Knickerbocker Club


The Knickerbocker Club is a gentlemen's club in New York City that was founded in 1871. It is considered to be the most exclusive club in the United States and one of the most aristocratic gentlemen's clubs in the world.
The term Knickerbocker arose partly due to the use of the pen name Diedrich Knickerbocker by writer Washington Irving, and was a byword for a New York patrician, comparable to a "Boston Brahmin".

History

The Knickerbocker Club was founded in 1871 by members of the Union Club of the City of New York who were concerned that the club's admission standards had fallen. By the 1950s, urban social club membership was dwindling, in large part because of the movement of wealthy families to the suburbs. In 1959, the Knickerbocker Club considered rejoining the Union Club, merging its 550 members with the Union Club's 900 men, but the plan never came to fruition.
The Knick's current clubhouse, a neo-Georgian structure at 2 East 62nd Street, was commissioned in 1913 and completed in 1915, on the site of the former mansion of Josephine Schmid, a wealthy widow. It was designed by William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich, and it has been designated a city landmark.

Membership

Members of the Knickerbocker Club are almost exclusively descendants of British and Dutch aristocratic families that governed the early 1600s American Colonies or that left the Old Continent for political reasons, or current members of the international aristocracy. Towards the middle of the 20th century, however, the club opened its door to a few descendants of the Gilded Age's prominent families, such as members of the Rockefeller family.
E. Digby Baltzell explains in his 1971 book Philadelphia Gentlemen: The Making of a National Upper Class:
Christopher Doob wrote in his book Social Inequality and Social Stratification in U.S. Society:

Selected notable members