The Harvard Club of New York City | |
Location | 27 West 44th Street, Manhattan, New York |
---|---|
Coordinates | 40°45′20″N73°58′53″W / 40.75556°N 73.98139°W |
Built | 1894[1] | ; enlarged in 1905, 1915 and 1989
Architect | Charles Follen McKim of McKim, Mead & White |
Architectural style | Colonial Revival, neo-Georgian style |
NRHP reference No. | 80002693 |
NYCL No. | 0259 |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | March 28, 1980 [2] |
Designated NYCL | January 11, 1967 |
The Harvard Club of New York City, commonly called The Harvard Club, is a private social club located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Its membership is limited to alumni, faculty, and boardmembers of Harvard University.
Incorporated in 1887, it is housed in adjoining lots at 27 West 44th Street and 35 West 44th Street. The original wing, built in 1894, was designed in red brick neo-Georgian style by Charles Follen McKim of McKim, Mead & White.
Founded without a location in 1865 by a group of Harvard University alumni, the club rented a townhouse for use as a clubhouse in 1887 on 22nd Street. [3] In 1888, the club acquired land on 44th Street intending to build a new clubhouse there. Many other clubs later located on what came to be called Clubhouse Row: [4] the Penn Club of New York, (in 1901); the Cornell Club of New York (in 1989); the New York Yacht Club (in 1899); the Yale Club of New York City (in 1915); and the Princeton Club of New York (in 1963).
The Harvard Club selected architect Charles Follen McKim, of McKim, Mead & White, for the project. The design was Georgian style of architecture with Harvard brick and Indiana limestone. The building's 1894 façade is reminiscent of McKim, Mead and White's 1901 gates at Harvard Yard. In 1905, Harvard Hall, the Grill Room, a new library, a billiard room, and two floors of guest rooms were added.
In 1915, McKim, Mead & White doubled the building's size by constructing the Main Dining Room, a bar, additional guestrooms, banquet rooms, and athletic facilities including a 7th floor swimming pool.
In 2003, the architects Davis Brody Bond, under the direction of J. Max Bond, Jr., added a 40,000-square-foot annex on West 44th Street, with a facade clad in limestone and fenestrated with large glass windows.
In the spring of 1970, four Harvard Business School students—Ellen Marram, Katie Metzger, Roslyn Braeman Payne, and Lynn Salvage—were turned away from membership interviews at the Harvard Club of New York, because the club admitted only men. [5] : 10 That fall, Marram and Salvage wrote to Morgan Wheelock, the president of the Harvard Club of New York, to request that women be granted equal membership privileges. [5] : 11 Wheelock rejected the request. In January 1971, Marram and Salvage began a letter-writing campaign to the new president, Albert H. Gordon. A group of Harvard alumni seeking club membership met with Gordon in the fall of 1971, but Gordon initially denied the delegation's request to bring women's membership to a vote. [5] : 12
A Harvard Law School alumna, Marguerite "Mitzi" Filson, suggested the group take legal action against the Harvard Club. [5] : 12 Marram, Salvage, Metzler, Payne, and Filson, represented pro bono by Jed S. Rakoff, then prepared a gender discrimination claim to file with the New York Commission on Human Rights. [6] In response, Gordon agreed to put the matter to a vote. [5] : 13 Shortly before the vote, several Harvard alumnae—including attorney and activist Brenda Feigen, cofounder of the ACLU Women's Rights Project—sued the Harvard Club in federal court seeking revocation of the club's liquor license on sex discrimination grounds. [7] [8] Nevertheless, on May 4, 1972, the club voted to deny full membership rights to women. [8] A majority of members (1,654 to 854) supported membership for women, but the vote fell 18 votes short of the required two-thirds. [9] Marram, Salvage, Metzler, Payne, and Filson then filed their complaint with the New York Commission on Human Rights. [5] : 15 In addition, Commission chairwoman Eleanor Holmes Norton issued a two-page letter condemning the Harvard Club's exclusion of women. [10] [11] [9] After the parties came before a New York Human Rights administrative judge, the Harvard Club's Board of Managers called another vote. [5] : 15 On January 11, 1973, the club voted 2,097 to 695 to admit female members. [12]
To be eligible for election to membership, a candidate must hold a degree or honorary degree from Harvard, be a tenured faculty member at the university, or serve as an officer, or member of any board or committee of the university. Dues levied are on a sliding scale, based on age and proximity to the club. Like most private clubs, members of the Harvard Club are given reciprocal benefits at clubs around the United States and the world. [13]
The building is sometimes used for outside corporate events such as business conferences. [14]
The HCNY Foundation has a scholarship fund that helps support 20 undergraduates at Harvard College and several students in graduate programs, as well as international student exchange programs.[ citation needed ]
Stanford White was an American architect. He was also a partner in the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, one of the most significant Beaux-Arts firms. He designed many houses for the rich, in addition to numerous civic, institutional, and religious buildings. His temporary Washington Square Arch was so popular that he was commissioned to design a permanent one. His design principles embodied the "American Renaissance".
