Manhattan Club (social club)
The Jerome Mansion, Home to the Manhattan Club
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| Formation | September 25, 1865 |
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| Extinction | 1979 |
| Type | Social club |
| Legal status | Incorporated 1877 |
| Headquarters | Jerome Mansion |
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Key people
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John Van Buren, founding president and son of U.S. President Martin Van Buren Samuel J. Tilden August Belmont Augustus Schell Henry Hilton Manton Marble Frederic R. Coudert |
The Manhattan Club was a social club in Manhattan, New York founded in 1865 and dissolved around 1979.
Designed to be the Democratic answer to the Union Club, its prominent members included Samuel J. Tilden, August Belmont, Grover Cleveland, Alfred E. Smith, Herbert H. Lehman, Jimmy Walker and Robert F. Wagner Other prominent members included Augustus Schell, Dean Richmond and John T. Hoffman. The Manhattan Club was organized on September 25, 1865 at Delmonico's on 14th Street at Fifth Avenue. Its first home was the Benkard House at 96 Fifth Avenue near the corner of 15th Street (called "Old 96" by members), followed by the A.T. Stewart Mansion on 34th Street at Fifth Avenue. From 1899 to 1966, it occupied the Jerome Mansion, at which time the building was sold to a developer and subsequently was torn down. The Manhattan Club then moved to a suite of rooms at the Barclay Hotel previously occupied by the Cornell Club and thereafter functioned mainly as a luncheon club. Around 1979, its suites were converted into conference rooms and the Manhattan Club was closed.
Despite having been conceived as a Democratic Party bastion during the U.S. Civil War, in its later days, the members of the Manhattan Club were often decidedly Republican in sympathies. In 1954, a survey of the men's social clubs of Manhattan noted that the club had become "ninety percent Republican." A half-century earlier, the significant majority of members supported Republican William McKinley's bid for President of the United States, triggering letters of resignation from members who wanted it to be a Democratic Club.
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Wikipedia