{"id":12287,"date":"2018-06-11T17:46:02","date_gmt":"2018-06-11T21:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=12287"},"modified":"2020-12-16T10:33:00","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T15:33:00","slug":"inconspicuous-consumption-and-philadelphia-aristocracys-last-preserve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2018\/06\/inconspicuous-consumption-and-philadelphia-aristocracys-last-preserve\/","title":{"rendered":"Inconspicuous Consumption and Philadelphia Aristocracy\u2018s Last Preserve"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Racquet Club, 215 South 16th Street. February 20, 1908. (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201c\u2019Everybody\u2019\u201d belongs to the Philadelphia Racquet Club, proclaimed Nathaniel Burt more than half a century ago.\u00a0 And by \u201c\u2019everybody\u2019\u201d Burt meant the subjects of his classic Perennial Philadelphians, <\/em>the subtitle of which is our obvious tip off: \u201cAnatomy of an American Aristocracy<\/em>.<\/p>\n

One might have expectations that their clubhouse, designed by Horace Trumbauer, the go-to architect for over-the-top client expectations (a recent monograph is titled American Splendor<\/em>) would be something of an opulent, urban sports palace. After all, Trumbauer created crenelated \u201cGrey Towers\u201d for the sugar magnate William Welsh Harrison, the 110-room “Lynnewood Hall” for streetcar baron P. A. B. \u00a0Widener and the lavish”Whitemarsh Hall” for investment banker Edward T. Stotesbury. But when it came to making a statement at this 16th<\/sup> Street sporting and eating refuge for old-money Philadelphia, Trumbauer chose the muted Georgian revival, which blended right in with old, original red-brick, white stoop Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

Nothing on the fa\u00e7ade telegraphed the fact that the clubhouse foreshadowed modernity (it was one of the city\u2019s first reinforced concrete structures) or that its above grade swimming pool was among the world’s first. Nor did the building reveal that inside, members competed in \u201cthe sport of medieval French kings\u201d on a \u201cliteral indoor reproduction of the original palace courtyard.\u201d There was nothing else like it in the city, and only a few like it in the country, this court tennis court, \u201cwith all sorts of antique penthouses, windows at odd intervals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Court tennis only vaguely resembled the much more popular (and derivative) lawn tennis. By comparison, this court is \u201cimmense: 93 feet long by 31 feet wide\u2026 15 feet longer and 4 feet wider than the standard lawn-tennis singles court.\u201d The \u201ccrimson-trimmed net was two feet lower in the middle than at the ends.\u201d Dimensions vary. England\u2019s Hampton Court \u201cis some 24 inches longer and 19 inches wider than the two courts at the New York Racquet Club.\u201d (That\u2019s right\u2014New York has two.) In Britain, the \u201cwalls are rougher, which means that the ball will bounce off them at a steeper angle.”\u00a0 The slope of the penthouses running along three of the walls can be different, although the window-like openings at odd intervals appear the same.<\/p>\n

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Racquet Club, 215 South 16th Street. February 20, 1908 (PhillyHistory.org)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One way players score in this complicated game, is to hit the heavy, hand-sewn, lopsided ball into these holes at speeds approaching 150 miles per hour. Yes, the esoteric rules and hard-acquired skills take years to master.<\/p>\n

The history and lore of the game is actually far more interesting\u00a0 Word has it that the young Henry VIII brought the game to Hampton Court in 1530. \u201cHis second wife Anne Boleyn was said to be watching a game when she was arrested and the king was playing tennis when news was brought to him of her execution.”<\/p>\n

\u201cShakespeare mentioned the game in six of his plays. \u2026 Chaucer, Erasmus, Edmund Spenser, Rabelais, Pepys, Gower, Chapman, Rousseau, Ben Jonson, John Locke, Montaigne, and Galsworthy are among the men of letters who made mention of tennis.”<\/p>\n

\u201cProper tennis\u201d had been played by royals and wannabes for about three-quarters of a millennium before it arrived on American shores. Whether it first landed in Boston in 1876 or New York in 1890 or\u00a0Chicago in 1893 is a matter of prideful debate. But one thing, pointed out by Burt, seemed clear: the game was imported \u201cduring the Gilded Age as a piece of extremely conspicuous consumption.\u201d<\/p>\n

And for the longest time, and perhaps still today, the Philadelphia version of the game is a \u201cpreserve of the aristocracy”\u2014albeit inconspicuously as possible.<\/p>\n

[Sources: Nathaniel Burt The Perennial Philadelphians: The Anatomy of an American Aristocracy<\/em><\/a> (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999; originally published in 1963); Sandra L. Tatman, Horace Trumbauer<\/a> (Philadelphia Architects and Buildings; The Athenaeum of Philadelphia); Allison Danzig, The Royal & Ancient Game of Tennis: A Short History<\/a>; Robert W. Stock, \u201cThe Courtliest Tennis Game of Them All<\/a>, The New York Times<\/em>, March 6, 1983; James Zug, Introduction to Court Tennis, A Guide to Tennis<\/a>.]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201c\u2019Everybody\u2019\u201d belongs to the Philadelphia Racquet Club, proclaimed Nathaniel Burt more than half a century ago.\u00a0 And by \u201c\u2019everybody\u2019\u201d Burt meant the subjects of his classic Perennial Philadelphians, the subtitle of which is our obvious tip off: \u201cAnatomy of an American Aristocracy. One might have expectations that their clubhouse, designed by Horace Trumbauer, the go-to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}