The Boston Club

The Boston Club
Founded1841; 183 years ago (1841)
Location
Coordinates29°57′14.2″N 90°04′14.1″W / 29.953944°N 90.070583°W / 29.953944; -90.070583
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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]

  1. ^ 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. 95
  2. ^ Blakes, Alvin (July 4, 2021). "Black Families of Edgefield Plantation – Woodville, Mississippi: Part 6". Almost Disappeared. Retrieved July 31, 2024.
  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