191 Clyde Street, Brookline
Boston Brahmins were eager to have a private club for racing horses and associated activities, yet free of the gambling which took place at public racetracks and which they found repulsive. So, in 1882, they founded The Country Club on 100 acres of land. Brookline, with its then-open countryside and proximity (in terms of travel by horse coach) to their homes in Boston, was an ideal location.
Horse-related activities dominated The Country Club for only a brief period. By the early 1900s, it was a multipurpose establishment dedicated to a variety of sporting endeavors, but still ones seen as “rural”—such as lawn tennis. Indeed, by this time what had been the racetrack was part of the golf course.
The Country Club, the first such establishment in the United States, both reflected and helped to define what it meant to be a member of Boston’s upper-class establishment. And, by inspiring the founding of other country clubs across the United States, it helped to produce the suburban lifestyle of the affluent and the associated landscape on a national scale. Long a bastion of WASP male privilege, The Country Club reportedly did not admit Jews until the 1970s, women (as full members) until 1989, and its first African American member until the following year.
Today, The Country Club sits on 236 acres of land. The privatized property is Brookline’s largest “green” space. Its membership of approximately 1300 individuals is secret, but it includes some of the Boston area’s most powerful individuals. Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots football team (who lives in an adjacent estate), is reportedly a member. And, until moving to Florida in 2020, so, too, were team quarterback Tom Brady and supermodel Giselle Bundchen, his spouse.
Getting there:
A MBTA bus, which runs between Forest Hill Station (Orange Line) and Reservoir Station (Green Line, D Branch), stops near the club’s entrance.
To learn more:
Richard J. Moss, Golf and the American Country Club, Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001.
Michael Rawson, Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.