St. Botolph Club

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The St. Botolph Club is a private social club in Boston, Massachusetts, founded in 1880 by a group including many artists. Its name is derived from the English saint Botolph of Thorney.

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Among the club's other activities in its quarters at 2 Newbury Street, it hosted an extensive and long-running series of fine arts exhibits, particularly new work from painters of the American Impressionists: Dennis Miller Bunker, Dodge MacKnight, Joseph Thurman Pearson Jr. (in a 1912 dual exhibition with animalier sculptor Albert Laessle [1] ) and Willard Metcalf, who first showed his landscape May Night at the club in 1906. The club also exhibited work by Wilton Lockwood, [2] Adelaide Cole Chase, Frances C. Houston, and the sculptor Bela Pratt. [3] The Club also sponsored a baseball team that played against other Boston institutions such as the Tavern Club. [4]

Among its members were the architect Charles Follen McKim, [5] Boston composer Frederick Converse, [6] Sculptor Cyrus Dallin, [4] artist William McGregor Paxton, [4] and U.S. Army brigadier general Charles Brewster Wheeler. [7]

Originally exclusively a men's club, the St. Botolph Club has been open to women since 1988 [8] in advance of a Supreme Court ruling against sexual and racial discrimination in social clubs that would have mandated it. [9]

The club appeared in fictionalized form as the "St. Filipe Club" in two novels written by Arlo Bates, The Pagans (1884) and The Philistines (1888). [10]

Since 1972 at 199 Commonwealth Avenue, [11] the club maintains reciprocal relationships with a large number of social clubs worldwide.

See also

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References

  1. "Paintings by Joseph T Pearson and Sculpture by Mr. Albert Laessle 1912". archive.org. Retrieved 20 June 2021.
  2. "Paintings by Wilton Lockwood 1906". archive.org. Retrieved 20 June 2021.
  3. "Exhibition of Sculpture by B. L. Pratt 1902". archive.org. Retrieved 20 June 2021.
  4. 1 2 3 "TAVERN CLUBMEN DEFEAT ST. BOTOLPH". Boston Globe. June 3, 1905. p. 5.
  5. Wikisource-logo.svg Homans, James E., ed. (1918). "McKim, Charles Follen"  . The Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: The Press Association Compilers, Inc.
  6. Wikisource-logo.svg Homans, James E., ed. (1918). "Converse, Frederick Shepherd"  . The Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: The Press Association Compilers, Inc.
  7. Marquis, Albert Nelson (1919). Who's Who In America. Vol. X. Chicago, IL: A. N. Marquis & Company. p. 2905 via HathiTrust.
  8. "Modern Times Strike Venerable St. Botolph Club, part 2". The Boston Globe. 1988-04-07. p. 32. Retrieved 2020-08-06.
  9. "Boston's All-Male Clubs Slow to Admit Women". The Boston Globe. 1989-02-12. p. 34. Retrieved 2020-08-06.
  10. Prindle, Francis Carruth (1 January 1922). Fictional Rambles In and About Boston. McClure, Phillips and company. p. 131. Retrieved 20 June 2021.
  11. "Club History". St. Botoph Club. Retrieved 20 June 2021.