Lotos Club

5 East 66th Street | Upper East Side | built 1900

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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. 1900

    Sculptor Karl Bitter carves a huge stone fireplace for the Schieffelin ballroom

    Inside Richard Howland Hunt's new mansion, the second-floor library stretched the whole length of the house, and the ballroom had dramatic arched windows. Its centerpiece was a huge stone fireplace carved by the sculptor Karl Bitter, who was then also at work on sculpture for the facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1900

    Margaret Shepard commissions a mansion for the Schieffelins

    Margaret Vanderbilt Shepard bought the two houses at 5 and 7 East 66th Street and hired Richard Howland Hunt, son of Richard Morris Hunt, to design a French Renaissance mansion for her daughter Maria and son-in-law William Jay Schieffelin. Completed in 1900, it has a marble foyer, a stone fireplace carved by sculptor Karl Bitter, and a mansard roof with copper-framed round windows.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1906

    November 26

    Booker T. Washington speaks at the Schieffelin mansion

    A meeting at the Schieffelin house on November 26, 1906, featured Booker T. Washington as its main speaker. Maria Schieffelin was a director of the City YWCA and a member of the Indian Rights Association, while William Jay Schieffelin led the Armstrong Association, which backed industrial education for Black students in the South.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1909

    December 5

    Mrs. Schieffelin gives a tea dance to introduce her daughter Louise to society

    On December 5, 1909, Maria Schieffelin held a tea dance at the house to bring her daughter, Louise Vanderbilt Schieffelin, out into polite society. Her sister, Mrs. Ernesto Fabbri, assisted, as did Cornelia Vanderbilt and other society names, a roster that Daytonian in Manhattan says any social climber would have envied.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1925

    The Schieffelins move to Park Avenue and leave the mansion to their daughter

    Around 1925, like other wealthy New Yorkers giving up grand private houses, William and Maria Schieffelin took an apartment at 620 Park Avenue. They left the East 66th Street mansion to their daughter. Dr. Carl Eggers and his wife were living here by the mid-1930s, and dances and dinners continued in the same rooms.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1947

    June 13

    The Lotos Club opens in the former Schieffelin mansion

    The Lotos Club, a literary club founded in 1870, bought the house just after World War II and opened its doors to members on June 13, 1947, with renovations about 85 percent complete. The clubhouse had a library, card room, ballrooms and a rare air-conditioned grill room below street level.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  7. 1977

    The Lotos Club amends its constitution to admit women as members

    A group of young writers and critics founded the Lotos Club in 1870 as a gentlemen's club. Thirty years after it moved into the former Schieffelin mansion at 5 East 66th Street, the club amended its constitution in 1977 to admit women as members.

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

Nearby

All 93 buildings with stories in Upper East Side