The Brook Club

111 East 54th Street | East Midtown | built 1925

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The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1903

    Society figures found the exclusive Brook Club

    William K. Vanderbilt Jr., Oliver H. P. Belmont, and Stanford White were among the society men who founded the Brook Club in 1903, naming it after a Tennyson line about a brook that runs on forever. Its first clubhouse, a renovated brownstone at 7 East 40th Street, had no bylaws and never locked its front door.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1924

    May 9

    The Brook buys two dwellings on East 54th Street to replace its Stanford White clubhouse

    The New York Evening Post reported on May 9, 1924 that the club had bought the two dwellings at 111-113 East 54th Street as the site for its new headquarters, so they stood here before the clubhouse. A month later the paper reported that Vincent Astor had bought the club's old East 40th Street property, which Stanford White had remodeled, for development.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1925

    The club moves into a new Delano & Aldrich clubhouse

    After outgrowing its first home, the Brook Club commissioned William Adams Delano of Delano & Aldrich to design a neo-Federal clubhouse at 111 East 54th Street, completed in 1925 with a rusticated base, Flemish-bond brickwork, and carved dolphin motifs.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1931

    February 18

    Alfred Tennyson's grandson visits the club named for his grandfather's poem

    Alfred Tennyson, grandson and namesake of the poet and a member of England's championship cricket team, arrived in New York on February 18, 1931 for a brief visit. He stopped at the Brook, whose name came from his grandfather's poem. The New York Evening Post noted that he had recently given the club one of the poet's original manuscripts.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1931

    November 8

    An architect staying overnight in a fourth-floor room is found dead

    The top floors had bedrooms for members from out of town and for those whose own houses were shut. Samuel Adams Clark, an architect with Warren & Clark who lived at 655 Park Avenue, stayed here on November 7, 1931 before a meeting the next day. His valet, Harry Wishkin, found him dead on the floor around noon. The Times believed a stroke struck as he reached into a closet.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1933

    A fired doorman's plan to strip the club's paintings is foiled by a tip

    Frank Mackey, a doorman fired in 1927, was the mastermind of an earlier holdup in which gunmen in evening dress took the club's cash. Another robbery on January 20, 1933 netted $375. Mackey then planned a bigger theft of the club's oil paintings and framed presidential signatures. A homeless-looking man overheard the talk, pretended to join in and warned the club secretary. Mackey and his associates were rounded up.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  7. 1954

    Membership grows to 400 as the club's roster fills with the powerful

    Membership, originally limited to 100 men admitted only by private invitation, had grown to about 400 by 1954, with a roster that eventually included John Jacob Astor IV, President John F. Kennedy, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Michael Bloomberg resigned his membership before running for mayor of New York and rejoined the club in 2011.

    Source: Wikipedia

  8. 2001

    Michael Bloomberg resigns from the club before running for mayor

    Michael Bloomberg was a member of the Brook until 2001, when he began his campaign for mayor. Most male-only clubs were pressured to admit women in the 1980s, but the Brook did not change. Bloomberg resigned from it and three other clubs, saying that if he could not change them he would go elsewhere.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  9. 2025

    March 25

    A worker is crushed when the club's dumbwaiter falls three floors

    On March 25, 2025 a 32-year-old worker was working in the dumbwaiter shaft when the dumbwaiter fell onto him, according to the Daily News. Firefighters had to hold the device in place while others broke through the wall to reach him. He was taken to a hospital. The incident put a club that normally avoids publicity in the news.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 43 buildings with stories in East Midtown