The Metropolitan Club is a private social club on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, New York. It was founded as a gentlemen's club in March 1891 by a group of wealthy New Yorkers led by the financier John Pierpont Morgan. The clubhouse at Fifth Avenue and 60th Street was designed by McKim, Mead & White and is a New York City designated landmark. The club is controlled by a 25-member board of governors. Initially, only men could become members, though women were given membership privileges in the mid-20th century. Like other Gilded Age social clubs, the Metropolitan Club functioned largely as a meeting place for the wealthy, hosting events such as luncheons, dinners, debutante balls, and business meetings. Over the years, the club's membership has included bankers, industrialists, doctors, lawyers, and CEOs, including several members each from the Goelet, Roosevelt, Vanderbilt, and Whitney families.
Morgan and 24 other wealthy men founded the club after two prominent men were denied membership at the Union Club of the City of New York. Work on the clubhouse began that May, and the club had attracted 1,000 members when the building was completed in February 1894. In its first few decades, the club hosted a variety of high-society events but also experienced financial shortfalls. The club acquired a neighboring house in 1912, and its membership increased to a high of 1,436 by the late 1920s. With the onset of the Great Depression and World War II, half the members had left by 1945, when the club narrowly avoided bankruptcy. The Metropolitan modernized its clubhouse over the next decades. To raise money, the club contemplated erecting a tower in the 1970s and again in the 1980s, but both proposals were unsuccessful. A penthouse with a dining room was completed in 2007.
The clubhouse consists of three structures surrounding a courtyard. Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White designed the main clubhouse and a northern annex in the Italian Renaissance Revival style, while the easternmost structure was designed by Ogden Codman Jr. The original structures have a marble facade with relatively little ornamentation. By contrast, the clubhouse's interiors were designed as ornate spaces with various murals and carvings. The first story includes the Great Hall and lounges, while club rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms were on the upper stories.
History In the late 19th century, New York City contained many private social clubs, which were largely based on British social clubs. At the end of the 19th century, many upscale residences were being developed along Fifth Avenue, particularly north of 59th Street. Many of the city's wealthiest residents thus began moving uptown along Fifth Avenue.
One of the city's most prominent clubs in the late 19th century was the Union Club of the City of New York, founded in 1836. The Union Club was restricted to 1,000 members, resulting in a long waiting list and several offshoot clubs. Each prospective member's application had to be sponsored by an existing member and reviewed by the Union Club's board of governors. By the 1870s, the board of governors frequently blackballed, or rejected, several prominent figures' membership applications on spurious grounds. Local newspapers published the names of blackballed applicants, resulting in humiliation for both the applicant and their sponsor. The Union Club blackballed two high-profile applicants in 1890: Erie Railroad president John King, who was sponsored by J. P. Morgan, and physician William Seward Webb, who was sponsored by William K. Vanderbilt.
1890s
Establishment
Morgan decided to form the Metropolitan Club after the Union Club failed to accept King and Webb. He was soon joined by other displeased members of the Union Club, including members of the Goelet, Iselin, Roosevelt, and Vanderbilt families. Morgan's friend William Watts Sherman drafted a constitution for a new club and invited 25 Gilded Age moguls to serve as co-founders. Sherman and many of the invitees attended a dinner at the Knickerbocker Club on February 20, 1891, to discuss the formation of Morgan's club. The founders next had to decide on a name, and they considered names such as "Millionaires' Club", "Park Club", and "the Spectators". The Metropolitan Club was formed on March 7, 1891. J. P. Morgan was elected as the club's first president, and the founders planned to invite 1,200 resident members (who lived in the New York City area) and 500 non-resident members (who lived further out). Annual dues were set at $100 for resident members and $50 for non-resident members, in addition to a flat initiation fee of $300.
When the new Metropolitan was founded, there was another Metropolitan Club two blocks south at Fifth Avenue and 58th Street, which exclusively served the city's Jewish community. Sherman claimed that the new Metropolitan's organizers did not know about the older club on 58th Street. Ultimately, the older club gave up its name, though the reason for this is unclear. The new Metropolitan Club was originally nicknamed the Millionaires' Club, as most of its earliest members were millionaires. The new club's members opened a temporary office at the Madison Square Bank Building, at the intersection of Fifth Avenue, 23rd Street, and Broadway. They sent out invitations to 1,000 wealthy New Yorkers, nearly half of whom had responded by April. Membership lagged after the club had signed on 650 members. There were fears that the club would not be profitable because of its location, which at the time was still far removed from Manhattan's commercial center.
