Effort to gain control over the Tennis Realty Corporation

Aerial view of FMTC in 1937. At the left stands the windmill in Crane Meadow, just below Church Lane. The first paddle court can be seen at the curve of the driveway.
Aerial view of FMTC in 1937. At the left stands the windmill in Crane Meadow, just below Church Lane. The first paddle court can be seen at the curve of the driveway.

Before Fox Meadow could make any substantial changes—buy or sell property, expand the clubhouse—it first had to gain operating control of the old Tennis Realty Corporation, which owned the Club’s grounds and facilities. This wearisome task took more than a decade.

By the early 1930s, so many former members (and therefore stockholders) had resigned, moved, or died that Club members owned a shrinking percentage of the Realty Corporation’s stock. It had become impossible to assemble a quorum for the annual meeting of the Realty Corporation, a situation that left its directors in a legally untenable situation.

In 1937, during John Van Norden’s presidency, the Club board began an all-out effort to collect enough stock through donation, purchase, or affidavits stating that the shares were lost, to gain control of the Realty Corporation and then liquidate it. After years of persistent effort, the Realty Corporation was dissolved in 1941. Fox Meadow Tennis Club assumed its property and its mortgages. Since then the management of the Club has rested solely with the Board of Governors.

Source: Diana Reische, Fox Meadow Tennis Club – The First Hundred Years, 1983