundity of
their knowledge.
Those blossoms of single bessednesS, the
nomadic, anomalous and blase creatures des-
ignated as ''men around town" are the chief
visitors to New York clubs. 1t may be said
that they divide the twenty-four hours Of
each day between clubs, barrooms, prone
nauGS, llltdl- - anu Slctp llINN ulO 'uNii'
lors, de facto, of arts and artfice. Leisure is
their life capital. and it brings to such tail
ors' models and time killers a recompense of
self qualification that is as enervating as the
happiness is transitory and unreal More
fortunate club members are heads of fami-
lies or the ambitious and well trained young
business men, either married or unmarried,
who hope to set up stylish domestic establish
ments of their own. The club has, for the
latter individuals, only an attractiveness that
pleasant comradeship begets anywhere and
everywhere. 1t is claimed, and not un Justly,
that in small towns or cities clubmen are
more amiabe and jolly than in New
York; being less exclusive, more intimate
from daily association, and, hence, charm
ingly unconventional. Throughout the south
this is notably so, but the wide awake, bus
ting west encourages club life, because it Of
fers relief from the tread mill of labor. The
first impression a New Yorker has of a
Chicago club house, after business hours, is
that he has dropped suddenly from the gal
lery to the floor of his own favorite bear pit,
the Stock Exchange, on holiday eve St.
Louis may be trifle less vehement in noise,
but its clubs dexterously hold their own
when wassail and fun making have been in
augurated.
Founded more than half a century ago, the
Union club takes precedence in my neces-
sarily abridged descriptions of these social
leagues Recently its membership. so desir-
able, has been extended to limit of 80.
1t is used to be 1000. Housed in a modern
brown stone edifice at the corner of Fifth
avenue and Twenty-irst street, opposite to
the Lotos clubs quarters, the Union has long
been in quest of bigger tenement The ini-
tiation fee of this club is $780, and its an
nual dues SIS A candidates name is only
brought to the notice of the Unions govern
ing board when a member resigns or joins
the innumerable caravan that goes but never
returns.
At Fifth avenue and Thirty fifth street is
the magnificently remodeled building of the
New York club, another opulent corporation,
which has greatly fourshed under the presi-
dency of the head official of the New York
stock exchange, Mr.. James d. Smith. A
quarter of a million dollars for the site and
nearly one hundred thousand dollars more
for tasteful improvements were paid by this
club when it folded its tents and moved
As,-<l~o,,x, %au-n Eour blocks north IF tho