Philadelphia Club

The Philadelphia Club was founded in 1834 and is located at 13th and Walnut Streets in Center City, Philadelphia. It is the oldest city club in the United States and one of the oldest gentlemen's clubs. Notable members have included George Meade, Owen Wister, and many members of the Du Pont and Biddle families.

The Philadelphia Club
The Philadelphia Club in 1916.
Formation1834
TypeGentlemen's club
HeadquartersThomas Butler Mansion, 1301 Walnut Street
Location
  • Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Region served
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the surrounding region
Membership
400[1]
Designations

History

Founding

The club's founders were a group of men who met to play cards at Mrs. Rubicam's Coffeehouse at the northwest corner of 5th & Minor Streets in Philadelphia. In early 1834, they moved around the corner to the Adelphia Building at 212 South 5th Street, taking the new building's name as the club's name. The Adelphia Club held its first recorded meeting on March 21, 1834. The following year, its members moved to the Joseph Bonaparte house at 260 South 9th Street, and changed the club's name to The Philadelphia Club. In 1843 they moved to 919 Walnut Street, and in 1850 the club moved to its current location, the Thomas Butler Mansion at 1301 Walnut Street. Frederick J. Benton the great-grandson of Joseph Bonaparte, was the owner of the nightspot in the 1930s early 1940s.[2]

American Civil War

Union General George Meade was admitted to club membership only after winning the Battle of Gettsyburg.

Presidents Day

Following Proclamation 87 - Celebration of George Washington's Birthday made by President Abraham Lincoln on February 19, 1862,[3] Philadelphia celebrated the Birthday of President George Washington with a military parade procession on Broad, Walnut and Chestnut Streets. The parade occurred on February 22, 1862 and was led by Major General Robert Patterson. The Club celebrated this occasion with a tribute President Washington. Philadelphia artist Joseph Boggs Beale recorded the Club's tribute in his diary:

The club house, 13th & Walnut, was illuminated with candles at every pane of glass, & had a beautiful American flag hanging so that the light on it showed it several squares away. In one of their windows they had a pure white marble head of Washington & the American flag (silk) covering the pedestal & this was set off with a dark red background and brilliantly lighted from above.[4]

Prohibition

In 1931, during Prohibition, the Philadelphia Club was raided by members of the Philadelphia Police Department, led by Bronislaw Wielbaba, in an effort to seize illegal spirits and wine. According to Weilbaba's testimony, the police captured 401 quarts, 118 pints, and a 1-gallon jug of alcohol during the raid of member lockers on February 2, 1931. The only arrest made was of the club manager.[5]

Clubhouse
The Philadelphia Club (1912) by Joseph Pennell

Design of the Butler Mansion is attributed to William Strickland and was one of his few residential commissions. It was built as a city house for Thomas Butler, only son of South Carolina U.S. Senator Pierce Butler. Thomas Butler died before the building's 1838 completion, and it stood vacant until its 1849 purchase by The Philadelphia Club. The club added a billiard room, moved the kitchen to the basement, and opened its new clubhouse in 1850. It was altered in 1888-89 by Frank Furness, who designed a rear addition and expanded its kitchens and main dining room.[6][7] Wilson Eyre renovated its interiors a decade later, and additional alterations were done by Horace Trumbauer in 1905 and 1908, and by Mellor, Meigs & Howe in 1916.[8]

George C. Boldt, hired in 1876 as a dishwasher, rose to become the club's steward and married the former steward's daughter. With financial backing from club members, he built the Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia; he later built the Bellevue Stratford Hotel, also in Philadelphia, and he managed the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City.

Jimmy Duffy, a Philadelphia Main Line caterer, was the club's bartender from 1895 to 1929.[9]

In addition to card rooms, dining rooms, smoking rooms, and a bar, the Club contains a library, a large collection of Philadelphia prints, a collection of game trophy heads donated by Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and lodging rooms on its upper stories.[10]

Food

The Philadelphia Club features Veal and Ham Pie whose ancestor may be the "Travellers Pie," once a famous dish at London's Travellers Club that features bacon and pork as well as veal and ham.[11]

Presidents and guests

Among the club's presidents have been Captain James Biddle, George H. Boker, Adolph E. Borie, General George Cadwalader, Mayor Richard Vaux, and Owen Wister, who wrote its 1934 centennial history.

