Colony Club

564 Park Avenue | also 47 East 62nd Street, 51 East 62nd Street, 560 Park Avenue | Upper East Side | built 1916

Open on the map4 entries

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

    Florence Harriman founds the Colony Club as the first social club run by and for women

    The Colony Club was founded in 1903 by Florence Jaffray Harriman. She and other wealthy women, Anne Morgan among them, raised $500,000 to build a clubhouse. Stanford White designed that first house on Madison Avenue near 30th Street, and Elsie de Wolfe, then new to interior design, decorated it. The club left it in 1916 for the Park Avenue building at East 62nd Street.

    Source: Wikipedia

  2. 1914

    Four rowhouses on Park Avenue are replaced by the new Colony Club clubhouse

    Before the club arrived, this Park Avenue frontage between East 62nd and 63rd Streets held four rowhouses, built for D. & J. Jardine to designs by Edward Kilpatrick. The Landmarks Preservation Commission's Upper East Side Historic District report lists the Colony Club building here as replacing them. Delano & Aldrich's clubhouse went up between 1914 and 1916.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1916

    Delano & Aldrich finish a seven-story neo-Georgian clubhouse for the Colony Club on Park Avenue

    The Landmarks Preservation Commission describes the 1914-16 building at 564 Park Avenue as a neo-Georgian club on a corner site, designed by Delano & Aldrich for the Colony Club. It has a marble base, red brick above, and central bays framed by two-story columns and pilasters. The report adds that the club, organized in 1903, was the first women's club to have its own building.

    “Seven-story club building on a corner site; marble base with keystone…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 1916

    The new Park Avenue clubhouse gives members a basement pool, squash courts and a kennel

    Beyond the usual lounges, dining rooms and bedrooms, the clubhouse held a two-story ballroom and a basement pool and spa. An express elevator linked the pool to a fifth-floor gymnasium. There were also two squash courts and servants' rooms, with thirteen female servants on staff in 1925, and a kennel where members could leave their pets, according to architectural historian Andrew Dolkart.

    “…a two-story ballroom, a basement swimming pool and spa that connected via an express elevator to a gymnasium on the fifth floor, two squash courts…”

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

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