The Clubs of Manhattan, Part 2 (of 3): Midtown

You can access a scrollable Google Map of the clubs of Midtown Manhattan by clicking HERE.

This is the middle section of a three-part overview of the private members’ clubs of New York - the city with the second-largest concentration of such clubs in the world. Part 1 looked at the Upper East Side, while Part 3 looks at Downtown and Midtown Manhattan.

The historic clubs can have an element of gentle competition between some of them - a theme picked up by Christopher Doob in his recent Social Inequality and Social Stratification in U.S. Society:

Old money prevails over new money as the Rockefeller family experience suggests. John D. Rockefeller, the family founder and the nation’s first billionaire, joined the Union League Club, a fairly respectable but not top-level club; John D. Rockefeller Jr., belonged to the University Club, a step up from his father; and finally his son John D. Rockefeller, III, reached the pinnacle with his acceptance into the Knickerbocker Club.

That being said, much of New York’s Clubland exists in non-competitive streams, either because clubs are clearly demarcated with an explicit theme, or because each has its own informal culture. However, this divide is less clear among some of the modern clubs.

As noted in Part 1 of this piece, there is some ambiguity as to what is and is not counted as a club, particularly with regards to establishments that overlap with ther functions. Here, I have tried to be consistent with the principles laid down in an appendix of my latest book, in stressing those organisations which are first and foremost social clubs with a shared clubhouse.

A range of themed clubs in Midtown

The New York Yacht Club. (Photo credit: New York Yacht Club website.)

The New York Yacht Club was founded in 1844. In its first 57 years, it led an itinerant existence across five clubhouses. Since 1901, it has occupied one of the most architecturally extravagant baroque clubhouses in the world, on West 44th Street, with both the interior and exterior modelled on the design of old galleons. Architects Warren & Wetmore won a competitive design competition for the Club. The Club’s vast model room, measuring 45 feet by 100 feet, displays over a thousand models yachts; and in World War II it was used to swear in new US Navy officers. The Club also hosts large-scale regattas from its separate station in Newport, Rhode Island.

The Century Association. (Photo credit: Century Association website.)

The Century Association was founded in 1847, as a merger of two pre-existing clubs, the Sketch Club for arts and literature, and the Column Club, for alumni of Columbia University. It was named after its initial one hundred members. Previously based on East 15th Street, the present clubhouse on West 43rd Street was completed in 1891 by the firm of McKim, Mead and White - each of whose three partners were members of the Club. Today it has a reputation for being fiercely scholarly as the club of choice for those in the arts and sciences, whether as professionals or as amateur authorities, with a sizeable diplomatic contingent. Members are known as “Centurions.”

The Union League Club. (Photo credit: Union League Club website.)

The Union League Club of New York was formed in 1863, as part of the generation of Union League Clubs, as in Chicago and Philadelphia, for northern supporters of the Union during the Civil War. But the specific spur to its formation was that the pre-existing Union Club of New York had refused expel its Confederate members, prompting a walkout by several members. The Club started its life on Union Square, at East 17th Street, and then in 1881 moved to Fifth Avenue at West 39th Street, until eventually settling in 1931 on its present East 37th Street building, designed by Benjamin Wistar Morris. One of the more political clubs, in the moderate Republican tradition, it has had seven Presidents of the United States, from Abraham Lincoln to George W. Bush.

The Amateur Comedy Club. (Photo credit: Amateur Comedy Club Facebook group.)

Described by Clubland USA as “Manhattan’s best kept secret”, the Amateur Comedy Club, otherwise known as “The Amateurs”, is a gentlemen’s-only club founded in 1884. The clubhouse in Murray Hill is on East 36th Street, and incorporates a working theatre, which is the oldest continuously operating theatre of its kind in the USA.

The Collectors Club’s new premises. (Photo credit: Collectors Club website.)

The Collectors Club of New York was established as a club for philatesists in 1896, and has long maintained a large collection of postage stamps, encompassing some 150,000 volumes of collated stamps. From 1939 until 2023, the Club occupied a McKim, Mead and White-designed townhouse on East 35th Street, until it was sold to the Serbian government. Since 2024, the Club has leased mezzanine-level rooms on West 40th Street, overlooking Bryant Park.

The Brook. (Photo credit: Wikimedia Foundation.)

