Initially Players was a 'men's only' club as was the norm then. The only group excluded (at Booth's insistence) was critics whom he called 'crickets.' He reasoned that actors got no break from the stage if they were present. In 1940, the first critic Burns Mantle became a member. Today the club is invitation only. Helen Hayes was the first woman admitted in 1989. Members have included, or do include: Stanford White, Mark Twain, Thomas Nast, Thornton Wilder, Maxwell Anderson, Philip Barry, Arthur Miller, James Cagney, Spencer Tracy, Marsha Norman, Morgan Freeman, Sidney Poitier, Liv Ullman, Carol Burnett, President Grover Cleveland, William Tecumseh Sherman, John J. Pershing, John Pierpont Morgan and Cornelius Vanderbilt. Stanford White, of the firm of McKim, Mead and White, was hired in 1885 to turn the 1845 building into a clubhouse.
McKim, Mead and White
(1879 – 1919)
was the premier American architectural firm from 1879 to1919. The firm's principals were Charles Follen McKim (b. 1847 Pennsylvania - d. St. James, New York 1909), William Rutherford Mead (b.1846 Vermont - d. Paris, France, 1928), and Stanford White (b.1853 New York City - d. New York 1906).During the first 30 years of business, the firm received and executed nearly one 1,000 commissions. The partners championed the movement to introduce classical order to America's cities by using models from Greek and Roman Antiquity and combining them with Renaissance forms. Examples of their early works are the Villard Houses (1882; now a part of the New York Plaza hotel) and the Boston Public Library (1887-95). The firm's Newport Casino (1879-80) and Isaac Bell House (1881-3) were American shingle-style designs. They designed Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus; the University Club (1900); the Pierpont Morgan house (1906; now the Pierpont Morgan Library Museum); additions to the sides of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1906); New York's Pennsylvania Station (1910; demolished and replaced); the New York Racquet Club (1916-19); and New York University University Heights campus (now Bronx Community College). At NYU Stanford White designed the arcade (Hall of Fame of Great Americans), lined with bronze busts of famous Americans, intended to serve as a monument as well as an educational tool. The firm's public and private buildings defined America's Gilded Age. 'The American Academy building in Rome, Italy, is one of the few buildings they designed outside America. Charles Follen McKim was among the founders of the Academy and was its president when the building was first conceived. Together with their contemporaries Richard Morris Hunt, Carrère & Hastings, Calvert Vaux, and James Renwick, McKim, Mead & White succeeded in establishing American architecture as important.
John Pierpont Morgan
(b. 1837 Hartford, CT – d. Rome, Italy 1913)
the son of a wealthy financier, became the embodiment of American capitalism. Morgan graduated from the English High School in Boston, MA, and attended the University of Gottingen, Germany 1854-56. He was trained as an accountant. Eventually, he joined his father's bank and later became a partner in Drexel Morgan & Company. In 1869, Morgan defeated Jay Gould in a contest for the control of the Albany and Susquehanna Railroad. He became prominent in railroad matters. Morgan reorganized the Northern Pacific Railroad and made a specialty of reorganizing bankrupt railroads. At one point, he controlled 5,000 miles of American railroads.In 1879, in cooperation with August Belmont and the Rothschilds, Morgan floated $62 million in 3-percent bonds to fund the U.S. Treasury, which had had a run on gold and had only $45 million in gold bullion left. Morgan helped move the center of international finance to New York in 1899, when he 1899 made America's first foreign loan to Mexico ($110 million) so it could refinance its debt. In 1891, Morgan arranged for the merger of Edison Electric and Thompson Houston Electric to make General Electric. Morgan also engineered the creation of United States Steel, which was capitalized at over $1 billion. An eternal optimist, Morgan helped finance a growing industrial America, in part because of his contacts in Britain. In 1895, his firm was renamed J. P. Morgan. In 1912, Congress, suspicious of Morgan's wealth and power, conducted an investigation of him, which found no illegal activities. Morgan was a yachtsman and owned the mega steam and sail yacht Corsair, which he loaned to the U.S. government during the Spanish-American War. He maintained a family estate, Dover House, on the Thames River near London, that had been owned by his father. Morgan donated money for the St. George Episcopal Church parish house. He eventually donated his art collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. President Howard Taft called Morgan 'the greatest financier America has ever produced.'
