American Furniture, Folk & Decorative Arts

identified Sylvan Association in gilt lettering and depicting the vessel Sylvan Dell.
unmarked.
Height 3 1/4 inches.

The Sylvan Dell was the final and fastest of five steamboats built for the Harlem & New York Navigation Company. She was first launched in 1872, steaming upriver from New York to Albany in the record-setting time of seven hours, forty-three minutes. Her primary function was the transport of commuter passengers between Harlem and lower Manhattan, before her conversion to a pleasure cruising vessel in 1889. The Sylvan Dell sank in Salem Creek in 1919.

The Sylvan Dell Association was a gentlemen's social club formed in Brooklyn in 1877. This mug may commemorate a cruise chartered by the group as one of their many members' outings throughout New York City. Around the turn of the twentieth century, the organization became increasingly civic-minded, endeavoring to reduce urban noise, among other aims.