History
It was founded in 1854 with help from Rotch Star Wistar a University of Pennsylvania trained attorney. English expatriates helped train the team which played in Camden, New Jersey. New Jersey allowed sports on Sundays. Rotch Wistar founded the corporation which raised the funds to establish a home ground.U.S. cricketer and baseball Hall of Famer George Wright became the cricket professional of PCC in 1886 for one year.In the 1890s George Patterson, regarded as the best batsmen in America, put Philadelphia cricket on the map with his consistently high batting scores. He captained the first Gentleman of Philadelphia tour to tour England in 1884. After forty years of Americans playing cricket,the PCC became one of the founding members of the United States Tennis Association.Source: David Sentance, Cricket in America 1710–2000 (McFarland:N.Carolina 2006) The United States Tennis Association (USTA), hosting the women's singles championship (today the U.S. Open) for many years, and its original golf course was the site of two U.S. Open golf championships.
The Philadelphia Cricket Club has two locations: one 40°03′52″N 75°12′31″W / 40.06444°N 75.20861°W / 40.06444; -75.20861 in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia where the main offices are located, along with the tennis and squash facilities and the eight-lane, twenty-five meter swimming pool. There is a short, nine-hole golf course there as well. The second location 40°06′31″N 75°13′25″W / 40.10861°N 75.22361°W / 40.10861; -75.22361 is ten minutes away in Whitemarsh Township, near Flourtown, which holds two 18-hole golf courses.
Originally, the cricket team did not own any grounds and played in Camden, New Jersey.Source: David Sentance. This changed in 1883, when grounds and a clubhouse were donated by Henry H. Houston. The team was disbanded in 1924 as the club's other sports became more prevalent, but cricket was revived in 1998.
Throughout this time, swimming, golf, tennis, and squash have also thrived at the country club. It is highly dedicated to the growth of juniors in these sports. In 2006, for example, the junior swimming team placed fourth at the Country Club Swimming Association of Greater Philadelphia's League Championships led by the William Penn Charter's high school swimming coach Kevin Berkoff.
Read more about this topic: Philadelphia Cricket Club
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“I feel as tall as you.”
—Ellis Meredith, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 14, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)