When the five-star Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland set out to design a fitness center that would appeal to its next generation of guests, its designers didn’t look to the future. Instead, they turned to the past — specifically, a Slim Aarons photograph titled “Tennis in the Bahamas, 1957.” The result is the Gleneagles Sporting Club, a retro, luxurious sports facility with ample courts, equestrian stables and a courtside lounge space.
Inspired by the iconic tennis and sporting clubs of the late 1800s and mid-1900s, spaces that were meant just as much for socializing as they were for exercise, the Gleneagles Sporting Club is part of a new wave of fitness centers that combine aspects of members clubs and gymnasiums under one roof.
Playing on the nostalgia for country clubs and Ivy League-coded preppiness, these athletic spaces are sharply veering away from the sleek aesthetics pioneered by fitness chains like Equinox.
For some, the shift is as subtle as a font change and some new merchandise. Last month, Blink Fitness, a budget gym chain, released a sweatshirt with 1980s-style script and “club” added to the end of its name. Others have gone further, building entire brands meant to evoke a vintage feel and even investing in period-era equipment.
“I wanted to bring in the spirit of the old gymnasiums, because I loved the type of equipment that they had and their focus on the actual design and how intricate it was,” said Lev Glazman, a co-founder of the Maker Gymnasium, a 2,700-square-foot gym attached to the Maker Hotel in Hudson, N.Y.
The gym opened in 2020 with a cork checkerboard floor and European gym equipment from 1920s and ’30s, including a pommel horse and circus rings from Austria.
“When you bring historical elements to a space and there’s an element of curiosity, it makes your experience so much better,” he said. “All of our customers who come to the gym say, ‘I feel like I’m in such a different place.’”
The more recent past has been a source of inspiration for other athletic club owners, as films like “Challengers” and “King Richard” have spurred a renewed interest in tennis and other racket sports.
“We wanted Reserve to be simple, elegant, luxurious clubs that would be the foundation for growth of padel in the U.S.,” said Wayne Boich, the founder of Reserve Padel, referring to the racket sport that is a blend of squash and tennis and is taking off in New York City.
A former college tennis player, he looked to the legacy of racket sports and to the tennis clubs of his childhood in the 1980s to develop the ethos for his venture.
“The Reserve green is a bit of a homage to the Wimbledon look and feel,” he said.
The trend extends beyond the East Coast. In Nashville, Forza Pilates Athletic Co. has a crest and green and navy heritage-inspired merchandise.
“My inspiration for the branding was country clubs, tennis clubs and racket clubs,” said Sydney Dumler, the founder of Forza. “It felt more timeless to me than just leaning into the Pilates aesthetic,” which tends to be more minimalist. She added she was also tired of the “industrial vibe.”
Emily Oberg, the founder of the brand Sporty & Rich, was an early purveyor of this aesthetic resurgence. In 2014, she started an Instagram account where she curated an aspirational moodboard of vintage sport and style imagery. It later grew to include a print magazine and a multimillion-dollar lifestyle and clothing brand with a SoHo flagship store.
“The brand is very much rooted in this aesthetic of country clubs and ’80s sports clubs and gyms,” said Ms. Oberg, noting that the New York Health and Racquet Club, which was founded in 1973, inspired her logo.
She said the nostalgia Sporty & Rich tapped into seemed to be about more than just interior design.
“Over the past 15 to 20 years, gyms have become solely focused on the fitness aspect, rather than the cultural or social aspect they used to have,” she said. “I think there’s a specific culture around them that we’ve lost.”
It is that culture and sense of belonging that this new crop of athletic clubs is hoping to recreate.
“As there is more awareness of the epidemic of loneliness, and especially as we emerge from the pandemic, there’s certainly an emphasis on socializing and coming together in embodied, real ways with other people,” said Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, a professor of history at the New School and the author of “Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession.”
Reserve Padel, Mr. Boich said, has made some strides in creating more of a social space. “People want to come here and hang out,” he added.
The current generation of sports clubs is hardly inexpensive — monthly memberships at Forza run from $140 to $440 per month, a month at Maker Gymnasium costs $140, and Reserve memberships start at $500 at the Hudson Yards location. But with drop-in options and open camps, some have tried to move away from the members-only exclusivity that was once standard.
“The democratization of luxury experiences is something we’ve seen in the consumer marketplace for the last couple of decades,” Ms. Mehlman Petrzela said. “Uber gave you your own private driver. Now, you can join a country club without the $100,000 initiation fee or going through a super complicated board of approval.”
The recent makeover for gyms may also owe to the simple idea that after years of the same look, people are ready to see something else.
“People want to get away from something that is standard,” said Mr. Glazman, the co-founder of Maker Gymnasium. “Particularly in gyms, I think there’s definitely going to be more movement to create environments that are more interesting and not just about functionality.”
