A Club for the Un-Clubabble

In the Montauk Club, smack in the heart of bourgeois Brooklyn, a cadre of self-styled anti-elitists find a crumbling mansion and discover a link to New York’s glorious past.

Photos by Emon Hassan

In 1893, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made an unsuccessful attempt to kill off his most famous creation. “I must save my mind for better things," he wrote in a letter to his mother. Clearly, he had already started saving it, at least a little. The Greek Interpreter, which appeared in The Strand Magazine that year, found Doyle casting about for ideas, revealing that Sherlock Holmes has a brother, which he’d somehow forgotten to mention in the previous two dozen novels and short stories. It’s not unlike the late-stage sitcom arrival of a cute young niece. Mycroft Holmes, Doyle writes, is every bit as intelligent as his brother Sherlock, but so lazy that he can’t put his skills to any good use. Instead, he spends his time at home, at work, or at his other haunt, The Diogenes Club, which Doyle describes thusly:

“There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comf…