The exclusion of Jews from a fashionable country club was revealed in a suit brought by Harold Ealster, promotor of an exclusive country club, which was to occupy part of the estate of the late William Rockefeller at Tarryton.
This club was to be known as Rockwood Hall, Inc. and had originally the financial assistance of several wealthy Jews as well as non Jews. Now the promotor has brought suit against the Board of Governors of the club, asking for a receivership, stating that one of the reasons which has caused differences of opinion to arise is the effort of the Board of Governors to exclude those Jews who helped to form the club.
Mr. Bolster charges that Frank H. Hitchcock, former Postmaster General, who has been in charge of the organization of the country club in recent months, and has arranged for the purchase of the Rockefeller property from the executors, has refused to issue life memberships in Rockwood Hall to several persons who have taken a financial interest in the enterprise “because the members of the Board of Governors will not tolerate any one of Jewish extraction as a member of Rockwood Hall.” Mr. Bolster asserts that this “is untrue, and is an excuse devised by said Frank H. Hitchcock for the purpose of depriving the members of the Tarrytown Realty Syndicate, Inc., Christian as well as Jewish, of the right to participate in the profits of the enterprise.”
The case came before Supreme Court Justice McGoldrick, who denied the application on the ground that sufficient reason for the appointment of a receiver and the granting of an injunction had not been shown in the papers.
Among the members of the Board of Governors of the club are Vincent Astor, Robert W. Chambers, Bainbridge Colby, Edward L. Doheny, T. Coleman duPont, Charles Dana Gibson, Frank A. Munsey and Melville E. Stone.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
