The Lansdowne Club is a London private club, which was established in 1935. It is located at 9 Fitzmaurice Place, near Berkeley Square, Mayfair, London, England.
The Lansdowne is unusual in three ways — it was established much later than most London clubs, it was open to men and women from its very inception, and its 1930s Art Deco architecture is quite distinctive from London's other clubs.
In 1930, Westminster council decided to improve access to Berkeley Square through creating an extra road into the square. This was accomplished by demolishing half of Lansdowne House, which had stood there since the 18th century. The remaining half was given a new frontage, and a newly renovated interior, and was founded as the Lansdowne Club. The 'First Drawing Room' was reinstated in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Dining Room in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
From the outset, it was founded as a 'social, residential and athletic Club for members of social standing' and their families, and so unlike many London clubs, had no vocational, artistic, or political 'theme'. The Club's facilities include a ballroom, a terrace, a fencing salle and a basement gym including an Art Deco swimming pool. The club's internal architecture is extremely unusual and relatively modern for a London club, being almost entirely Art Deco, as opposed to the more usual Georgian/Victorian/Edwardian styles found in other clubs. The splendid Adam Room and other parts of the Club on the ground floor are Georgian though. The building underwent extensive renovation and further modernisation in 2000. The club includes a fencing salle, where the resident coach, Professor Wojciechowski, is also the official coach of the British Olympic squad.
Past and current members include Richard Dimbleby, Joachim Ribbentrop, Beryl Cook, John Bly, Loyd Grossman, Baroness Butler-Sloss, Peter Alliss, Paul Smith (fashion designer), Elizabeth Blackadder and Lord Sudeley.
CHAIRMEN OF THE CLUB
- 1935-40 Dr. F. Howard Humphies
- 1940-54 Sir Frederick Arnold-Baker
- 1954-57 Clarence Napier Bruce, 3rd Baron Aberdare
- 1957 (interim) Morys Bruce, 4th Baron Aberdare
- 1957-63 P.D. Krolik esq
- 1963-67 Major J. Fletcher
- 1967-79 C.G. Findlay esq
- 1979-97 J.R.M. Keatley esq
- 1998-2006 Mrs Michael Moore
- 2006-10 D. Whitehouse esq
- 2010- C. Powell esq
Famous quotes containing the word club:
“The barriers of conventionality have been raised so high, and so strangely cemented by long existence, that the only hope of overthrowing them exists in the union of numbers linked together by common opinion and effort ... the united watchword of thousands would strike at the foundation of the false system and annihilate it.”
—Mme. Ellen Louise Demorest 1824–1898, U.S. women’s magazine editor and woman’s club movement pioneer. Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions, p. 203 (January 1870)