The Los Angeles Tennis Club, Modern Screen, 1931-32.
Long a favorite activity of high society, tennis has been a way to fashionably exercise and enjoy time with friends for centuries. Los Angeles “in crowd” flocked to tennis, especially in the 1920s when it began to rise in popularity around the world. Seeking to become a world class home for the game, the Los Angeles Tennis Club constructed an elegant Spanish Revival building and courts at its current 5851 Clinton Street location in 1920. Designed by preeminent Southern California architect Sumner Hunt, the refined location has hosted top athletes and motion picture stars for over 97 years.
The “popular” club itself seems to have begun in 1889, per listings in the Los Angeles Times and Herald, with its first courts opening Friday, September 20, 1889 at Ninth and Pearl Streets, per the September 22, 1889 Los Angeles Times. It hosted men’s singles and doubles, women’s singles, and even mixed doubles in its first tournament. While small, the club hosted teas, tournaments, and events through 1897, when all mention of it in the newspaper disappears until showing up again in 1919, when the Red Bluff Daily News reported that the newly formed club intended to build a $25,000 clubhouse with 20 courts, after talking about it for years.
Hollywood at Play, by Donovan Brandt, Mary Mallory and Stephen X. Sylvester is now on sale.
Nigel de Brulier, courtesy of Mary Mallory.
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