📍Germantown, Philadelphia, PA, USA
1893 – 1920“I was born William Tatem Tilden II in February 1893 at Overleigh, my family's large Victorian mansion on McKean Avenue in Germantown, a wealthy, leafy district of Philadelphia. My father, William Tatem Tilden, was a prosperous wool merchant and a prominent figure in the city's Republican politics, and presidents were guests in our house. But our home had known great grief: before I was born, three of my older brothers and sisters had died of diphtheria within weeks of each other, and my mother, Selina, was terrified of losing me too. So I was kept close, tutored at home, and taught music and literature. My older brother Herbert, whom I idolised, played tennis, and I learned the game at the Germantown Cricket Club, a few steps from our house, and on the family's summer holidays in the Catskills. In 1908, when my mother fell ill, I was sent to live with my aunt and cousin in a smaller house a few streets away, and I kept my room there for the rest of my years in Philadelphia. At last I went to Germantown Academy. My mother died in 1911, and within a few years my father and Herbert were gone too, and tennis became the centre of my life. I was a late developer, but I studied the game obsessively and taught myself every stroke. In 1920, at twenty-seven, I became the first American to win Wimbledon, and I won ten Grand Slam titles in all, dominating the 1920s. The Germantown Cricket Club, where I first played, still stands near the site of Overleigh.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today