Mrs. A.A.A. Brooks, Hotel St. James Tenant and President of The Gotham Club

She was a busy lady. In the Who's Who, the section on her New York involvement has this list:

I went in search of more information on the Gotham Club and found some meetings had been held at the St. James as well, despite not turning up when searching the hotel by name. 

Mrs. A.A.A. Brooks (Algernon Arthur Alfred), shortened often to A.A., sometimes A. Arthur Alfred,  was also Anita Comfort Brooks. 

Her club had some very interesting meetings. 

Starting in Dec. 1907:

"ranging from Hygiene to the Germans"

January 1908

Dissension in the ranks: "Smoking By Women Called Deplorable"

"At this point a member in a baby lamb coat left the room. To a small group standing near the door she said, 'Wouldn't I talk if I were a club officer! It's hypocritical to talk one way and act another.' But nothing could persuade the militant member to brave Mrs. Brooks."

March 1908

"Miss Alice Ives discussed dramatic art, albeit she said that there was no such thing to-day. Miss Ives is a playwright."

April 1908

"a medley of fortune telling, ghost dances, crystal gazing, telepathic experiments, dream analyses, palm and tea leaf readings, Indian dances, amateur and professional 'incantations,' and table rappings. With this array of psychic phenomena it will be seen that the evening was as occult as possible, although it was difficult to follow the complicated programme."

"Mrs. Brooks was ghost extraordinary and moaned like the ghosts of Mr. Poe are wont to do."

June 1908

"'Well,' said the President, 'you can't blame them. I didn't wear calico myself but this is the nearest thing to it' and pointed to her own creation of lace and fine lawn [?], liberally adorned with diamonds."

In January 1910, the cost of living was climbing and people were up in arms. The Gotham Club got busy.

Just then an unexpected ally arrived in Mrs. A.A. Brooks, President of the Gotham Club. She was greeted with acclaim and was at once asked to make a speech. Clad in a stylish heliotrope gown and a large hat adorned with heliotrope feathers, with the jeweled badges of her club flashing from her throat she mounted the rostrum.

"I don't look like a poor woman, do I? she said. "But I really have to count every dollar and I know some quite poor people, though I look quite well-off, you know."

In April 1910, the club is associated with a new religious cult organized as the Free Church of New York City 

Big surprise at the January 1912 business meeting in the St. James

In March 1912

  

 

In May 1912, a month after the sinking of the Titanic:

Finally, in 1915, the push to change the name of Central Park to Woodrow Wilson Park may have done Mrs. Brooks in. The Gotham Club seems to disappear from Times mentions after this.

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