Manufacturers: Maddock Pottery, Syracuse China
User: Noonday Club, St. Louis, Missouri
Date of Syracuse match stand: 1931
Notes: The first organizational meeting of the Noonday Club was reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Dec. 25, 1892, with "elaborate and expensive furniture from Boston … in special designs of rich oak and leather, and all the appointments of the resort will be on the elegant scale. The Noonday Club is not started to compete with the St. Louis or University Clubs; its idea simply is to furnish its members with a place to get a good dinner and have a little bit of enjoyment down town in the day time."
On April 20, 1893, the Post-Dispatch announced that "The Palatial Quarters in the Security Building Opened." Located "at Fourth and Locust streets," membership was "limited to 300 members."
In an article titled "If Our Walls Could Talk," the Lawrence Group – located in the Security Building – discussed tenants of the building, including the Noonday Club, which occupied the 10th and 11th floors that "were custom designed for this organization and originally consisted of a main dining room, library and billiard. They occupied the Security Building until the 1960s."
The article continues that "it was in one of their private dining rooms in 1927 where four club members made plans to financially back Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh's historic 33.5 hour nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Paris. Several pilots had died trying, and no one had succeeded by 1927. Member Harold Bixby of State National Bank, who also sat on the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce, persuaded Lindbergh to name his airplane 'the Spirit of St. Louis.'"
In 1964 the club moved to the Metropolitan Square building. By 1968 the encircling wreath and crown had been eliminated from the logo.
A July 26, 2008, story in the Post-Dispatch announced that notices had been sent to members the preceding Friday announcing that the club's board had voted to close the club "because it simply can no longer continue to exist in Metropolitan Square in the present economic climate."
Both Maddock and Syracuse made china with this crest with the interlocking NC monogram. The Lamberton items date to before 1923 and the known Syracuse pieces were made in November 1925, 1931 (match stand above) and September 1956. It was also on silver made by Reed & Barton, also shown above).
Sources:
The Lawrence Group: If Our Walls Could Talk
Security Building photo
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dec. 25, 1892
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 18, 1893
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 20, 1893
St. Louis Post Dispatch, July 26, 2008
Contributors:
Larry Paul, ID
Charles Sovine, match stand photos