The Detroit Athletic Club (often referred to as the DAC), is a private social club and athletic club located in the heart of Detroit's theater, sports, and entertainment district. It is located across the street from Detroit's historic Music Hall. The clubhouse was designed by Albert Kahn and inspired by Rome's Palazzo Farnese. It maintains reciprocal agreements for their members at other private clubs worldwide. It contains full-service athletic facilities, a pools, restaurants, ballrooms, and guest rooms. Members include businessmen of all types as well as professional athletes. Ty Cobb is among the athletes to have been a member of the DAC. The building is visible beyond center field from Comerica Park.
Over the years, the Detroit Athletic Club has provided financial assistance and training opportunities for a number of amateur athletes preparing for the Olympic Games.
At the 1956 U.S. Olympic Team Trials, springboard divers Jeanne Stunyo (a native of Gary, Indiana) and Mackenzie High School graduate Barbara Gilders-Dudeck were sponsored by the DAC. Stunyo and Gilders-Dudeck qualified for the Summer Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia. At the Games, Jeanne Stunyo won the springboard diving silver medal, and Barbara Gilders-Dudeck finished in fourth place - less than one point from a bronze medal.
Famous quotes containing the words athletic and/or club:
“The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon.”
—Douglas Jerrold (1803–1857)
“Of course we women gossip on occasion. But our appetite for it is not as avid as a man’s. It is in the boys’ gyms, the college fraternity houses, the club locker rooms, the paneled offices of business that gossip reaches its luxuriant flower.”
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–1978)