Newport Reading Room

The Newport Reading Room was founded in 1854 by William Shepard Wetmore, a wealthy China trade merchant, and several other notable Newporters, including Yankee traders and Southern planters who summered in Newport.Newport Reading Room: Sesquicentennial History, 2003 (Newport: NRR, 2003), pp. 12-27 Several of the managing stock holders were full-time Rhode Island residents while others were summer residents.[https://books.google.com/books?id=kN0iAAAAMAAJ Cleveland Armory, The last resorts (Greenwood Press, 1973)p. 247] Supposedly, the Newport Casino, a rival club nearby on Bellevue Avenue was started by a former Reading Room member, James Gordon Bennett, Jr., as described:

The Newport Reading Room incident concerns Bennett and one of his polo buddies, Captain Candy, better known as "Sugar Candy." A wager was concocted whereby Sugar Candy would mount his polo pony and ride up the short flight of stairs into the exclusive club located on Bellevue Avenue. Bennett was reprimanded, Sugar Candy supposedly shown the door for the last time. As the story goes (never proven), Bennett started the Newport Casino in response.[http://www.redwoodlibrary.org/notables/bennett.htm redwood library website link to story] (accessed Oct. 8, 2009)[https://web.archive.org/web/20121025121237/http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1081563/index.htm Sports Illustrated, Sept. 2, 1968] (accessed Oct. 8, 2009)

The Reading Room has a long history of hosting charitable fundraisers, for example the New York Times reported on the club's 1912 baseball game against the U.S. Navy officers of the Atlantic Fleet to raise funds for Newport Hospital.BASEBALL AT NEWPORT.; Naval Officers to Play Reading Room Team for Charity. The New York Times. August 14, 1913, Thursday Page 9 [https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B04E3DD113CE633A25757C1A96E9C946296D6CF] The Reading Room was one of the centers of Newport social life with other traditional institutions such as the Redwood Library, Newport Country Club, Trinity Church, Bailey's Beach, New York Yacht Club summer clubhouse and the Newport Casino"NEWPORT'S WINTER SOCIETY.; A RECEPTION AT THE READING ROOM -- PRIVATE ENTERTAINMENTS," New York Times, January 12, 1890, pg. 12 [https://www.nytimes.com/1890/01/12/archives/newports-winter-society-a-reception-at-the-reading-room-private.html]

There are several categories of membership that include Stockholders, those who are eligible to vote; annual subscribers, resident and non-resident; and junior members.A complete list of all stockholder members for the first 150 years, from 1853 to 2003, is in Newport Reading Room: Sesquicentennial History, 2003 (Newport: NRR, 2003), pp. 181-197.

• Henry H. Anderson, Jr.
• Vincent Astor
• George F. Baker
• James Gordon Bennett, Jr.
• John Nicholas Brown
• Rear Admiral Henry E. Eccles
• Elbridge T. Gerry
• Robert Goelet Sr.
• John N. A. Griswold
• Theodore Havemeyer
• Vice Admiral John T. Hayward
• Thomas Wentworth Higginson
• Arthur Curtiss James
• George Noble Jones
• William Beach Lawrence
• Lewis Cass Ledyard
• Pierre Lorillard
• Charles May Oelrichs
• Duncan Pell
• Claiborne Pell
• Frederick H. Prince
• Cornelius Vanderbilt II
• Harold S. Vanderbilt
• William Shepard Wetmore
• Rear Admiral J.C. Wylie

• List of American gentlemen's clubs
• Newport Casino
• Newport Country Club

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https://www.golocalprov.com/news/An-Ugly-Anti-Semitic-Episode-in-Newport-When-a-Club-Wanted-Throw-Out-a-Jewi

• [https://books.google.com/books?id=zOAKAAAAYAAJ&dq=newport+reading+room&pg=RA1-PA512 RI Supreme Court Case, In re Newport Reading Room et al., 21 RI 440 (1899)]

{{Newport, Rhode Island}}

Category:1854 establishments in Rhode Island

Category:Clubs and societies in the United States

Category:Gentlemen's clubs in the United States

Category:Organizations established in 1854