"The Riding Club Of New York 1919 Members Annual" (SOLD)
Price on Request
Club House
No. 7, Fifty-Eighth Street, East
[57] pp.
5 3/4" x 4 3/8"
VG
Following the completion of Central Park, riding clubs and academies cropped up nearby. Among the first was the New-York Riding Club, organized in 1873. Its elegant club rooms were located in Durland's Riding Academy at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street. Seven years later a group of members splintered off, creating the Gentlemen's Riding Club, deemed by James Grant Wilson in his 1893 The Memorial History of the City of New York, "a worthy rival."
The Fortnightly Review explained that it "owes its existence to the fact that ladies were dependent for their instruction on the riding schools, which were not always as exclusive as might be desired. So a great many of the best known men in New York clubbed together and bought property in Fifty-eighth Street, where they put up a club-house at a cost of $60,000." (The price would be in the neighborhood of $1.5 million today.)
The property, between Fifth and Madison Avenue and stretching through the block to 59th Street, was owned by the Astor family. The Riding Club's headquarters was as much elegant social club as stables and riding space. The Fortnightly Review said "It consists of a large ring two hundred feet square, on which an immense general sitting-room looks out through a partition wall of glass; a general dining-room; separate dining-rooms, drawing-rooms, and reading-rooms for ladies and gentlemen, and private dressing-rooms where the ladies can keep their habits and dress at the club. The stables are very fine and complete in every way."
The Riding Club's founders successfully set out to make theirs the most exclusive in the city. Membership was limited to 400, "and election to the club is a very difficult matter," said the magazine. "The club is most particular about the social standing of its members, and also makes a high standard of horsemanship a necessary qualification." Members paid an initiation fee of $200 and an annual dues of $100.
Although women would not become members, wives, unmarried daughters and children of members were admitted. Shortly after moving into the new clubhouse the group removed the word "Gentlemen's" from its title. Fortnightly Review opined "The club has contributed in an incalculable degree towards raising the standard of woman's riding in America."
Wallace's Monthly, in April 1888, wrote "The swellest coteries of lady riders are, of course, the guests of the Riding Club on Fifty-eighth Street" and noted "The ladies, in a great variety of plain colors, flock to the club from morning until evening. They have their own lockers, dressing-rooms and bath-rooms." The magazine added that the clubhouse was "distinguished by butlers and stewards in knee breeches, and with their calves so padded that the prince of Wales would feel quite at home with one to wait upon him."