The West Side Nut Club is an organization that aims to promote civic welfare in the city of Evansville, Indiana. The slogan of the organization is “From small acorns large oaks grow.”
The club began early in the 20th century as a noontime gathering of west side businessmen who lunched at West Franklin Street to discuss the topics of the day. The original name of the informal association was "West Side Epicures." In March 1914, feeling that the name "did not express anything to the layman," the men changed the name to "The Nut Club." In the same month, they proposed to the West Side Business Association that a fall festival be held in October. As a result of this proposal, the West Side's "First Annual Fall Festival" was staged on West Franklin Street. However, it was until 1921, when the Nut Club was formally organized with a much larger membership, that the festival began its tradition as a truly annual event. This festival is one of the larger festivals in the Midwestern United States.
Membership in the club is limited to 300 members. While the organization still acts as a civic organization, it also supports scholarships and sponsors local festivals, including the annual West Side Nut Club Fall Festival.
Famous quotes containing the words west side, west, side, nut and/or club:
“His role was as the gentle teacher, the logical, compassionate, caring and articulate teacher, who inspired you so that you wanted to please him more than life itself.”
—Carol Lawrence, U.S. singer, star of West Side Story. Conversations About Bernstein, p. 172, ed. William Westbrook Burton, Oxford University Press (1995)
“God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“The most interesting thing which I heard of, in this township of Hull, was an unfailing spring, whose locality was pointed out to me on the side of a distant hill, as I was panting along the shore, though I did not visit it. Perhaps, if I should go through Rome, it would be some spring on the Capitoline Hill I should remember the longest.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Evaluation is creation: hear it, you creators! Evaluating is itself the most valuable treasure of all that we value. It is only through evaluation that value exists: and without evaluation the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear it, you creators!”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“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)