tored to titles and estates. There are those of the Year
of Grace 1918 who recall the "little white-faced Tremont." But its soul
has long since passed to t'other side of Styx.

From the day when the Union first opened its doors at No. 1 Bond
Street, it was one of the wealthiest and most exclusive of New York
clubs. The names of its organizers are names associated with the history
of the city. Ogden Hoffman, whom Mr. Fairfield describes as "a
bald-headed, dreamy-eyed man, in his day the star of the New York Bar,
both for fervid eloquence and profound learning"; Philip Hone, he of the
immortal "Diary"; Thomas P. Oakley, Samuel Jones, Beverly Robinson, W.B.
Lewrence, Charles King, E.T. Throop, and J. Depeyster Ogden. These were
some of the men whose names were appended to the provisional
constitution drawn up on June 30, 1836. C. Fenno Hoffman, "next to
Morris the sweetest song-writer America has produced," later became a
member of the association, which from its inception, was the
representative organization of the old families. Livingstons, Clasons,
Dunhams, Griswolds, Van Cortlandts, Paines, Centers, Vandervoorts,
Stuyvesants, Van Renssalaers, Irelands, Suydams, and other names of
Knickerbocker fame, filled its list of membership with a sort of
aristocratic monotony of that Knickerbockerism, which has since, to use
the words of Mr. Fairfield again, "in solemn and silent Second Avenue
(the Faubourg St. Germain of the city), earned the epithet of the
Bourbons of New York." Solemn and silent Second Avenue is solemn and
silent no more. Long since gone are the social glories of that
thoroughfare that once boldly stepped forward to challenge the supremacy
of the street that is the subject of this book. "Sic transit!" or
something of the kind would have been the probable comment of Mr.
Fairfield, for he, in common with others of his age, delighted in
flinging in a scrap of Latin or French on every possible occasion. They
were industrious investigators of the thesaurus in those days.

The first home of the Union, at No. 1 Bond Street, was in reality the
house of its secretary, John H.L. McCrackan. In 1837 a building on
Broadway near Leonard Street was secured, and the club moved into it,
there to remain for three years. Then, for seven years, it was in a
house on the other side of Broadway, and in 1847, obeying the prevalent
impulse up-townward, it shifted its quarters to the spot from which it
was later to remove to the Twent