| Return to Tennessee |
|
||||
  |
|||||
|
Rex Club |
1911 USPC | ||||
| Dunlap Street and Madison Ave. | |||||
| Memphis, TN 38103 | |||||
|
Ridgeway Country Club |
1925 USPC | ||||
| 5854 Poplar Ave | |||||
| Memphis, TN 38119 | |||||
|
Rex Club 1910 - 1932 |
|||||
|
|||||
   |
|||||
|
Ridgeway Country Club 1925 - present |
From the USPC records |
||||
 |
 |
||||
|
The Rex Club |
|||||
|
In March 1905 several young Jewish Memphians formed a new social club and named it the Rex Club. In the first few years of its existence, the Rex Club met in various locations in Memphis. It was not until November 1908 that it possessed its first clubroom (in 1908 the Rex had taken in the membership of another Jewish social club, the Memphis Club, which had been around since the 1860’s). The clubroom was at 291 Madison Avenue in leased space on the 2nd and 3rd floors of the new Jefferson Theater building. It had lounging rooms, a billiard room and a library on the 2nd floor and a ballroom on the 3rd. |
|||||
|
Below is pic of the Jeffersen Building, home of the Rex Club's first clubroom. The red arrow is the entrance to the Rex Club |
|||||
 |
|||||
|
A few months later, on January 29th 1909, the Rex Club would formally register itself as an entity with the State of Tennessee. Not long after the Rex Club moved into its rooms at the Jefferson Theater building it began making plans to construct its own club house. Ground was broken on the new club house October 12th 1909, the cornerstone of building laid January 10th 1910 and the $75,000 building formally opened on November 9th 1910 (probably around the time that the Rex poker chips were ordered). The 3 story structure at the corner of South Dunlap and Madison Avenue had a library, bowling alley, swimming pool, billiard room, gym, banquet room and ball room. |
|||||
|
|||||
| Description from 1912 | |||||
 |
|||||
|
|||||
|
The Ridgeway Country Club |
|||||
| In the late 1910’s several members of the Rex Club started looking for a place in the Memphis area to build a golf course. In 1919 this group, in the name of the Ridgeway Land Company, purchased over 100 acres outside the Memphis city limits on Poplar Pike, later 5854 Poplar Avenue. At this location was constructed a golf course and tennis courts which became the Ridgeway Country Club. On May 3rd 1923 the Rex Club voted to construct a $50,000 club house at the location. The new Ridgeway Country Club clubhouse, pictured below, opened in 1925 (at the time that the poker chips were ordered). | |||||
 |
|||||
|
The Rex Club and the Ridgeway
Country Club, although both Jewish
clubs and sharing many of the same
members, seem to have originally
operated as separate entities—one a
downtown social club, the other a
suburban country club. In 1932 the
Rex Club moved out of its building
on South Dunlap and leased space in
the Gayoso Hotel building at 139
South Main (the Rex donated its club
house building to the University of
Tennessee). After the move into the
Gayoso Hotel, which appears to have
been a bit of a downsizing of the
downtown club, the Rex began calling
itself the Rex-Ridgeway Country
Club.
|
|||||
|
|||||
