page_title: The Boston Club
section_title: Horse racing
hierarchical_section_title: The Boston Club / Horse racing
caption_attribution_description: English: Louisiana Jockey Club's Boston Club Stakes 1907
context_page_description: The Boston Club is a private gentlemen's club in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, founded in 1841 as a place for its members to congregate and partake in the fashionable card game of Boston. It is the oldest remaining social club in the city, after the Elkin, Pelican and Orleans Clubs closed prior or due to the Civil War. The clubhouse has been located at 824 Canal Street since 1884, formerly 148 Canal St, on the edge of the Central Business District. It was built in 1844 by James Gallier as a city residence for Dr. William Newton Mercer, a planter in Mississippi and surgeon from the War of 1812. The Club itself was organized in 1841, by thirty leading mercantile and professional men, they were the heads of families and men of substance on the shady side of life, yet full of bonhomie and fond of the card game of Boston, from which this club was christened. It epitomized the South’s most refined male tastes and attitudes, a member once noted, “Propriety of demeanor and proper courtesy are alone exacted within its portals.”
context_section_description: Members of the Boston Club frequently patronized Jockey Clubs of the area, both the defunct Metairie Course (now the Metairie Cemetery) and the Fair Grounds Race Course, putting up high stakes purses to help offset the Jockey Club’s expenses. “The Boston Club…being composed of gentlemen who know ‘what’s what’...insured a numerous and distinguished attendance upon these occasions.”  Later noting “In the betting circles last evening.. The wagering was spirited and lively, and a good deal of money will change hands as a result.”   John Randolph Grymes owned philly Susan Yandal who raced in the first races at the Fair Grounds Race Course in 1838, his cousin Henry A. Tayloe, youngest son of turfsman John Tayloe III, was one of the proprietors along with local, Bernard de Marigny.
caption: Louisiana Jockey Club's Boston Club Handicap 1907
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