Rowing and Track Athletics (extract)

The Organizati'on of the Clubs 261 the New York Athletic Club in 1877. The place which the Manhattan Club soon held in city-bred athletics is suggested vividly enough by the mere mention of the fact that Lawrence E. Meyers was one of its runners. There were plenty other men in the club in those days to make it famous - W. Byrd Page, the high jumper, Westing, Cope– land, and later Conneff, the mile champion - and its colors were soon being carried to victory against the stronge t fields in the country, and not infrequently abroad. It is through one of those ironies of fate that the club-house at Madison Avenue and Forty-fifth Street, which was looked upon as the best in the country when the Knicker– bocker Club went into it, is now the home of a twentieth-century woman's club. The rest of the metropolitan district soon fell into line. The ] ersey suburbs organized their clubs, of which the Orange Athletic Club was to become the most notable, and in Brooklyn and in many of the less sophisticated corners of Man– hattan small organizations sprang into being, of which those devoted to cross-country running, such as the Suburban Harriers, Prospect Harriers, and Westchester Harriers, were founded perhaps on the solidest and healthiest basis - the desire of vigorous young men to take vigorous exercise in the open air, untrammelled by clothe , gymnasium air, or the toy freedom of a twcn ty-lap track.