University Club of New York
6 West 55th Street | also 3 West 54th Street, 1 West 54th Street, 690 5th Avenue | Midtown | built 1900
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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.
- 1858
St. Luke's Hospital opens on the block where the University Club would rise
An earlier building on the lot: St. Luke's Hospital opened to patients on May 13, 1858, and took up the West 54th Street block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. During the Civil War, half of its 200 beds were given to wounded soldiers. In a report dated June 3, 1893, the Record & Guide said Charles A. Seymour & Co. had bought the whole property for $2.4 million, and McKim, Mead & White's University Club rose on the Fifth Avenue corner by 1899.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1865
The state legislature charters the University Club
The legislature granted the University Club its charter on April 28, 1865, to promote literature and art through a library, reading room and art gallery. The landmark report calls it a new kind of New York club, one requiring a college degree. Its founders had met as the Red Room Club, and for fifteen years before 1899 the club was based in the Jerome Mansion at 26th Street and Madison Avenue.
- 1899
McKim, Mead & White's University Club clubhouse opens on Fifth Avenue
Three club members, Charles McKim, William Mead, and Stanford White, designed the $1 million clubhouse at Fifth Avenue and 54th Street as an Italian Renaissance palazzo resembling the Strozzi Palace in Florence. Pink granite, rather than the expected white marble, clads the facade, and large arched windows make its six stories read as three. The building replaced the club's earlier home in the Jerome mansion at 26th Street and Madison Avenue.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1899
Eighteen college shields, lettered by Daniel Chester French, decorate the facade
Carved marble shields on the facade represent eighteen universities and colleges that most club members attended. Because the U.S. Naval Academy had no seal, the architects invented one for it. Beneath the shields, Latin inscriptions naming the schools were sculpted by Daniel Chester French. Inside, the library's ceiling and walls carry murals by Harry Siddons Mowbray.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1902
The new clubhouse hosts a dinner for Prince Henry of Prussia
In the first years after the Fifth Avenue clubhouse opened, the University Club hosted dinners for notable guests. Guests included Prince Henry of Prussia in 1902, an imperial Chinese delegation in 1906 and Mayor George B. McClellan in 1908.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1905
Four marble busts of Greek thinkers are given to the club's library atrium
In 1905 the member John Woodruff Simpson presented the club with marble busts of the ancient figures Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Plato. They were sculpted in Rome by M. Ezekiel and stand in the fourth-floor atrium outside the private library, which holds roughly 100,000 books and periodicals.
“These were sculpted in Rome by M. Ezekiel and were presented to the club in 1905 by member John Woodruff Simpson.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1928
Women are let into the clubhouse for Sunday evening suppers
Until 1928 women were barred from the University Club's clubhouse entirely. That year they were admitted for Sunday evening suppers and a twice-yearly ladies' supper. The clubhouse held its first couples' dance in 1940.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1935
Le Corbusier says New York taught him to appreciate the Italian Renaissance
The University Club's architecture prompted Le Corbusier, in 1935, to remark that in New York he had learned to value Italian Renaissance design. Charles McKim had modeled the clubhouse on a Florentine palazzo. Tom Miller, writing as Daytonian in Manhattan, describes it as among the most important architectural treasures of Fifth Avenue.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1967
The city designates the clubhouse a landmark while the club reserves the right to appeal
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the University Club a landmark on January 11, 1967, after a May 1966 hearing with three speakers in favor and none opposed. The club's president wrote that it would be honored, but added that the club reserved the right to appeal any adverse ruling on future alterations, even challenging the law in court.
- 1984
The soot-darkened clubhouse is cleaned, starting with the annex
In 1984 the clubhouse was cleaned for the first time since it was built, with the annex done before the main building. The facade, which had turned gray, returned to its original color, though the critic Christopher Gray judged the change not necessarily an aesthetic improvement.
“The clubhouse accumulated dirt throughout its history until it was cleaned in 1984. The annex was cleaned before the main building was.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1987
The University Club votes to admit women as members
New York City's antidiscrimination law took effect in 1984, and the city opened an investigation of the University Club in 1986. Members voted in January 1987 to ignore the law, but in June 1987 the club voted to let women join. Within a year, 16 women had been admitted among about 4,000 members.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1997
Hillary Clinton and columnist Cindy Adams are escorted out over a cell phone call
In 1997 the club enforced its rules on then-First Lady Hillary Clinton and the columnist Cindy Adams. Adams made a cell phone call, which club rules forbid, and the pair were escorted out. The incident came a decade after the club's 1987 decision to admit women as members.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
Further reading
- University Club of New YorkWikipedia
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