The Knickerbocker Club, is a gentlemen's club in New York City founded in 1871.The name "Knickerbocker", mainly thanks to writer Washington Irving, was a byword for a New York patrician, comparable to a "Boston Brahmin."ClubhouseThe 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 mansion of Josephine Schmid, a wealthy widow. It was designed by William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich, and has been designated a city landmark.HistoryThe Knick 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 The Knick's 550 members with the Union Club's 900 men, but the plan never came to fruition.The Knick was the location of a fictional murder in Victoria Thompson's 2012 whodunit Murder on Fifth Avenue: A Gaslight Mystery.
