Athleticism and the New Woman: Lawn Tennis at the Staten Island Ladies' Club.

Founded in 1877 as an offshoot of the Staten Island Cricket and Baseball Club, the Staten Island Ladies' Club was one of the largest women's sporting organizations in Gilded Age America and the first to embrace lawn tennis. This case study of the ladies' club from its establishment until the early 1920s argues that the material culture of lawn tennis empowered white upper-class women in measurable ways. Clubhouse architecture, female sportswear, and tennis racquets increased their freedom of movement, eroded social barriers to their use of public and semiprivate space, and created opportunities for mixed-gender socialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]