In literary, artistic, musical, dramatic, and social clubs, the city has become populous. The Academy of Music had its origin in the success of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Society, the leading organization for the patronage of music, which was incorporated in 1857. It had been remarked that the audiences which patronized the concerts of the New York Philharmonic Society were, in a great part, made up of Brooklyn people. In 1856 or 1857 it occurred to the heads of several families, who were the best and most appreciative patrons of the New York society, that Brooklyn might and ought to have a Philharmonic Society of its own. The project was inaugurated, and was attended with success. The subscription list doubled the second season. There were, the second year, over seven hundred subscribers, and numerous patrons besides. The Athenæum was entirely inadequate for the purposes of the society. In 1858, the leading members of the Philharmonic Society, by circulars, called the attention of several leading citizens to the relative change that was going on between the two cities, and pointed to the success of their society as the best evidence that the time had come when a large lyric hall was demanded by the necessities of our city. About fifty gentlemen responded to this call, and a preliminary meeting was held at the Polytechnic Institute, in October, 1858.[51] A public meeting followed, a popular stock company was formed, and the Academy was incorporated in 1859. Land in Montague Street was bought for $41,000. The total expenditure reached $200,000. The Academy became and has remained the city's leading opera house, and largest place of public meeting. Most of the greatest musical artists, actors, and orators in the country have been heard under its roof. Among the leading musical associations of the city are the Apollo Club, the Seidl Society, the Brooklyn Choral Society, the Arion Society, the Brooklyn Maennerchor, the Zoellner Maennerchor, the Amphion Musical Society, the Cæcilia Ladies' Vocal Society, the Concordia Maennerchor, the Euterpe Chorus and Orchestra, the Deutscher Liederkranz, the Saengerbund, and the Prospect Heights Choral Society. In recent years there has appeared a disposition to regard Brooklyn as a musical city. The increase in the number of musical societies and the patronage of opera and concert have unquestionably been great. Among the musical composers, resident in the city, who have made national reputations, Dudley Buck has been of first prominence.