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]

Among its members were the architect Charles Follen McKim[4] and Boston composer Frederick Converse.[5]

Originally exclusively a men's club, the St. Botolph Club has been open to women since 1988[6] in advance of a Supreme Court ruling against sexual and racial discrimination in social clubs that would have mandated it.[7]

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).[8]

Since 1972 at 199 Commonwealth Avenue,[9] the club maintains reciprocal relationships with a large number of social clubs worldwide.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  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. ^  Homans, James E., ed. (1918). "McKim, Charles Follen" . The Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: The Press Association Compilers, Inc.
  5. ^  Homans, James E., ed. (1918). "Converse, Frederick Shepherd" . The Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: The Press Association Compilers, Inc.
  6. ^ "Modern Times Strike Venerable St. Botolph Club, part 2". The Boston Globe. 1988-04-07. p. 32. Retrieved 2020-08-06.
  7. ^ "Boston's All-Male Clubs Slow to Admit Women". The Boston Globe. 1989-02-12. p. 34. Retrieved 2020-08-06.
  8. ^ Prindle, Francis Carruth (1 January 1922). Fictional Rambles In and About Boston. McClure, Phillips and company. p. 131. Retrieved 20 June 2021.
  9. ^ "Club History". St. Botoph Club. Retrieved 20 June 2021.

External links[edit]


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