“Racquet And Tennis Club: Architecture Art Library” 2022 BELLIVEAU, Gerald J. Jr. (SOLD) The Cary Collection

BELLIVEAU, Gerald J. Jr.

ZINK, Clifford W.

[154] pp.

Racquet And Tennis Club

2022

12 1/4″ x 9 1/4″

Fine

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Monograph published by the Club to document the history of its building, designed in 1917 by McKim Mead & White; to offer exclusive glimpses of its interiors and art collections, sculpture and painting; to showcase items from its sporting book collection.

The Racquet & 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.

The Racquet Court Club opened in 1876 at 55 West 26th Street. It had two racquets courts, an indoor running track and two bowling alleys, but it did not have a tennis court. 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 club house at 27 West 43rd Street (1891). This second club house had two racquets courts, one fives court and one court tennis court. The Club moved to its third, and current, home in 1918.

The R&T’s current clubhouse was designed by William Symmes Richardson, a partner at McKim, Mead, and White. The facility was built on a parcel offered for lease by a member of the club, Robert Goelet. Richardson, who had primary design responsibility for Pennsylvania Station and the Hotel Pennsylvania, proposed an integrated Italian Renaissance style and his firm’s proposal was presented to the membership for approval in April 1916. In addition to offering its members more spacious amenities, the move to Park Avenue afforded more consistent natural light for the skylit playing courts, as well a generally more desirable location. Construction began on December 20, 1916 and was completed on September 7, 1918. The builder was Mark Edlitz, and the estimated cost was $500,000. Board of Directors at this time included financier Ogden Mills and sportsman Harry Payne Whitney.

The resulting building is about 200 feet by 100 feet (30 m x 60 m) and five stories tall. The exterior is stone and brick over a structural steel frame. According to the original plans, the interior contained three dining rooms, a billiard room, library, lounge, gymnasium, swimming pool, five squash courts, two court tennis courts, and two racquets courts. Today, there are four singles squash courts, one hardball squash doubles court, one racquets court and two court tennis courts. The club’s court facilities are considered among the finest in the world.

The structure is representative of the ornate private clubs constructed in New York during the early twentieth century. McKim, Mead and White had previously designed the Harvard Club of New York, the Century Association and the University Club of New York. Today, it performs an important architectural role on Park Avenue as a foil to the Seagram Building, directly across the avenue, and the Lever House, across 53rd Street, and other corporate structures in the glass-clad vocabulary of International Modernism.

The building was designated a NYC Landmark in 1979 and on July 21, 1983, the building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

The club sold its air rights on Park Avenue to the developer of the Park Avenue Plaza skyscraper in 1978. The glass-clad skyscraper rises in the middle of the block, immediately behind the club.

*upper right corner cover dent*