"Knickerbocker Centennial: An Informal History Of The Knickerbocker Club 1871-1971" BRADLEY, John Atwater [edited by]

BRADLEY, John Atwater [edited by]

[193] pp.

Knickerbocker Club, Inc.

1971

Limited edition of 1500 copies of which this is number 415

9 1/2" x 6 3/8"

VG

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The Knickerbocker Club (known informally as The Knick) is a gentlemen's club in New York City that was founded in 1871. It is considered to be the most exclusive club in the United States and one of the most aristocratic gentlemen's clubs in the world.

The term "Knickerbocker" arose partly due to the use of the pen name Diedrich Knickerbocker by writer Washington Irving, and was a byword for a New York patrician, comparable to a "Boston Brahmin".

History

The 1882 clubhouse, located at Fifth Avenue and 32nd Street

The Knickerbocker Club 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.[6] 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 its 550 members with the Union Club's 900 men, but the plan never came to fruition.

The current clubhouse at 2 East 62nd Street, photographed in 2011

The Knick's current clubhouse, a neo-Georgian structure at 2 East 62nd Street, was commissioned in 1913 and completed in 1915, on the site of the former mansion of Josephine Schmid, a wealthy widow. It was designed by William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich, and it has been designated a city landmark.

Membership

Members of the Knickerbocker Club are almost-exclusively descendants of British and Dutch aristocratic families that governed the early 1600s American Colonies or that left the Old Continent for political reasons (e.g. partisans of the Royalist coalition against Cromwell, such as the "distressed Cavaliers" of the aristocratic Virginia settlers), or current members of the international aristocracy. Towards the middle of the 20th century, however, the club opened its door to a few descendants of the Gilded Age's prominent families, such as members of the Rockefeller family