In many ways the city’s most socially elite club is The Brook, a gentlemen’s club founded in 1903. It takes its name from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem of that name, and particularly its observation, “For men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever.” With a smattering of overseas aristocracy and royalty among the members, it is New York’s nearest equivalent to White’s. The 1925 building on East 54th Street, styled after the smaller, well-proportioned clubhouses of 18th century London, was designed by William Adams Delano, of Delano & Aldrich, and is decorated with oil paintings of hunting and racing scenes.

The Nippon Club. (Photo credit: John W. Cahill/Skyscraper Center.)

The Nippon Club is a unique institution, a club founded by prominent chemist Jōkichi Takamine in 1905, as a social club for Japanese Americans. In a reverse of the common pattern of Manhattan clubs moving uptown over the years, it was originally based much further uptown on Riverside Drive at West 105th Street, moving in 1908 to West 85th Street. That clubhouse was seized by the US government and sold off during World War II, but the Club resumed its activities after the war, opening a building on Riverside Drive at West 72nd Street in 1956. In 1991, it settled on its current home, a large, modern skyscraper on West 57th Street, designed in the Japanese style by Norboru Uenishi.

The Women’s National Republican Club. (Photo credit: New York Post.)

The process of women being granted the vote nationally in 1920 resulted in a dash to incorporate new women voters into political culture - and the creation of women’s political clubs. A survivor of this era is the Women’s National Republican Club, a ladies’ club founded in 1921. Its roots went back over a decade earlier, in the women’s suffrage meetings convened by Henrietta Wells Livermore in her home. The Club’s first address was a loft on West 39th Street, and it moved in 1924 to East 37th Street, before settling on its current home in 1934, building a neo-Georgian clubhouse on West 51st Street. The fourth-floor library, dedicated by President Coolidge, remains the Calvin Coolidge Library.

The River Club. (Photo credit: Courts Club website.)

Long a centre of the city’s high society, the River Club of New York was founded in 1931 by Kermit Roosevelt, Mollie Davis, Robert Sturgis Potter, Robert Early Strawbridge Jr., and James Whitney Barney. Unusually for its time, the River Club was mixed-sex from its inception - the emphasis was on social distinction, not gender, and it has long stresssed being a family club. It is located on the lower floors of an Art Deco building between 52nd and 53rd Streets, overlooking the East River.

Large facilities in Midtown

The Racquet & Tennis Club. (Photo credit: Wikimedia Foundation.)

Some of Manhattan’s clubs are huge. Gargantuan, in fact. They deserve mention in a category of their own, as they include some of the world’s largest city clubs. Three in particular come to mind, starting with the Racquet and Tennis Club, a gentlemen’s club on Park Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Streets. Its predecessor club was founded in 1876, as the Racquet Court Club on West 26th Street, before it merged in 1890 into the new Racquet and Tennis Club, moving the following year to West 43rd Street. The current clubhouse, built by William Symmes Richardson of McKim, Mead and White, dates to 1916, and offers extensive indoor court facilities on the upper floors. It is considered one of the premier racquet clubs of the world, and parallels can be seen in later racquet clubs in north American cities such as Boston, Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Toronto. The Club was also responsible for developing the rules of modern-day backgammon.

The rear of the New York Athletic Club, seen from 58th Street. (Photo credit: John W. Cahill/Skyscraper Center.)

Another gargantuan clubhouse is the New York Athletic Club on 59th Street/Central Park South. It was founded in 1868 by John C. Babcock, William Buckingham Curtis, and Harry Buermeyer, building on the enormous success of the gymnasium they had opened two years earlier. They claimed their inspiration from the London Athletic Club in Brompton. Originally convening on a track at Mott Haven in the Bronx, it grew to maintain a string of facilities around New York city. These were consolidated in 1929, by the construction of the present 24-storey clubhouse overlooking Central Park, which encompasses athletics and aquatics, as well as the full range of social facilities. A country facility exists just north of the city, at Travers Island, overlooking the Long Island Sound.

The entrance to the Yale Club. (Photo credit: American Club website.)

The Yale Club of New York City holds the record for the largest city club in the world, by internal volume. Founded in 1897 for alumni of Yale University, it spent its first four years in a rented mansion on East 26th Street, before opening a purpose-built clubhouse on West 44th Street which is today used by the Penn Club (see below). In 1915, it moved to its present clubhouse, a 22-storey skyscraper on Vanderbilt Avenue, next to Grand Central Station, designed by Yale alumnus James Gamble Rogers. Much of the building is given over to accommodation. The Club also deserves to be listed alongside the university clubs below, which make up “Clubhouse Row”.

