Ivy Club

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Ivy Club
Ivy Club postcard 1909.jpg
The current clubhouse as viewed from Prospect Avenue in a 1909 photographic postcard
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Location43 Prospect Ave, Princeton, New Jersey
Coordinates 40°20′53.4″N74°39′08.0″W / 40.348167°N 74.652222°W / 40.348167; -74.652222
Built1897
Architect Cope and Stewardson
Architectural style Jacobethan
Part of Princeton Historic District (ID75001143 [1] )
Added to NRHP27 June 1975

The Ivy Club, often simply Ivy, is the oldest eating club at Princeton University. [2] It was founded in 1879 with Arthur Hawley Scribner as its first head. [3]

Contents

Club culture

The club is described by F. Scott Fitzgerald in This Side of Paradise (1920) as "detached and breathlessly aristocratic". [4] A more recent account described Ivy as the "most patrician eating club at Princeton University" where members "eat at long tables covered with crisp white linens and set with 19th-century Sheffield silver candelabra, which are lighted even when daylight streams into the windows." [5]

Ivy Hall, built to house Princeton's short-lived law school, later the first home of the Ivy Club, to which it gave its name Ivy Hall (Princeton).jpg
Ivy Hall, built to house Princeton's short-lived law school, later the first home of the Ivy Club, to which it gave its name

Membership

The club was one of the last to admit women, resisting the change until spring 1991 after a lawsuit had been brought against the Ivy Club, Tiger Inn, and Cottage Club by the Princeton student Sally Frank and her lawyer Nadine Taub. [6] [7] [8] The members of each class are selected through the bicker process, a series of ten screening interviews, which are followed by discussions amongst the members as to whom of the remaining to admit. Current undergraduate members host regular "Roundtable Dinners" featuring talks by faculty and alumni.

Clubhouse

Ivy Club from Prospect Avenue Ivy Club Princeton.JPG
Ivy Club from Prospect Avenue

The first clubhouse was Ivy Hall, a brownstone building on Mercer Street in Princeton that still stands. It had been constructed by Richard Stockton Field in 1847 as the home for the Princeton Law School, a short-lived venture that lasted from 1847 to 1852. From the time of its founding until its incorporation in 1883, the club was generally known as the "Ivy Hall Eating Club." [9]

In 1883 the club purchased an empty lot on Prospect Avenue, which was a country dirt road at the time. Ivy erected a shingle-style clubhouse in 1884 on what is today the site of Colonial Club. The clubhouse was remodeled and extended in 1887-88. Following Ivy's move to new quarters across Prospect Avenue some ten years later, its second clubhouse was used by Colonial before being sold and moved to Plainsboro Township, New Jersey. [10]

Ivy's third and current clubhouse was designed in 1897 by the Philadelphia firm of Cope & Stewardson. In 2009, the club completed its most significant renovation to date. The expansion added a second wing to the facility, changing the club's original L-shaped layout to a U. [11] Designed by Demetri Porphyrios, the new wing includes a two-story Great Hall and a crypt to provide additional study space.

Notable alumni

The following is a list of some notable members of the Ivy Club: [12] [13]

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Sally Frank sued the three all-male eating clubs at Princeton University in 1978 for denying her on the basis of her gender. Over ten years later, in 1990 the eating clubs were defined as "public accommodation" and court ordered to become co-ed thanks to Sally Frank, her attorney Nadine Taub and the Women's Rights Litigation Clinic of Rutgers Law School. The eating clubs argued that they were completely private and separate from the university, giving them the right to sex discrimination. After many rounds in the courts, this argument eventually failed. The winning argument stated that the clubs were in fact not separate, and instead functioned as an arm of the university itself. This meant that the clubs were in the end covered by New Jersey's anti-discrimination law and forced to admit women.

References

  1. "Princeton Historic District". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
  2. Yazigi, Monique (May 16, 1999). "At Ivy Club, A Trip Back to Elitism". New York Times. Retrieved February 2, 2011.
  3. 1 2 "A. H. Scribner Dead. Headed Book Firm. Son of Founder of Noted Publishing House Is Victim of Heart Attack in His Sleep. Was Active for Princeton. Permanent President of His Class of '81 and an Organizer and First Head of the Ivy Club". New York Times . July 4, 1932. Retrieved 2008-07-24.
  4. Fitzgerald, Francis Scott (1920). This Side of Paradise. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 49.
  5. Yazigi, Monique P. (16 May 1999). "At Ivy Club, A Trip Back to Elitism". New York Times. Retrieved 16 January 2014.
  6. Eating Clubs Records, 1879–2005: Finding Aid Archived 2003-10-26 at the Wayback Machine
  7. Stanley, Alessandra (1990-07-04). "Court Tells Princeton Clubs They Must Admit Women". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2021-09-25.
  8. Doskoch, Evelyn; Gjaja, Alex (July 13, 2020). "How the Eating Clubs Went Coed". The Daily Princetonian . Retrieved 2021-09-25.
  9. Rich, Frederic C. (1979). The First Hundred Years of The Ivy Club. Princeton, NJ: The Ivy Club. pp. 20–27. ISBN   0-934756-00-7.
  10. Rich, Frederic C. (1979). The First Hundred Years of The Ivy Club. Princeton, NJ: The Ivy Club. pp. 28–35. ISBN   0-934756-00-7.
  11. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-07-13. Retrieved 2011-06-23.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  12. Griffin, James Q.; Reath Jr., Henry T.; Wilson, Sally, eds. (2001). Constitution and Rules, Officers and Members of The Ivy Club. Princeton, NJ: The Ivy Club. pp. 48–106.
  13. Rich, Frederic C. (1979). The First Hundred Years of The Ivy Club. Princeton, NJ: The Ivy Club. pp. 248–261. ISBN   0-934756-00-7.