The Missouri Athletic Club (often referred to as the MAC), founded in 1903, is a private city and athletic club with two locations. The Downtown Clubhouse is in

Downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business district ...

St. Louis,

Missouri Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...

, USA and the West Clubhouse is located in the St. Louis County suburb of Town and Country. The MAC awards the annual

Hermann Trophy The Hermann Trophy is awarded annually by the Missouri Athletic Club to the United States's top men's and women's college soccer players. History In 1967, Bob Hermann, the president of the National Professional Soccer League (NPSL) and th ...

, the highest award in American

college soccer College soccer is played by teams composed of soccer players who are enrolled in colleges and universities. It is very prominent in United States, Japan, South Korea, Canada, and as well as in South Africa and the Philippines. The United Ki ...

, and the

Jack Buck Award Jack Buck Award is an award named after former St. Louis broadcaster Jack Buck and presented by the Missouri Athletic Club. This award was established in 1987 and is presented to individuals in recognition of enthusiastic and dedicated support of s ...

(in recognition of enthusiastic and dedicated support of sports in the city of St. Louis). Notable members have included President Harry S. Truman,

Charles Lindbergh Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, military officer, author, inventor, and activist. On May 20–21, 1927, Lindbergh made the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris, a distance o ...

Stan Musial Stanley Frank Musial (; born Stanislaw Franciszek Musial; November 21, 1920 – January 19, 2013), nicknamed "Stan the Man", was an American baseball outfielder and first baseman. Widely considered to be one of the greatest and most consis ...

, and

Alan Shepard Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. (November 18, 1923 – July 21, 1998) was an American astronaut, naval aviator, test pilot, and businessman. In 1961, he became the second person and the first American to travel into space and, in 1971, he beca ...

. The

American Legion The American Legion, commonly known as the Legion, is a non-profit organization of U.S. war veterans headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. It is made up of state, U.S. territory, and overseas departments, and these are in turn made up of ...

was organized there in 1919. Membership was restricted to white men until the late 1960s and men until 1988.

Facilities

Downtown Clubhouse

The Missouri Athletic Club opened its doors on Sept. 13, 1903, in the Boatman's Bank Building at 4th Street and Washington Ave. in downtown St. Louis. Founder Charles Henry Genslinger had opened clubs in New Orleans and New York. A fire destroyed the original clubhouse in March 1914. Within two weeks, a committee was appointed to design and erect a new and more elaborate clubhouse on the same location. The project was funded with bonds sold to prominent St. Louis businessmen, including August A. Busch. Designed by William B. Ittner, the present-day Downtown Clubhouse opened on March 1, 1916, with a gala celebration attended by 5,000 people. The 10-story facility was grander than the original, with contains two restaurants, a ballroom, a barber shop, numerous private meeting rooms, a reading room, a billiard parlor, a rooftop deck, more than 75 guest rooms, and full-service athletic facilities. The athletic facilities include weight training, a pro shop, whirlpools, tanning beds, saunas, trainers, pros, a masseuse, squash courts,

racquetball Racquetball is a racquet sport and a team sport played with a hollow rubber ball on an indoor or outdoor court. Joseph Sobek invented the modern sport of racquetball in 1950, adding a stringed racquet to paddleball in order to increase velo ...

courts, and

handball Handball (also known as team handball, European handball or Olympic handball) is a team sport in which two teams of seven players each (six outcourt players and a goalkeeper) pass a ball using their hands with the aim of throwing it into the ...

courts. The Missouri Athletic Club has renovated and expanded its West Clubhouse numerous times over the years. Some of the largest projects took place in 1998, 2004, and 2016.

West Clubhouse

In 1995, the Missouri Athletic Club purchased the Town and Country Racquet Club, which was built in 1975, and opened it as the MAC's West Clubhouse on June 16 of that year. The sprawling facility, with more than 178,000 square feet of space, has a 25-meter outdoor swim and dive pool, two restaurants and bars, private event spaces, eight indoor tennis courts, squash courts, racquetball courts, a basketball court and gymnasium, and a fitness center.

History

Entrepreneur Charles Henry Genslinger came to St. Louis in 1903, during the lead-up to the 1904

Louisiana Purchase Exposition The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, informally known as the St. Louis World's Fair, was an World's fair, international exposition held in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, from April 30 to December 1, 1904. Local, state, and federal funds tota ...

. Having organized amateur athletic and social clubs in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and New Orleans, he persuaded local prominent citizens to fund a similar club.The New Missouri Athletic Club: 100 Years of History, Tradition & Service (Missouri Athletic Club 2003)
Boatmen's Bancshares, Boatmen’s Bank donated a seven-story building at Fourth Street and Washington Avenue to the Club, which adopted “Missouri Athletic Club” as its name. More than 3,200 members enrolled before to Club opened in September 1903. Upon its founding, the MAC joined the Amateur Athletic Union, which allowed its members to participate in the 1904 Summer Olympics, also held in St. Louis. As part of the AAU, the MAC formed basketball, swimming, track, baseball, boxing, wrestling, bowling, and billiards teams which competed throughout the United States. In 1914, the MAC's clubhouse was destroyed by a fire that killed 30 members, guests, and staff. The club decided to construct a new building in its place, which opened in 1916. This has been the clubhouse ever since. From 1916 to 1939, the MAC was renamed the Missouri Athletic Association. In the late 1960s, the all-white, all-male club voted to allow Black men to join. In 1987, the MAC began awarding the

to the United States's top male and female

players. This is the highest player's award in college soccer, equivalent to the Heisman Trophy for college football. In 1988, the Club’s members voted overwhelmingly to admit female members. The vote came after John C. Shepherd, whose membership in the all-male MAC and the all-white Bellerive Country Club had drawn national scrutiny and criticism, withdrew from his nomination to be Attorney General Edwin Meese, Edwin Meese III's deputy at the United States Department of Justice, U.S. Justice Department. In 1995, the MAC bought the Town and Country Racquet Club in West St. Louis County. The club spent $2 million to upgrade the facilities and reopened them as the Missouri Athletic Club's West Clubhouse. The West Clubhouse was re-renovated for $8 million in 2003. By 2006, St. Louis Magazine reported, "The Missouri Athletic Club, one of the largest clubs in the country, lost cachet after admitting first women and then anybody who could pay."

Notable members

* Glendy B. Arnold, St. Louis judge * Jack Buck, St. Louis Cardinals sportscaster * Jimmy Dunn (soccer), Jimmy Dunn, American soccer player * Gwynne Evans, American Olympic athlete * Joseph Forshaw (athlete), Joseph Forshaw, Olympic marathon runner * Augustus Goessling, American Olympic athlete * Charles F. Haanel, American businessman and author * Sidney Hatch, American Olympic athlete *

, pioneer aviator * John Meyers (swimmer), John Meyers, American Olympic athlete *

, St. Louis Cardinals baseball player, Baseball Hall of Fame inductee * William R. Orthwein, William Orthwein, American Olympic athlete * Marquard Schwarz, American Olympic athlete *

, astronaut, first American in space * Harry A. Slattery, United States Deputy Secretary of the Interior (1917–18), author of the Slattery Report * Manfred Toeppen, American Olympic athlete * Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States (1945-1953) * Jackie Joyner-Kersee, American Olympic athlete *Jeffrey Wehmer - Lawyer/Dong Sucker

References

Missouri Athletic Club Hermann Trophy

External links

Missouri Athletic Club (official website)
{{Authority control Athletics clubs in the United States Buildings and structures in St. Louis Squash venues Organizations based in St. Louis