"Racquet And Tennis Club Book For 1956" (SOLD)

[174] pp.

1956

7 3/8" x 5 3/8"

*slight fraying on top left cover board/ condition noted*

Ex-libris: Clarence Cecil Pell (1885-1964)

Clarence C. Pell was a retired stockbroker and a noted racquets player.

Mr. Pell was a descendant of the Pells who were hereditary lords of the manor of Pelham under a grant from King Charles II and who sold part of the land in 1688 to Huguenot settlers, who then founded New Rochelle. In the deed the city was obliged to provide the family annually with "one fatt calfe."

He was a younger brother of Herbert Claiborne Pell, a former United States Representative from New York and a diplomat, and an uncle of Senator Claiborne Pell, Democrat of Rhode Island. John H. G. Pell, financier and historian and former chancellor of Long Island University, is a cousin.

He was educated at the Pomfret School and at Harvard, where he was graduated in 1908 and was captain of the hockey team. He became a stockbroker in New York, retiring in 1929.

In World War I Mr. Pell served overseas as an aviator, holding a captaincy in what was then the aviation section of the Army Signal Corps.

U.S. Champion 21 Times

The war interrupted his record as a perennial racquets champion of the United States. He held the singles title 12 times between 1915 and 1933. Paired with Stanley G. Mortimer, he won the doubles championship nine times. In 1925 he won the British singles championship, the only foreigner to have achieved this.

The scene of many of his triumphs was the Racquet and Tennis Club in New York, of which he was president from 1933 to 1942. He was also for many years a governor of the Piping Rock Club, Locust Valley, L. I.

Racquets is usually played on a roofed court 80 feet long and 40 feet wide with walls 40 feet high. The players stand facing one of the narrow walls known as the front wall and hit the ball with a gut‐strung bat or racket at each other by rebound off the front, as in squash or handball.

The Racquet and Tennis Club, familiarly known as the R&T, is a private social and athletic club at 370 Park Avenue, between East 52nd and 53rd Streets in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.

History

The Racquet Court Club was organized April 28, 1875 and opened May 27, 1876 at 55 West 26th Street. It had two racquets courts, an indoor running track and two bowling alleys. In 1890, it merged into the newly incorporated Racquet and Tennis Club, which planned to build a tennis court, moving the following year to a second, larger clubhouse at 27 West 43rd Street (1891). This second clubhouse had two racquets courts, one fives court and one court tennis court. The Club moved to its third, and current, home in 1918.