Charles Follen McKim was an American Beaux-Arts architect of the late 19th century. Along with William Rutherford Mead and Stanford White, he provided the architectural expertise as a member of the partnership McKim, Mead & White.
William Rutherford Mead was an American architect who was the "Center of the Office" of McKim, Mead, and White, a noted Gilded Age architectural firm. The firm's other founding partners were Charles Follen McKim (1847–1909), and Stanford White (1853–1906).
The Racquet and Tennis Club, familiarly known as the R&T, is a private social and athletic club at 370 Park Avenue, between East 52nd and 53rd Streets in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.
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McKim, Mead & White was an American architectural firm that came to define architectural practice, urbanism, and the ideals of the American Renaissance in fin de siècle New York. The firm's founding partners Charles Follen McKim (1847–1909), William Rutherford Mead (1846–1928) and Stanford White (1853–1906) were giants in the architecture of their time, and remain important as innovators and leaders in the development of modern architecture worldwide. They formed a school of classically trained, technologically skilled designers who practiced well into the mid-twentieth century. According to Robert A. M. Stern, only Frank Lloyd Wright was more important to the identity and character of modern American architecture.
The Colony Club is a women-only private social club in New York City. Founded in 1903 by Florence Jaffray Harriman, wife of J. Borden Harriman, as the first social club established in New York City by and for women, it was modeled on similar gentlemen's clubs. Today, men are admitted as guests.
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The Century Association is a private social, arts, and dining club in New York City, founded in 1847. Its clubhouse is located at 7 West 43rd Street near Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. It is primarily a club for men and women with distinction in literature or the arts. The Century Association was founded by members of New York's Sketch Club; preceding clubs also included the National Academy of Design, the Bread and Cheese Club, and the Column. Traditionally a men's club, women first became active in club life in the early 1900s; the organization began admitting women as members in 1988.
The Algonquin Club of Boston, presently known as The Quin House, is a private social club in Boston, Massachusetts, founded in 1886. Originally a business-themed gentlemen's club, it is now open to men and women of all races, religions, and nationalities.
The Harvard Club of Boston is a private social club located in Boston, Massachusetts. Its membership is open to alumni and associates of Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, and Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. The Back Bay Clubhouse is located in Boston's historic Back Bay neighborhood, at 374 Commonwealth Avenue.
The Bowdoin College Museum of Art is an art museum located in Brunswick, Maine. Included on the National Register of Historic Places, the museum is located in a building on the campus of Bowdoin College designed by the architectural firm McKim, Mead, and White.
The Cornell Club of New York, usually referred to as The Cornell Club, is a private club in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Its membership is restricted to alumni and faculty of Cornell University, family of Cornellians, business associates of Members, and graduates of The Club's affiliate schools.
James Kellum Smith was an American architect, of the Gilded Age architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White.
Perth Amboy Terra Cotta Company of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, was a late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century brickworks, known for the manufacture of many prominent and unique architectural terracotta elements.
The Columbia University Club of New York is a private university alumni club that extends membership to all graduates of all the schools and affiliates of Columbia University, as well as Columbia undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty and administrators. The Club has more than 2,500 Columbia members representing all the schools and affiliates of Columbia University.
William Mitchell Kendall was an American architect who spent his career with the New York firm of McKim, Mead & White, the leading American architectural practice at the turn of the century, renowned for its classical work. Kendall joined the firm in 1882, became a partner in 1906, and remained with the firm until his death in 1941. He was closely associated at the firm with partner Charles Follen McKim until McKim's death in 1909, and added a refined delicacy to McKim’s somewhat severe Roman classicism.