No story of Coveleigh would be complete without reference to the Wainwright family. The Wainwrights owned considerable property in Manhattan, where they lived in the 1800’s. The family summered in Rye where they purchased most of the land on Milton Point. Coveleigh's beautiful Georgian mansion was built between 1902 and 1904. In the early 1900’s the Wainwright family lived in the fifty rooms home and carriage house on 18.5 acres. The front exhibition tennis court was originally built for the family’s use. The ‘Coveleigh’ name was selected by Richard Tighe Wainwright, where Cove means a small bay and lea means a meadow.
Coveleigh Club opened as a family club on December 9th, 1933, when six very determined and farsighted individuals believed the concept could survive in the midst of a depression. There have been many changes to the Club since then, but all kept the original purpose and history in mind, ensuring they maintained the charm, grace, elegance and warmth of the original family estate.
To this day Coveleigh remains a family club, operated and maintained to offer a wide selection of facilities for its members. Over the decades, the club added the lawn bowling green, boating facilities and the additional tennis courts. In early 2000, the cabanas were updated, additional platform tennis courts added, the carriage house renovated to accommodate our growing tennis and camp programs, and the west porch was enclosed with all glass walls. The original formal gardens in the lawn adjacent to the shore were replaced by a pool in 1964, which in turn was fully renovated to a fabulous heated pool in 2016.