Clipping:A social club outgrowth of the old Athletics

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Date Sunday, April 11, 1886
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Any list of the social clubs of Philadelphia would be very incomplete that did not include the Liberal Club, the small but festive organization that occupies the cozy white marble and brick front building on the east side of Broad street, north of Chestnut, adjoining Finelli’s. this club, which has a member of less than a hundred, contains possibly more of those elements of good fellowship and good living and spirited enjoyableness generally associated in the popular mind with club life than any of the organizations that are larger and more often heard of. The Liberal Club is quiet, almost secluded; and is averse to noise and notoriety. ... As the Philadelphia Club represents wealth and family; the Social Art society and culture; the Union League the great business and financial interests and the Republican party; the University, the scholars; the Pennsylvania, the bright lawyers and mug-wumps; the Commonwealth, the swallow-tail Democracy; and the Americus, the ward-working element of the same and the sporting fraternity generally, so the Liberal Club represents distinctively good-fellowship... ... Its history is curious. Just as the Philadelphia Club sprang from a whist party, the Social Art from a reading club and the Americus to a great extent from the old Fire Department, so this unconventional and convivial organization had its origin in a base ball club. It grew originally out of the old Athletic Base Ball Club, when that was a purely amateur organization in the palmy early days of the great American game, when each man’s runs and base hits and errors were not counted up and skillfully arranged beforehand in the manager’s office. As soon as base ball began to deteriorate and before it became professional some of the leading spirits and supporters of the Athletic Club, notably Edwin F. Poulterer, now the Liberal Club president; George Thompson, its vice president; William Warnock, the treasurer; Charles J. Cragin, one of the Board of Directors; Stephen Des Granges and a number of others withdrew, and, taking rooms in a building on Chestnut street, formed themselves into a little social club, to which a few years afterwards they gave the present name.

Source Philadelphia Times
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Submitted by Richard Hershberger
Origin Initial Hershberger Clippings

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