The Boston Club Explained

The Boston Club
Location:824 Canal Street New Orleans, Louisiana
Founded:
Coordinates:29.9539°N -90.0706°W

The Boston Club is an exclusive private gentlemen's club in New Orleans, Louisiana, US, founded in 1841 as a place for its white members to congregate and partake in the fashionable card game of Boston. It is the third oldest City Club in the United States, after the Philadelphia Club (1834) and Union Club of the City of New York (1836).[1]

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 designed and built in 1844 by James Gallier as a city residence for Dr. William N. Mercer, a Maryland native, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine trained surgeon and veteran of the War of 1812, posted in New Orleans, then Natchez, Mississippi, where he married Ann Eliza Farar whose dowry included Laurel Hill and Ellis Cliffs, Mississippi by way of her mother, the heiress of Richard Ellis, who with his brother John Ellis, for their loyalty to the crown during the American Revolution, received the original 20,000 acres royal english land grant.[2]

The club was organized 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."[3]

History

Founded in 1841, members organized and rented rooms first at the Merchants Exchange, 126 Royal St, in the Vieux Carre, then 129/130 Canal Street until the Civil War when it closed from 1862 to 1866. After the war, it occupied 214 Royal Street (currently the Hotel Monteleone) until 1867 at which point it moved to 4 Carondelet Street, the former home of New Orleans financier, Edmund Jean Forstall. In 1884 it moved into its current clubhouse at 824 Canal Street (then known as 148 Canal Street) and the house was fully purchased by 1905.[4] The club was closed for 3 years during the Civil War.[5]

The History of Gentlemen's Clubs in New Orleans starts with The Elkin Club, named after Harvey Elkin, was founded in 1832 by a group of Harvey's friends who purchased "Elkinville" after Mr. Elkin encountered financial difficulty, these men included John Slidell, John Randolph Grymes, and Glendy Burke. It was the first official private social club in New Orleans. An open club, members could freely invite guests, it sponsored dances and balls in the vicinity of Bayou St John and closed officially in 1838, due to the financial crisis of 1837. Next was The Pelican Club, founded in 1843 from the remnants of The Elkin Club, and folded at the beginning of the Civil War. It confined its membership through blackball policies to bankers, cotton brokers, attorneys, physicians, and political leaders; the smallest lapse in credit spelled denial of membership. It was to this club Henry Clay and Gen. Winfield Scott would retire for respite. Younger gentlemen, who had been rejected membership to the Pelican Club, organized The Orleans Club in 1851 with less restrictive membership policies but similarly closed, during the Know Nothing Times. A few members of this club would later found The Pickwick Club, the city's second-oldest gentleman's club, who would influence the development of modern-day Mardi Gras.[6]

Unlike The Pickwick Club or Louisiana Club, the Boston Club was not initially a "closed club" and was more diverse. Members could invite guests into the club freely where they could use the premises "gratis," though in the traditional club style new members were put up through a blackball process. A few Jewish men, such as Judah P. Benjamin and the first Rex, Lewis Solomon, had been members of the club in its earlier days.[7] Eventually, however, the club became almost exclusively Anglo-American as racial attitudes in New Orleans hardened after the Civil War and even white minorities would be blackballed leading to an air of antisemitism,[8] [9] especially with the rise of the Crescent City White League.[10] For his merits early in his career Edgar B. Stern was invited to join. Stern declined the invitation on learning that close Jewish friends would be unable to join.[11] [12] The Boston Club has no reciprocal relationships with any national or international gentlemen's clubs, unlike other revered national societal institutions such as the Union Club in New York or the Metropolitan Club in Washington, D.C.

Famous guests

Notable members

Portrait Gallery

Horse racing

Members of the Boston Club frequently patronized Jockey Clubs of the area, the Eclipse Race Course, the Metairie Race Course 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."[76] 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."[76] Boston Club Founder John Randolph Grymes owned filly Susan Yandal who ran in the first races at the Fair Grounds, his cousin Henry Tayloe, younger son of leading turfman J. Tayloe III of The Octagon, was one of the founders of The Louisiana Jockey Club, along with native French Creole Bernard de Marigny.

