The Crescent Athletic Club was an athletic club in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

. Founded by a group of

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

alumni in 1884 as an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

club, it later expanded to include other sports, including

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

lacrosse Lacrosse is a team sport played with a lacrosse stick and a lacrosse ball. It is the oldest organized sport in North America, with its origins with the indigenous people of North America as early as the 12th century. The game was extensively ...

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...

and

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

. The club had over 1,500 members in the early 20th century. The club's membership declined in the 20th century, and it filed for bankruptcy in 1939. The club also became an important social institution in the

Bay Ridge Bay Ridge is a neighborhood in the southwest corner of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It is bounded by Sunset Park to the north, Dyker Heights to the east, the Narrows and the Belt Parkway to the west, and Fort Hamilton Army Base and ...

section of Brooklyn, hosting plays, dinners, dances, lectures, concerts, and minstrel shows. The club fielded a football team (known as the Brooklyn Crescents) that competed with the major collegiate and non-collegiate football teams in the late 19th century, including

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine ...

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

, Penn, and the

Orange Athletic Club The Orange Tornadoes and Newark Tornadoes were two manifestations of a long-lived professional American football franchise that existed in some form from 1887 to 1941 and from 1958 to 1970, having played in the American Amateur Football Union from ...

. The team won

American Football Union The American Football Union (AFU) was a coalition of amateur, semi-professional, and collegiate club football teams that operated from 1886 to 1895 in the New York metropolitan area. Although the minor league was practically inconsequential and ob ...

championships five consecutive years from 1888 to 1892. The Crescents played their football games at various locations including Washington Park and

Eastern Park Eastern Park was a baseball park in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York in the 1890s. It was bounded by Eastern Parkway—later renamed Pitkin Avenue when Eastern Parkway was diverted—to the north (home plate); the Long Isla ...

. The club also fielded a strong baseball club, also known as the Crescents. The club had an ice hockey team, the

Brooklyn Crescents The Brooklyn Crescents, affiliated with the Crescent Athletic Club, were an American amateur ice hockey team from Brooklyn in New York City. History The Brooklyn Crescents played in the American Amateur Hockey League in 1896–97 (the inaugural s ...

, in the

American Amateur Hockey League The American Amateur Hockey League was an amateur ice hockey league in the United States. The league was founded in 1896, and was based in New York City and New Jersey, until 1914, when the Boston AA joined the league. In the 1900–01 season a te ...

in 1896–97 and between 1899–1917. The

Crescent Athletic Club House The Crescent Athletic Club House is a building at 129 Pierrepont Street at the corner of Clinton Street in Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn, New York City. Designed by prominent Brooklyn-based architect Frank Freeman and completed in 1906, the buildi ...

, completed in Brooklyn Heights in 1906, is now known as The Bosworth Building of Saint Ann's School. The club's papers reside with the Brooklyn Historical Society.

References

{{Crescent Athletic Club football navbox American football teams in New York City Athletics clubs in the United States Sports in Brooklyn