MacDowell Clubs

[3]: 17  The MacDowell Club of Canton was founded in 1908;[5] its members donated funds for construction of the Gail Watson Cable Recital Hall.

A typical small club gathering would feature a privately held meeting with invited talks, piano and vocal solos and duets of local performers.

[12] Bigger clubs were able to organize academic lectures, concerts, recitals (including Marian MacDowell's or other well-known national performers) and art exhibitions opened to the general public, as well as private dinners, pageants, and balls.

Several organizations, including clubs in New York City, Los Angeles, Austin, Illinois, Green Bay, Wisconsin, Canton, Ohio, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Oklahoma City, and Altus, Oklahoma,[3]: 82  among others, established student funds and scholarships for youth and developed outreach programs through Junior MacDowell Clubs while continuing to support financially the MacDowell Colony.

[15] Club membership included writers, musicians, performing and visual artists, theate and film actors, sculptors, and architects: Hamlin Garland, Richard Watson Gilder, Edwin Arlington Robinson, James Harvey Robinson, John Dewey, Leonora Speyer, Herbert Adams, Robert Aitken, Hobart Nichols, Irving Ramsey Wiles, Ivan Olinsky, F. Luis Mora, Robert Henri, George Bellows, Louise Homer, David Bispham, Katherine Bacon (1896-1952), Francis Stetson Rogers (1870-1951), Charles Coburn, Harriet Rogers (Otis) Dellenbaugh, Beatrice Cameron, Harold Van Buren Magonigle, and May Riley Smith, among others.

Shortly after Marquand's death in 1902, the building had been sold to Joseph Pulitzer, then publisher of the New York World, who lived several blocks to the east at 73rd and Park.

A year later Halina Rosenthal, head of the block association and later founder of the Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts, lobbied the commission to include the Marquand stable in the designation, which it did in 1981.

[15] In 1911, John W. Alexander, the Club's second president, instituted a revolutionary for the time change by introducing an open exhibition, or no jury policy.

Many talented, but previously unrecognized artists, such as Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, among others, received an opportunity to promote their works.