Homes of The Boston Club

Description

Entering from Canal Street, the entrance to the club is a 10x12 vestibule framed by sidelights between engaged ionic pilasters and columns, with a wooden door inscribed in a frosted glass the club's initials BC, opening into a marble-paved hallway. Adjacent, to the left through a solid mahogany door,[78] is a well-decorated parlor, extending fifty-five feet deep from the front facade. Here can be found leather chairs, lace curtains, and rockers with foremost men of New Orleans discussing current events. There is a reception area with a large round table behind leading into formal and informal dining areas. The formal dining room is forty-five feet deep, with molded stucco ceiling cornices and large center ceiling medallion of floral designs, and mantels finished in the period Eastlake Style replacing earlier marble mantel carved with cherubs and flute players. The bar, located behind the informal dining area, is made of oak along with the wainscot running around the room. The second floor has two rooms, the front, a former card room while the rear is mainly used as a sitting room but can be converted easily into a dining room, it is finished in oak with cypress doors and is attached to a billiards room, board room and lady's water closet.[79]

Significance

The Boston Club is a social club composed solely of Anglo-Americans[10] since the turn of the century, with few details known about its constituents. Members usually announce their associations upon death, in their obituaries. Its clubhouse has held lavish balls, regular daily lunches, monthly dinners, and annual spring and fall parties. Its events and social activities were the fodder for many newspaper and social columns at the turn of the 19th century and on into the 20th century. That a lavish club lifestyle could be centered around something as simple as a card game serves as a sign of prosperous times in New Orleans.

Status as the "oldest club in the south"

The Boston Club is the oldest City Club in the Southern United States.[80] Only two Gentlemen's City Clubs, that offer the facilities of a traditional gentlemen's city clubregular hours, paid staff, a bar, a dining room, lodging roomsthat are associated with the English model of city clubs in the St. James's district of London, are older: the Philadelphia Club, and the Union Club of the City of New York.

In popular culture

In The Moviegoer, by Walker Percy, "Uncle Jules" is said to have suffered a heart attack (his second) and died at the Boston Club on Mardi Gras.

See also

Notes and References

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  2. Web site: Blakes . Alvin . 2021-07-04 . Black Families of Edgefield Plantation – Woodville, Mississippi: Part 6 . 2024-07-31 . Almost Disappeared . en-US.
  3. Historical Sketch Book and Guide to New Orleans and Environs: With Map. Illustrated with Many Original Engravings and Containing Exhaustive Accounts of the Traditions, Historical Legends, and Remarkable Localities of the Creole City, W. H. Coleman, 1885, p. 96
  4. Landry. History of the Boston Club. p. 7.
  5. Landry. History of the Boston Club. pp. 6–7.
  6. New Orleans Carnival Krewes: The History, Spirit & Secrets of Mardi Gras, Rosary O'Neill, Arcadia Publishing, February 11, 2014.
  7. Web site: ArchivesSpace Public Interface | Archives and Special Collections at Tulane University.
  8. Jews and New Orleans Economic and Social Elites, Walda Katz Fishman & Richard L Zweigenhaft, Jewish Social Studies, Summer-Autumn, 1982, Vol 44, No. 3/4 (Summer-Autumn, 1982) pp. 291-298, Indiana University Press, www.jstor.org/stable/4467188
  9. Web site: ISJL - Louisiana New Orleans Encyclopedia . 2024-07-31 . Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life . en.
  10. Hunter . G. Howard . 2016 . Late to the Dance: New Orleans and the Emergence of a Confederate City . Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association . 57 . 3 . 297–322 . 0024-6816.
  11. Richardson. Joe M.. Edgar B. Stern: A White New Orleans Philanthropist Helps Build a Black University. The Journal of Negro History. Summer 1997. 82. 3. 328–342. 10.2307/2717676. 2717676. 140496068.
  12. Web site: Vogt. Justin. The Krewes and the Jews. TabletMag.com. February 16, 2010. 31 December 2016.
  13. Landry. History of the Boston Club. p. 8.
  14. New Orleans Times. April 3, 1880. Quoted in Landry. History of the Boston Club. p. 8.
  15. Web site: Archived copy . February 12, 2019 . August 27, 2018 . https://web.archive.org/web/20180827094003/http://www.neworleansbar.org/uploads/files/When%20General%20Pershing%20took%20Berlin_7-2(1).pdf . dead .
  16. The Haberdasher, Volume 71, Haberdasher Company, 1920
  17. Lords of Misrule: Mardi Gras and the Politics of Race in New Orleans, James Gill, Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1997, p. 176
  18. Web site: Duke and Duchess of Windsor in stands in front of the Boston Club on Canal Street during Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans in 1950.
  19. Landry. History of the Boston Club. p. 9.
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