The Real Hidden Courts of New York
New Yorkers complain about Central Park crowding. But a subway-ride away…
Who doesn’t want to belong to the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, Queens. Am I right? It’s a gorgeous, legendary facility with tons of displayed history and panache, not to mention clean locker rooms. But the fact of the matter is this: most New Yorkers cannot afford West Side ($5,000 to join, about $300 per month in fees) or most of the other clubs in town. The parks have about 500 courts city-wide; the ever-lasting gripe is that there are not enough for the 2,000 permit holders… or they are too crowded… or they are not lighted… etc., etc.
Two years ago, the New York Times put out a story about the courts of New York City, which included the Central Park Courts, the East River Courts, two court facilities in Brooklyn (McCarren and Fort Greene) as well as the 96th Clay and the Cary Leeds Center. One can usually book a decent pick-up game at the East River in the summer, but other than that, most of these courts are impossible to reserve, usually booked for the day by 10am. But look a little closer, travel a little farther, and voila! New York tennis opens its chain-link doors — even during a pandemic!
South Oxford Park Courts
Nestled among the Atlantic Commons development, a Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) apartment complex, are two hardtop courts, one singles and one doubles, on top of the place where the South Oxford Tennis Club used to stand. Once the only black-owned tennis club in New York City, during its 16-year existence, South Oxford offered free lessons, tournaments and hip-hop events. When the city closed it in 1997 and demolished the clubhouse in 2001, it built the park on the old grounds.
Unlike the other Fort Greene courts, these also two of the few in Brooklyn where people can get away with playing without a permit. The only problem: coaching. The park does not have an attendant to make sure instructors stay off the courts. Instead, South Oxford relies on sign-up sheets allowing players to reserve hour-long sessions — sometimes more, if no one is paying attention in this relatively noiseless, drama-free slice of New York.
The Lincoln Terrace Tennis Center
Lincoln Terrace Park is one of only two New York City parks named for the 16th president, Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) and has long been a haven for the people of Brownsville, Crown Heights and East Flatbush. The 11 courts date back to the 1930s and were reconstructed in 1996 and again in 2014 with a new surface, retaining walls, fencing, benches and lighting.
As early as 1949, Top-50 players were teaching around the neighborhood — about 25 minutes from from Chambers Street on the 3 train. Phil Rubell, a U.S. Postal Worker who played in college, charged $30 per half-hour in the 1950s to supplement his mail carrier salary. Rubell became so popular that the Parks Department built a wooden house adjacent to the courts for him to sell racquets and clothing; his side hustle soon became his main hustle. Rubell’s son, Steve, who took lessons from his father, went on to captain the team at Syracuse University, but instead of turning pro, opened several restaurants before his most famous venture: Studio 54.
Sutton East Tennis Club
In mid-2017, the populists of the Upper East Side finally won a battle against the elitists. A spot of rich, red clay known as the Queensboro Oval tennis bubble — operated by a group calling itself Tennis in Manhattan through a license agreement with the city — opened to city tennis permit holders, following a rancorous battle cry. East Siders wanted a multi-sports venue with an ice-skating rink in the winter, but the one-acre tennis facility, under the Queensboro Bridge on the Manhattan side — which hosted softball players in the summer, tennis players in winter — went all-season on June 16, 2017, handing over six of the club’s eight courts to city tennis permits at no extra cost. Normally, the club charges from $80 to $225 per court per hour during peak times.
Tony Scolnick, the owner of the Tennis in Manhattan, which has the Vanderbilt Club at Grand Central Station as well as the Yorkville Tennis Club, opened Sutton East in 1979. He currently pays a $2 million per year lease on the land to the city. When the neighborhood ballplayers gathered 1,000 signatures to convert the grounds back to a city park, Scolnick, a former Athletic Director for Hunter College and player at Springfield College in Massachusetts, fought back with 3,000 signatures from grassroots patrons of Sutton East. “People will be thrilled because when it rains in the summer they can’t play outdoors,” he told the former news site DNA.info in 2017. “We believe thousands of people who play at our facility, if they don’t have a permit, will go and get one. We are very happy to maintain the courts.”
The Harlem Armory
Located at the Armory building at 143rd Street and Fifth Avenue — the former home of the 369th Regiment “Harlem Hell Fighters” — the Harlem Tennis Center (HTC) runs eight indoor courts on the medieval-inspired drill shed built in 1921 for once training the New York’s first black National Guard regiment. After the war, Nick’s Indoor Tennis took over the facility, followed by Bill’s Indoor Tennis, which then became HTC. During the afternoons, the Harlem Junior Tennis and Education Program (HJTEP), runs programs for local children, but days, nights and weekends, courts are available at below-market rates.
The armory, which also has an art-deco wing, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. Tennis greats Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson played at the Armory before getting involved in junior tennis — Gibson in Newark and Ashe with the New York Junior Tennis and Learning (NYJTL) program. Still, under the tenure of Mayor Ed Koch, half of the courts were used as homeless shelter, but Mayor David Dinkins — an avid tennis lover and player — turned over the courts to HJTEP in the early 1990s. For information on booking, call the HJTEP at 212–491–3738.
Frederick Johnson Park
Possibly one of the least-known tennis jewels of Manhattan, the recently restored Frederick Johnson Playground offers eight courts in Harlem, open from April through November — with lights! Once affectionately known as “the Jungle”, according to the New York Times, these courts were also once a mecca for top African-American players. Frederick Johnson, the park’s namesake, coached Althea Gibson there, despite losing his left arm as a child.
In 2010, former mayor and tennis enthusiast, David Dinkins, helped form the David Dinkins Tennis Club — a free family program on summer weekends. Dinkins was also instrumental in installing lights at Frederick Johnson when he served as Manhattan borough president in 1986. But other than that programming, the city has maintained a mostly hands-off approach to the small slice of New York tennis utopia tucked into a corner of northeast Manhattan. To get there, take the 3 train to the 148th Street Lenox Terminal Station.
