Tennis, Anyone?

Crowds watch a match at the Newport Casino in 1890. Newport Casino patrons in 1891. Photo courtesy of the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

In1879, James Gordon Bennett Jr. bet his friend, Captain Henry Augustus Candy, that he would not ride his polo horse across the porch of the Newport Reading Room — the notoriously stuffy social club where both were guests. Candy raised the bet, riding his horse not only across the porch, but through the building and right out the back door, disturbing members along the way. Their guest privileges revoked, Bennett resolved to open his own social club, and the Newport Casino was born.

At least, that’s the story that’s been passed down through the years, likely with a wink and a nod from Bennett himself. In reality, the businessman was already in talks with architectural firm McKim, Mead and White about constructing a new social club when he purchased the parcel on Bellevue Avenue in 1879. Construction was completed in just six months, and the following year, the Newport Casino opened to the public. Far from the modern concept of a casino as a gambling institution, the Newport Casino was a social venue that included both public outdoor spaces and a private club.

“They would have concerts, horse shows, flower shows, once the automobile entered, they had car shows. And then there was this little thing of a new sport that had recently hopped over the pond called lawn tennis,” says Nicole Markham, curator of collections for the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

In 1881, the newly formed United States National Lawn Tennis Association hosted its first men’s singles championship on the casino lawn. The event would later move to Forest Hills, New York (a more accessible venue for the scores of New Yorkers who came to watch and participate), but for its first thirty-four years, the casino played host to what would eventually become the U.S. Open. On other days, the casino hosted mixed doubles club play, with men and women playing together. White fabrics such as linen and wool hid perspiration, and women often played in their corsets and long skirts.

The Horseshoe Piazza as it looked in the early years. Newport Casino patrons in 1891. Photo courtesy of the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

“We’ve always had tennis tournaments on this site,” Markham says. “Prior to COVID, we would always say that we were the oldest continuously used grass courts in the world.”

In addition to tennis, the club held balls, concerts and social events in the Casino Theatre, later hosting big names like Ray Charles and Charlton Heston. During the Gilded Age, the seats of the theater could be removed for social events, and the public, for a small fee, could purchase tickets to stand in the balcony and observe the elite partying down below.

With the onset of the Great Depression and World War II, the club began to decline in popularity. After a fire in the north wing in the early 1950s, the iconic Bellevue Avenue facade was slated to be torn down and replaced with a strip mall. Jimmy Van Alen, a national tennis champion and member of the Newport Casino, petitioned the United States Lawn Tennis Association to open a hall of fame and tennis museum in the location. The Tennis Hall of Fame opened in 1954, adding the “International” designation in 1975.

Today, the Hall of Fame records more than 140 years of tennis history while preserving the original Newport Casino site. It also remains an active tennis venue. The property hosts the Infosys Hall of Fame Open in the summer, as well as regular matches for the more than 600 members in its associated tennis club.

Newport Casino patrons in 1891. Photo courtesy of the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

OLD HOMETOWNE TENNIS AND ATHLETIC CLUB

Tennis wasn’t just for the Astors and Vanderbilts. In 1927, leaders associated with Newport’s four African heritage churches, the Newport NAACP and other civic associations came together to establish the Old Hometowne Tennis and Athletic Club. The club hosted tournaments on regulation-size courts in the backyard of Mt. Olivet Baptist Church on Thames Street. Among the founders was Cromwell Payne West, a Philadelphia transplant who operated a successful pharmacy on the corner of Caleb Earl Street and Broadway. “The origins of the Old Hometowne Tennis Club and many other recreational activities that dominated the African heritage Newport landscape of the era arose at a time when African Americans were active inhabitants of a new type of urban setting — the resort community,” Stokes says. “People, and their social and recreational activities, who came from all over the country and in some cases, the world, were all converging upon Gilded Age Newport.” 

“The origins of the Old Hometowne tennis club and many other recreational activities that dominated the African heritage Newport landscape of the era arose at a time when African Americans were active inhabitants of a new type of urban setting — the resort community.” —Keith Stokes