In Treasure Chess, Bruce Pandolfini notes that the probable first chess club in the US supposedly existed in NYC in the City Hotel on lower Broadway near Trinity Church in 1801. Can anyone expand on that scant information?
He got it from a book “How to learn to play the game of chess: a primer of the game” edited by Henry Chadwick
See google books.
But It all started in San Francisco where the first chess club in the United States was founded in the early 1850’s. Originally meeting in a library,
fofv.com/page.php?id=20
Some say :The oldest chess club in the U.S. is the Manhattan Chess Club, founded in 1877
logicalchess.com/info/trivia/c.html
I’ll check out the Chadwick book. But where did Chadwick get his information?
Here is what Chadwick wrote giving no source for his information.
The first regular chess club in America, however, was that which held its winter evening meetings in the old City Hotel in Broadway, New York, near Trinity Church, and this old club was in active operation in 1801. Before this, however, a noted chess player named Louis Rou, had made the game known in New York, and during the last quarter of the eighteenth century chess gradually but surely came into vogue as a recreation for litterateurs and men of studious habits. But from the time of the Revolution up to 1826, chess may be said to have been a game known only to a choice few in America.
More on Rou:
[i]Rev. Louis Rou, a Huguenot minister in New York City, was also documented as playing
chess around 1734. Since Franklin’s “acquaintance” with whom he played around 1733 was
not named, Franklin and Rou are apparently the first chess players in the future United
States who can be definitely identified by name. (2)…
Thanks to this discovery, it seems that Rev. Rou now has replaced Franklin with the
distinction of having authored the first American publication on chess. Rev. Rou’s poem,
which like Franklin’s later writing also had a moralistic theme centered on chess, named
eight other early players of the game in the New York coffeehouse where Rev. Rou played
chess. The Rou poem was apparently written around 1735, so Franklin and Rou retain the
distinction of being the two earliest-named players in the future United States.
[/i]
I have not been able to come up with a copy of Rou’s poem which names other coffee house chess players in NYC. Can anyone find a translation of the poem from Latin to English?
Are you looking for English speaking coffee house chess clubs?
First mention of chess in America, in a history of Dutch settlers;1641
Saint Augustine Florida is the oldest European city in the United States. Juan Menendez de Aviles established the first settlement on August 28, 1565 almost half a century before the first English settlers landed at Jamestown. St. Augustine grew to become the Spanish center of power in North America for almost 200 years. The Spanish were playing chess 200 years before the English.
Its membership is not what it used to be though.
I took your question as a challenge, and while I did not find the poem, I think I know where to look: Chess Life, December 2003.
This according to a PDF by John McCrary: CHESS AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN-HIS PIONEERING CONTRIBUTIONS
benfranklin300.org/_etc_pdf/ … cCrary.pdf
Relevant section:
However, in 2003 it was determined that the “Morals of Chess” was not the first American
publication on chess after all. David Shields, Professor of English at the Citadel, discovered
that Rev. Lewis Rou, (referenced above as one of the first American players) published a
poem about New York chess players in 1744. This long-lost publication was discovered in
the Library of Edinburgh in Scotland. Shields informed Professor Gilbert Gigliotti,
Professor and Chairman of the Department of English at Central Connecticut University,
and he contacted this author. The discovery was then published in Chess Life, the magazine
of the US Chess Federation*.
- McCrary, John with Gigliotti, Gilbert. “ Chess History, Episode Eleven.” Article in Chess
Life, December 2003 issue, p. 32.
The downfall came after women were allowed to join the club
Thanks! Does anyone have a copy of the poem from that issue to post here or send to me via email at blafferty1@verizon.net