St. Botolph Club

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.

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.

  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. ^ a b c "TAVERN CLUBMEN DEFEAT ST. BOTOLPH". Boston Globe. June 3, 1905. p. 5.
  5. ^  Homans, James E., ed. (1918). "McKim, Charles Follen" . The Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: The Press Association Compilers, Inc.
  6. ^  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.