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The Lotos Club
the celebrated Academy of Music. The Club was incorporated on April 29, 1870.
President Van Buren died on October 5. A.Oakey Hall, the Tammany Hall-connected Mayor of New York, succeeded him. President Hall instituted the Lotos Saturday Nights, modeled on the Saturday dinners of the Garrick Club in London, and they were long a Lotos Club feature.
Before 1870 was out, the Club passed a resolution to accept works of art from artists as their initiation fees, a rule in e ect ever since. By the end of that rst year, the Club had 172 members. The Club admitted only men until its Constitution was amended in 1977 to admit women.
Very early, the Club laid great emphasis on arranging dinners for distinguished guests. Samuel J. Tilden, who almost became President of the United States in 1876, was an early dinner guest. On another evening, composer Johann Strauss played “The Blue Danube Waltz.” And Henry M. Stanley of the New York Herald, back from nding Dr. Livingstone in Africa, was received as a hero. The Lotos Club became famous as an uno cial host of New York City.
Quickly the Club gathered a roll of notable members including Mark Twain, editor Whitelaw Reid, author and Abraham Lincoln’s secretary
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