The Boston Club is a segregated private gentlemen's club in New Orleans, Louisiana, US, founded in 1841 as a place for its white members to congregate and partake in the fashionable card game of Boston. It is the oldest remaining social club in the city, after the Elkin, Pelican, and Orleans Clubs closed prior to or due to the Civil War. The clubhouse has been located at 824 Canal Street since 1884, formerly 148 Canal St, on the edge of the Central Business District. It was built in 1844 by James Gallier as a city residence for Dr. William Newton Mercer, a planter in Mississippi and surgeon from the War of 1812. The Club itself was organized in 1841, by thirty leading mercantile and professional men, they were the heads of families and men of substance on the shady side of life, yet full of bonhomie and fond of the card game of Boston, from which this club was christened. It epitomized the South's most refined male tastes and attitudes, a member once noted, "Propriety of demeanor and proper courtesy are alone exacted within its portals." History Founded in 1841, the Boston Club is the third oldest Gentlemen's City Club in the United States behind the Philadelphia Club in Philadelphia and the Union Club of the City of New York in New York City. Members organized and rented rooms first at the Merchants Exchange, 126 Royal St, in the Vieux Carre, then 129/130 Canal Street until the Civil War when it closed from 1862 to 1866. After the war, it occupied 214 Royal Street (currently the Hotel Monteleone) until 1867 at which point it moved to 4 Carondelet Street, the former home of New Orleans financier, Edward J. Forstall. In 1884 it moved into its current clubhouse at 824 Canal Street (then known as 148 Canal Street) and the house was fully purchased by 1905. The club was closed for 3 years during the Civil War. The Elkin Club, founded 1832 and shuttered in 1838, was the first social club in New Orleans. An open club, it sponsored dances and balls in the vicinity of Bayou St John and closed due to the financial crisis of 1837. The Pelican Club founded in 1843 and folded at the beginning of the Civil War, confined its membership through blackball policies to bankers, cotton brokers, attorneys, physicians, and political leaders; the smallest lapse