The founders wished to build a clubhouse near Central Park, which would both serve the uptown crowd and be larger than the Union Club's existing building. The club began planning a clubhouse on a site at Fifth Avenue and 60th Street. The Hamersley family had owned the site since 1853, and the land was vacant by the 1890s. Three of the Metropolitan's members—Robert Goelet, Adrian Iselin Jr., and Samuel D. Babcock—obtained an option to buy seven of Hamersley's land lots.; The site was next to the under-construction Elbridge T. Gerry Mansion on 61st Street and several other clubs including the New York Athletic Club, Liederkranz, Arion Society, and Seventh Regiment Veteran's Club were nearby. The board of governors settled on a parcel measuring after initially contemplating a smaller site. The Metropolitan obtained the site at 60th Street in May 1891 paying $480,000. The club offered $100,000 in cash and taking a mortgage loan of $380,000 from the Hamersley estate's trustees. Each of the club's 25 founders pledged $5,000, and they also planned to charge 1,200 members a $300 initiation fee, to pay for the site.
Construction The club selected the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White to design its clubhouse, and the architects, Charles McKim and Stanford White, became charter members of the club. Excavations commenced that May, and John D. Crimmins began digging up the site. McKim, Mead & White spent the next several months drawing up plans for the clubhouse, adjusting the plans to fit the club's demands. By that September, the club had 700 members, although it had not yet decided on a design for the building. Goelet submitted preliminary plans for the clubhouse to the city's building department the same month. Although there was a tentative agreement on the interior design, the board of governors and the architects continued to discuss the facade's design, including the location of the main entrance. After several alterations to the plans, the club approved a final design in February 1892. The structure was intended to be much larger than other clubs' quarters, including those of the Knickerbocker, Union, and Manhattan clubs. The Real Estate Record predicted that the structure "will undoubtedly be a noteworthy addition to the club houses of the city", while The New York Times predicted that the clubhouse would "place the Metropolitan at the very head of the club procession".
McKim, Mead & White hired David H. King Jr. as the general contractor,; and Morgan was heavily involved with many aspects of the design, including such minute details as the carpets. Work was delayed in mid-1892 when laborers went on strike.; The new clubhouse was almost complete by early 1893. By then, the influx of new members had slowed dramatically, and existing members' annual dues could not adequately fund the club's operations. The club's members took out two mortgage loans from the Bowery Savings Bank that year for a combined $1.6 million. The Union Club contemplated merging with the Metropolitan in mid-1893, but the Union's members ultimately voted against a merger. Additional labor strikes delayed the building's construction further, and the final architectural details were not added until February 1894. The clubhouse ultimately cost $1 million, excluding furnishings and decorations. Including these additional costs, the club spent a total of $1,777,480 on its clubhouse.
Opening and early years
The Metropolitan initially planned to raise money through initiation fees and by renting out the bedrooms in the clubhouse's attic. By early February 1894, the club had 1,000 members; contrary to the club's common nickname, Millionaires' Club, not all of the members were millionaires. The first official event at the clubhouse took place February 20, 1894, when the board of governors ate dinner in the strangers' dining room. The Metropolitan hosted a public preview of the clubhouse at the end of February 1894, and the clubhouse officially opened two days later on March 1. Several thousand people attended its first reception. The club's finance and building committee disbanded in April 1894 with a surplus of $122,519.
Two months after the clubhouse had opened, the New York Evening World wrote that many of the club's existing members shunned the clubhouse; for example, the dining room rarely had more than eight people, even though it could seat a thousand. The club's executive committee had hired several staff members by the end of 1894, including a chef from France. The Metropolitan also arranged hansom cab service, telephone service, and newspaper subscriptions for its members. The little-used bowling alley and one of the wine rooms were converted into bicycle storage rooms. The club had 1,030 members by the following year, including influential industrialists, politicians, and financiers, as well as members of well-off families. Members often hosted lavish dinners at the clubhouse, and events were often hosted in the northern wing.
Despite the club's large membership, it recorded a net deficit in 1895 and 1896. The club's board of governors initially did not want to impose an additional fee on its members. The Calumet Club unsuccessfully proposed merging with the Metropolitan Club, and there was also a failed proposal to merge with the Union Club. During 1897 and 1898, the club did record a net profit but only because of contributions from the governors. The Metropolitan recorded increasing profits from the bar and restaurant by 1898, and it also relaxed its rules for non-members. The next year, the board of governors contemplated charging each member $50 to cover the increasing deficits. Existing members were not visiting the clubhouse frequently because they were attending events elsewhere.
1900s and 1910s