$250
Sz: 55" x 3"
*BB pink OCBD shirt sold separately*
The Lotos Club is a private social club in New York City. Founded primarily by a young group of writers and critics in 1870 as a gentlemen's club, it has since begun accepting women as members. Mark Twain, an early member, called it the "Ace of Clubs". The Club took its name from the poem "The Lotos-Eaters" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, which was then very popular. Lotos was thought to convey an idea of rest and harmony. Two lines from the poem were selected for the Club motto:
In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon
The Lotos Club has always had a literary and artistic bent, with the result that it has accumulated a noted collection of American paintings. Its "State Dinners" (1893 menu at right below) are legendary fetes for scholars, artists and sculptors, collectors and connoisseurs, writers and journalists, and politicians and diplomats. Elaborate souvenir menus are produced for these dinners.
Notable members:
Brooke Astor
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Kathleen Battle
Andrew Carnegie
Walter P. Chrysler
Mary Higgins Clark
William A. Clark, whose portrait hangs in the club
Samuel Clemens
George M. Cohan
Hume Cronyn
Mario Cuomo
David Dinkins
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Renee Fleming
Gilbert and Sullivan
Alan Gilbert
Solomon R. Guggenheim
William Randolph Hearst
David M. Heyman
Marilyn Horne
Leslie Howard
Alleyne Ireland
Sir Henry Irving
Joseph Koch
Angela Lansbury
Leonard Liebling
Wynton Marsalis
Margaret Mead
Burgess Meredith
Peter O'Toole
William S. Paley
Christopher Plummer
Julian Rix
Charles M. Schwab
Cyrus Ingerson Scofield
Bobby Short
Beverly Sills
Stephen Sondheim
Isaac Stern
Elaine Stritch
Susan Stroman
Moses J. Stroock
Arthur Hays Sulzberger
Jessica Tandy
J. Walter Thompson
Orson Welles
P. G. Wodehouse
Tom Wolfe
James Wolfensohn
Frank Winfield Woolworth
Andrew Wyeth
Yo-Yo Ma
James D. Watson