The Boylston Chess Club was established in Boston in 1919. Though, I believe it informally existed for many years prior to that.

For about a century, it's been one of the few U.S. chess clubs which has maintained physical premises, a vast chess library, and other chess resouces in order to promote the game and build a chess community. In addition to offering tournament play, the BCC offers lessons, especially for kids, lectures, and access to local masters in additon to the aforementioned library.

However, the club has never been a place you could call elegant. The club has always slogged from month-to-month to pay it's rent and other bills with the revenues which come from membership fees and tournaments.

The club has always been run by volunteers, including myself who served as a board member for several years and as President for one year.

The current President and Borad of Directors are exploring an idea to expand the club significantly. The basic model they seem to have in mind is the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis.

After discussing the idea with banks, it was determined that the club's projected cash flow would allow them to purchase the needed facilities if they can provide a $50,000 down payment. Of course, the club doesn't currently have $50,000.

But, they're looking for people who do.

Boylston Chess Foundation Looking for a Permanent Home

Well that expansion would be amazing. I've played at the Bolyston Club, it's a hole in the wall. It was sad to me, because it has such a prestigious reputation yet exists in what essentially is a closet in some random building with rooms to rent.

The St. Louis club is the most beautiful thing ever. I've been there too and it was a great experience, but WHY is such a wonderful establishment WASTED in St. Louis? Chess needs something like that in the Northeast corridor. The one in St. Louis essentially exists due to donations, and if it can happen there it can happen in Boston.
....And if I ever win the World Series of Poker I'll gladly donate the 50k

50k sounds like a steal, to be honest

Is this post legally binding or does the wink cancel it's legality?

All the best with your search for donations!

This sounds like a great idea.

If only there were some boston chessplayer that has made millions of dollars in poker......

who was associated with twoplustwo......

It was cool seeing his name on the plaque as a former champion of the club. What a talented individual.

who he is for godsake...

This would be nice but remember St. Louis has this rich guy who is just paying for everything. They are paying Ben and Hikaru a salary to just be there. Maybe something similar to what Dean Ippilito started down in New Jersey is possible in the Boston area, but what St. Louis has is close to impossible without a rich person donating huge amounts of $$.

I agree the BCC isn't the nicest place, but even worse is the parking to get here. Thank god I only go there for the USCL matches and don't have to feed the meters every 2 hours.

The parking situation is such a lol. For anyone who hasn't seen this it's 1 quarter per 15 MINUTES and you can only put 4 hours worth in at a time. For an all-day tournament this is an absolute nightmare. You need to literally have like 30+ quarters on you to get through it. That's if you can even find a space.

This being said, if the Northeast were to get a World Class Chess Center like St. Louis, it could realistically only be in NY, Boston, or Philadelphia and Boston probably has the best parking situation of the 3. I'd think the club would have to be moves out of Somerville and more INTO the city. That way it could be accessible to residents via the T, and outsiders could just find a parking garage or something that actually has room. Or you could pull int outsider/tourist chess people that are there for a trip or whatever. I wanted to go there once just to go there, but I can't imagine myself EVER going there again given its current location. But if it was in Boston maybe. (Idk if Sommerville is 'technically' Boston or whatever, but c'mon it's not really)

On a related note. I heard they were thinking about putting a chess center in place of that Mosque they were supposed to built in NYC near the WTC location. Was that supposed to be a St. Louis equivalent? Anyone know anything about that?, might this still happen? NYC would obviously be even awesomer!

This may be a dumb question, but has anyone contacted MIT or Harvard?