1926 Membership Certificate - Lake Shore Athletic Club (850 N Lake Shore Drive) in Decatur, Illinois For Sale

Authentic, red serial numbered xxxx membership certificate to the Lake Shore Athletic Club located at 850 N. Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. Document has a dollar-bill green border with a pinwheel at bottom center and is hand-signed by the Asst. Secretary and the President. Top center of the document contains a graphic of a discus thrower just before releasing his throw.
The early 20th century construction boom spawned athletic clubs that were not merely sweatshops for the physically inclined. This era's athletic clubs bragged of cigar lounges and stuffed chairs. They were elegant and elaborate palaces tied to social aspirations, with one architect vying to out-perform the other, as evidenced by the spectacular Medinah Athletic Club and the Chicago Athletic Association, located respectively on North and South Michigan Avenue.
The 19-story Lake Shore Athletic Club building sits on a prominent corner on Chestnut Street along Lake Michigan and south of Mies van der Rohe's acclaimed steel and glass prismed Lake Shore Drive Towers, located at 860 and 880 N. Lake Shore Drive respectively. Chicago architect Jarvis Hunt designed the Athletic Club's beaux-arts structure in the mid-xxxx's and featured a marble-clad lobby with a grand staircase, ballroom, significant murals, running track, pistol range and swimming pool where Olympic gold medalist and Tarzan movie star Johnny Weissmuller trained. The coup-de-gras was a fifth floor showstopping dining room with shiny, silver-plated bronze light fixtures.
Sadly all good things must come to an end. Lake Shore Athletic Club never got a designated Chicago landmark status, although it did appear in the Chicago Historic Resources Survey. Northwestern University purchased the Lake Shore Athletic Club building in the late xxxx's for use as a residence hall, but closed the building in xxxx and sold to a developer who is currently offering luxury rental apartments after a costly gut rehab conversion.
The Chicago Athletic Club (12 S. Michigan Ave.) recently shared the same fate, except that it became a luxury boutique hotel. And the spectacular Medinah Athletic Club (505 N. Michigan Ave.) got swallowed by the Intercontinental Hotel many years ago.
Membership certificate is in Excellent condition and measures 7 5/8 X 11 7/8 inches.