Thomas Nast
(b. 1840 Landau, Bavaria – d. Guayaquil, Ecuador, 1902)
was an important illustrator. His father, who had been a musician in the Bavarian Army, sent the family to New York when Nast was 6. His father then joined, and later deserted, the French Naval service, but took three years to reach New York.Nast was taught by the German-born history painter Theodore Kaufmann. In 1855, he began to work for Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Magazine and studied at the School of Design in the evenings. He published his political cartoons with Leslie until 1858. In 1860 Nast reported the Heenan–Sayers prizefight in England for the New York Illustrated News, and spent four months covering Garibaldi's campaign in Sicily and southern Italy for the News and the Illustrated London News. In 1862, he joined the staff of Harper's Weekly, where he worked until 1886. During the Civil War, his trenchant anti-South cartoons were widely popular. Lincoln called him 'the Union's best recruiting sergeant.' It was as a political caricaturist that he excelled, and when the Tweed Ring began to run riot, Nast cut loose. The Ring tried to buy him off, but failed. He made the dollar mark on Tweed's face famous. He invented the symbol of a blazing diamond ring to represent vulgar and showy wealth. Nast created the elephant as a symbol for the Republican Party. The Tweed ring, which was estimated to have stolen $200 million, was broken largely because of him. Nast was also virulently anti-Catholic, anti-pope and he lampooned the Irish as beasts. During Reconstruction, he ridiculed Andrew Johnson. His work became quite bitter in tone. Nast was a member of the 'silk stocking' Seventh Regiment in New York. President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him consul general at Guayaquil, Ecuador, where Nast died of yellow fever.
Stanford White
(b. 1853 NY – d. NYC 1906)
was one of America's most important architects and a partner in McKim, Mead & White, the Beaux-Arts architectural firm. White was the son of the Shakespearean scholar Richard Grant White. He began working for Henry Hobson Richardson of Gambrill & Richardson in Boston, and worked on Trinity Church there. Then he toured and studied in Europe for 18 months. On his return, he partnered with Charles Follen McKim and William Rutherford Mead. The firm was quickly one of the most successful in America. It built the original Madison Square Garden, Madison Square Presbyterian Church, the New York Herald Building, Washington Arch, and the Century Club. The latter two still stand. He built mansions on Long Island, from Southampton to Montauk, in the informal shingle style. He also built primary residences for the social elite (Vanderbilt and Astor) on Fifth Avenue.Unfortunately White may best be remembered for his death. He was murdered by Harry K. Thaw on the Madison Square roof garden because White had had an affair with Evelyn Nesbit (Thaw's wife). The affair had ended before Nesbit's marriage to Thaw, but Thaw was an insanely jealous man who beat her on their honeymoon until she revealed all the details of her former affair with Stanford White. The murder was a scandal. Thaw (a Pittsburgh railroad heir) was twice tried for murder, but in the end he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. In 1926, Thaw (d. 1947) wrote a book called 'The Traitor' in which he attempted to justify killing White. Nesbit (d. 1961) returned to Vaudeville and married, then divorced and finished her life in obscurity. White's reputation suffered for many years because of the circumstances of his death. White had a special four-car funeral train that left Grand Central Station for St. James, Long Island, where his funeral service was held in St. James Episcopal Church. Present at the services were his old partners. Arrangements had to be made to avoid the curious crowds. So hungry was the public for news of his scandalous death that a false rumor went around that a strange woman dressed in white had fainted in the church and caused a scene. His servants were reported to have wept. He was buried in the cemetery next to the church.
Cornelius Vanderbilt
(b. 1794 NYC – d. NYC 1877)
was a Knickerbocker farm-born boy who became a railroad magnate. At age 16, with a boat financed by his mother, he began to ferry freight and passengers from Staten Island to Manhattan. He purchased more boats, and when the War of 1812 broke out, he was able to prosper from his war contracts. In 1814, he obtained a government contract to supply transportation for the six forts in New York Bay for three months. The profits enabled him to buy a schooner, the Dorad. By 1817, he was worth $10,000.His nickname 'Commodore' came because he was in charge of the largest schooner on the Hudson River. In a famous 1824 Supreme Court decision, Gibbons vs. Ogden (Ogden was Vanderbilt's partner), the court overturned a navigation monopoly New York State had granted Robert Fulton (the steamship inventor) and Robert Livingston, his partner. With his new lower and legal prices, Vanderbilt gained control of shipping business along the Hudson River. He cut the fares of men going to the Gold Rush in California by building a cheap land route through Nicaragua. Afterwards he 'retired,' and took his family for a European cruise on his yacht, the North Star. He was welcomed in Europe like a conquering hero. In Russia, the Grand Duke Constantine visited him on his yacht. In Austria-controlled Italy, it was feared that his yacht was the precursor of an attack. He was shadowed by the government. He competed in the Atlantic trade with Cunard. Vanderbilt sold his steamships and entered the railroad business. He quickly became involved in the bitter stock wars over control of the rail lines. A particular enemy was Jay Gould. By 1867, he had gained control of the New York Central Railroad. In every transportation market Vanderbilt entered, he cut prices to gain market share. During the financial panic of 1873, he announced that the New York Central would pay its dividends, and he began building Grand Central Terminal (station not begun until 1903) which gave employment to thousands of men. New York City picked up part of the cost of building his track. By 1875, his New York Central Railroad controlled the route between New York and Chicago. He was never a society figure. Vanderbilt was considered crude, in part because his main interest in life was his business empire. When he was asked if the railroads should be run for the public benefit, he famously said, 'The public be damned.' At his death, he left a fortune of $100 million.
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