Among the club's guests have been twelve U.S. presidents: John Quincy Adams,[12] Martin Van Buren, James K. Polk, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, William McKinley, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gerald R. Ford, and George H. W. Bush; soldiers and sailors George B. McClellan, William Tecumseh Sherman, William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, George Dewey, George Goethals and Jack Keane; writers, artists, actors and musicians: William Makepeace Thackeray, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Henry Irving, Charles Kemble, Edwin Booth, Booth Tarkington, John Barrymore, Joseph Pennell, Leopold Stokowski, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Bram Stoker, Eugene Ormandy, Louis Kahn and Roger Scruton; and other public men Talleyrand, Stephen A. Douglas, Lord Randolph Churchill, Grand Duke Alexander, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Duarte Pio, Henry Cabot Lodge, Winston Churchill, Lord Louis Mountbatten, and Henry Clay.[13]

In its first 119 years, women were admitted to the club on only three occasions: balls in January 1851 and January 1869 and the centennial reception in October 1934. In May 1953 the membership voted to allow women guests at dinners. Many restrictions have since been eased, but women remain excluded from membership.[14] In the mid 1970s, the club hired a woman barber, Isabella Judith Devaney, who worked there for 18 years before leaving due to health problems.

Status as the "oldest club"

The Philadelphia Club is the oldest gentlemen's club in the United States.[15] Three social clubs for men are older, but none of them offers the facilities of a traditional gentlemen's club – regular hours, paid staff, a bar, a dining room, lodging rooms – that are associated with the English model of city clubs in the St. James's district of London.

The three older social clubs are:

Notable members

Critical assessment

In an April 2008 article, Philadelphia Magazine described the club:

The Philadelphia Club, 1301 Walnut Street; 215-735-5924. The oldest and most guarded of the city's old-guard clubs sits, with increasing incongruity, at the edge of the Gayborhood – but the Philadelphia Club makes no adjustments to passing fads. Unmarked outside but for a discreet awning logo, it is said to be one of the oldest men's clubs in the U.S., feeding the city's elite since 1834. Inside the three-story building, the Philadelphia Club is – except on occasional nights when members gather around the piano to sing – kept deathly quiet by members eating Old Philadelphia lunches of chicken salad and fried oysters. The blue bloods hang out to play an archaic domino game called sniff. This is the hardest club in town to join, limited largely to old Philadelphia families. Walter Annenberg applied for membership once and was blackballed – though he was eventually accepted. Was he turned down because he was Jewish? Because he made enemies? Who knows. Founded: 1834. Number of members: 400. Notable facilities: Rooms for napping. Wait list: Unknown. Demographics: Pretty damn white, although it reportedly got into the token-Jew business in the 19th century. Notable members: Socialite Robert Montgomery Scott. Food: Members mention the ham and veal pie. Crustiness: As crusty as that ham-and-veal pie.[1]

gollark: The "recent pages" bit now actually is labelled "recent" *and* is saved in local storage between page loads!
gollark: #76995 is nice.
gollark: I switched page links over to this pleasant cobalt color.
gollark: I only have 40 or so left, somehow.
gollark: I got a box of 100 perfectly good pens last year.

See also

References

Notes

  1. Issenberg, Sasha; Miller, Blake; and Patel, Roxanne. "Members Only," Philadelphia Magazine (April 18, 2008).
  2. Rivinus, pp. 8-9.
  3. Lincoln, Abraham. "Proclamation 87 - Celebration of George Washington's Birthday February 19, 1862" American Presidency Project
  4. Beale, Joseph Boggs. Education of an Artist: The Diary of Joseph Boggs Beale, 1856-1862
  5. "Illegal alcohol at the Philadelphia Club" (photograph and caption) Philadelphia Evening Bulletin (February 27, 1931) on the Temple University Libraries website
  6. Thomas, George E.; Cohen, Jeffrey A.; and Lewis, Michael J. Frank Furness: The Complete Works (Princeton Architectural Press, revised 1996), pp. 66, 280.
  7. Furness addition photo from Flickr
  8. Philadelphia Register of Historic Places: 1956; National Register of Historic Places: 1984, contributing property to East Center City Commercial District.
  9. Rivinus, p. 38.
  10. Bell.
  11. Freedman.
  12. Bell
  13. Rivinus, 24-26.
  14. Rivinus, 30-32.
  15. Whitaker's Almanack 2008. A&C Black. 2008. p. 649. ISBN 978-0-7136-8554-1.

Bibliography

  • Bell, Malcolm, Jr. "Major Butler's Legacy." (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987)
  • Freedman, Paul. (2017-04-07) "The Fascinating History of Food at Private Clubs."
  • Klaus, William R. "This Old House." ( privately printed, 1999).
  • Lippincott, Horace Mather. "The Philadelphia Club," Early Philadelphia: Its People, Life and Progress (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1917), pp. 300–02.
  • Rivinus, F. Markoe. The Philadelphia Club, 1934-1984 (privately printed, 1984).
  • Wister, Owen. The Philadelphia Club, 1834-1934 (privately printed, 1934).
  • Wainwright, Nicholas B. "Education of an Artist: The Diary of Joseph Boggs Beale."


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