5. Yorick’s Skull and Shakespeare Bust, The Players Club


The Players Club was founded in 1888 by Edwin Booth, the prominent Shakespearean actor and brother of John Wilkes Booth, along with 15 other incorporators (including Mark Twain and General William Tecumseh Sherman). Booth purchased an 1847 mansion fronting Gramercy Park and hired Stanford White to redesign it. During his lifetime, Booth lived in the mansion’s upper floors and his room remains as it was when he died (including a skull he used in Hamlet). In the above photograph, Yorick’s skull is in the back corner atop the bookshelf and Shakespeare’s bust is on the right on a ledge. For more photographs of the Players Club check out our previous coverage.