Land on which the FMTC tennis courts where located bought by Emily Butler in 1911 and leased back for $1 per year

The lease stipulated that no liquor be be sold on the premises and that various repairs be made to the tennis courts and backstops.

In 1913 the Club reorganized completely, with 142 “charter members.” Membership was limited to twenty persons per tennis court, and any individual over sixteen years old was eligible.

After the 1913 reorganization, women were no longer elected to the Board of Governors, and they did not have a direct voice in managing the Club again until the 1970s.

The new Club constitution stated that “the objects for which this club is formed are to provide and maintain proper grounds and facilities for playing the game of tennis, the development of social life among its members, their physical improvement and enjoyment, the accommodation and entertainment of the members and guests of the Club, and the promotion of the welfare of the neighborhood.”

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

The “war to end all wars” marked a clear dividing line in the tempo and style of Scarsdale life. A postwar building boom redrew the map of the community while land prices climbed sharply.

Automobiles began to displace carriages on the town’s dirt roads, although cars were still banned from Emily Butler’s 500-acre Fox Meadow estate. Visitors were free to stroll, ride horses, or drive carriages on her property, but cars—except those of house-guests—were prohibited on the estate grounds.

Even the Fox Meadow estate was shrinking, however, for Miss Butler began to sell and give away bits and pieces of her land. All around the Fox Meadow Tennis Club the sounds of construction could be heard, as roads, schools, and houses were built.

Miss Butler sold twenty-five acres between the Club and the Post Road to the Village for Scarsdale’s first public high school, which opened in 1919, and for the recreation area now known as Butler Field. The limited-access Bronx River Parkway—the first road of its kind in the world—opened to traffic in 1924, part of it on land donated by Emily Butler.

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

By 1916 a joint committee with members from both Fox Meadow Tennis Club and the Town Club had been formed to “prepare a financial plan for procuring a site for the Club.”

Within a year the Fox Meadow Board of Governors noted that the Butlers seemed willing to sell the Club three or four acres at Fox Meadow for approximately $4,000 an acre.

World War I interrupted efforts to buy a permanent home and reorganize the Club. Eleven members’ names were shifted to an Inactive Military List at no dues for the duration of the war.

In 1917 the Club held a tournament to benefit the Scarsdale Red Cross and sent off a check for $300 from the proceeds.

There do not seem to have been regular tournaments during this period for, in 1919, Rollin Kirby suggested that preparations be made for holding tournaments. Club President Frank Ayres favored junior tournaments and advocated allowing high school students to have limited use of the Club’s courts.

Before there was a clubhouse in which to store records, FMTC apparently did not keep a running list of tournament winners. Efforts to assemble a list have produced some discrepancies. Certain names, however, recur in newspaper accounts.

On July 8, 1922, the Scarsdale Inquirer, reporting on the Fox Meadow Men’s Singles, said that “the most noteworthy event…was the defeat of Rev. Alan R. Chalmers, who was on his way to being the Club’s perpetual and universal champion.” Chalmers was rector of St. James the Less and father of member Ruth Chalmers.

The year the reverend lost his title, Fox Meadow Tennis Club at last was able to buy itself a permanent home.

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

J. Nelson Shreve elected FMTC President (1914-1915); articles of incorporation filed, a portable clubhouse installed, purchase of Wayside Cottage considered

The period after 1913 appears to have been financially precarious, as neighboring clubs built and upgraded their facilities. The Scarsdale Golf Club built tennis courts in 1911, and in 1912 the County Tennis Club in Hartsdale constructed a clubhouse. Both events apparently lured some members and potential members from Fox Meadow.

The Club’s treasurer wrote endless letters dunning people for lapsed dues and asking payment for such items as tennis balls. (New balls were forty cents each, used balls twenty-five cents.) The Club’s treasury did not cover all costs, as is indicated by the following letter from Herbert B. Shronk concerning a $45 bill for trophies: “As the Club now has in its treasury only about $10, it will be necessary to make up the sum by subscription. I understand the necessary funds were pledged by Messrs. Ayres, Aspinwall, you [J. Nelson Shreve], and myself. …”

To offset a deficit in 1913, the Club raised dues for new members from $5 to $7.50 for individuals, and from $10 to $15 for families. [2014 Dues Notice] The increase was apparently too stiff, for dues were reduced in 1917.

The earliest surviving membership list, dated 1914, showed several names from the formative years, including Alex Crane, Hopeton Atterbury, and Miss E. Popham. New members included Frank Ayres, whose family would play an important role during the Club’s middle decades. Fox Meadow had forty-nine family members in 1915, with an additional forty-five individual members.

Groundskeeper Ira Jones worked a six-day week during the tennis season for $60 a month. In season, deliveries of ice and water arrived regularly at the Club, which as yet had no building other than a storage shed donated in 1902 by Hopeton Atterbury.

Hours available for play must have been extended around 1914, for the organist and musical director of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin wrote the following letter: “I desire to withdraw from the Fox Meadow Tennis Club as I do not approve of the Club courts’ being open on Sundays during the hours of Public Worship. Yours very truly, Walter Fleming.”

There were four committees in 1915: an Admissions Committee chaired by Vera Quaid Ayres, a Grounds Committee chaired by Hugh White, a Tournament Committee chaired by Pliny Williamson, and a House Committee chaired by Mrs. John Carstensen.

The Club took three major steps in 1915. It filed articles of incorporation, installed a portable clubhouse for $400, and launched a major drive to raise funds to buy a permanent home. [See also Letter to Membership seeking input on future development of the club] None of these ventures went off smoothly. In later years members of the Board of Governors referred to the Club as a non-incorporated entity, apparently because records were lost or memories faded.

During the same year, the board apparently hoped to buy Wayside Cottage and its adjoining land. Unfortunately, a gap of more than a year in the Club’s minutes makes it impossible to reconstruct exactly what transpired. Many decisions involving Fox Meadow Tennis Club were made at informal lunches in Manhattan clubs, so no official notes were taken.

The third step taken in 1915 was that Frederick L. Collins proposed a plan for “raising the remaining subscriptions for the Fox Meadow Club.” He called for a notice stating “that it has become necessary to give up the present club and to form a new one to be called the Fox Meadow Club, which will purchase and operate the Wayside Cottage property; that almost all the funds necessary for this purpose have already been subscribed.”

At least $4,000 had been pledged, but for unexplained reasons the effort to buy Wayside failed. Emily Butler ultimately gave the property to the Village for use by the Scarsdale Woman’s Club.

The little clubhouse bought in 1915 was another failure. In 1916 it was sold at a loss, evidently because the Butlers objected to the structure and insisted upon its removal. The Inquirer reported, “The cozy little weatherworn clubhouse of the Fox Meadow Tennis Club has been purchased by the Italian settlement workers at the Village, and it will be removed shortly to a site near Brook Street for use as a community house for the Italians of that vicinity.”

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