University Clubs in Midtown

The area west of Grand Central Station is noted for its high concentration of clubs around the mid-40s, dubbed “Clubhouse Row.” Most of these are university clubs, formed for alumni of some of America’s most prominent universities. Indeed, there used to be more of them - some have closed down, like the old Williams Club on East 39th Street, in 2010, and the former Princeton Club on West 43rd Street, in 2021. (The New York Yacht Club, mentioned above, is a notable exception, being a non-university club at the heart of “Clubhouse Row,” neighbouring the Harvard Club, and facing the Penn Club.)

The University Club, seen from Fifth Avenue. (Photo credit: Wikimedia Foundation.)

One outlier several blocks to the north of this cluster is the University Club of New York on West 54th Street, which is not formally affiliated with any single university, but which is only open to university graduates. It had informal roots as the Red Circle Club formed in 1861, which was reconstituted by an act of the New York state legislature in 1865 as the University Club, and it initially led a cash-strapped existence, being based out of members’ houses, first on East 10th Street, and then on East 26th Street. But by the 1880s it had accumulated a large library and considerable wealth, and the 1890s saw the construction of the present vast, opulent clubhouse. Designed by Charles Follen McKim of McKim, Mead and White, it was completed in 1899.

The Harvard Club, with the various extensions visible. (Photo credit: New York Times.)

The same architect, McKim of McKim, Mead and White, also built the Harvard Club of New York on West 44th Street. The club’s informal roots date to 1865 as an association of Harvard alumni in the city, but it was formally incorporated in 1887. The Club acquired the land the following year, being based in a rented mension on West 22nd Street while it developed the site into a distinct neo-Georgian clubhouse in 1894. There were further enlargements made to the building in 1915 (by McKim), and then again in 1989.

The Cornell Club’s clubhouse. (Photo credit: Cornell Alumni website.)

A university club in a very different style is the Cornell Club of New York, founded in 1889. It had an itinerant existence in the 20th century, occupying six clubhouses, the longest-lasting of which was on Park Avenue at 38th Street, from 1901 until 1939. In 1989, it opened its current clubhouse on East 44th Street, a converted 14-storey office formerly used by the Chicago Pneumatic Tool Company, which was redecorated by Gensler & Associates. The interior décor today, in grey with red trim, still stands as a testament to 1980s design.

The main entrance of the Penn Club. (Photo credit: Wikimedia Foundation.)

Last but not least, the Penn Club of New York City, for alumni of the University of Pennsylvania, was incorporated in 1900, building on alumni gatherings of the previous fifteen years. Like the Cornell Club, it moved between six different addresses in the 20th century (at one stage even sharing a clubhouse with the Cornell Club), until in 1989 it settled on its present location, on West 44th Street. The 1901-built 11-storey building by Tracy and Swartwout, originally built for the Yale Club, was the first clubhouse to be built as a skyscraper, with an additional three storeys added after the Penn Club’s 1989 renovations.

New Clubs in Midtown

While most of New York’s more recent clubs are focused Downtown and in Lower Manhattan, a few are still found in Midtown.

CORE now occupies the upper floors of this building. (Photo credit: New York Social Diary website.)

One of the larger new clubs is CORE: Club, which was established by Reebok Sports Club founder Jennie Enterprise in 2005. For most of its existence it has been in a large facility on East 55th Street, though a recent move in 2023 means that it is now across four floors of a building on Fifth Avenue, between 55th and 56th Streets. Its hefty initiation fees, ranging from $50,000 for individuals (though with discounted rates of $15,000 for younger members) to $100,000 for families, were at the forefront of the recent phenomenon of “initiation fee inflation” among city clubs, and they have been much reported upon. A new branch in Milan has been announced.

Aman, which is mostly a luxury hotel, but also has several floors of club facilities. (Photo credit: SHVO website.)

A prime example of the modern breed of hotel-clubs is Aman, which opened in 2022 on Fifth Avenue, between 56th and 57th Streets. The hotel offers 83 suites and 22 residences, as well as a members’ area. It is owned by the Aman Group, a resort chain which is controlled by Russian-born billionaire Vlad Doronin. The initiation fee is $200,000.

Moss is contained within this building. (Photo credit: 520 Fifth Avenue website.)

And the latest arrival to the new clubs on Fifth Avenue is Moss, sandwiched between 43rd and 44th Streets, which opened earlier in 2025. Founded by sisters Colleen and Hailey Brooks, Colleen’s background is in finance, and Hailey’s is in trend forecasting. They had planned to launch a “Highcourt Leisure Club” in mid-2020, but this was a victim of the pandemic, and Moss sees a more esoteric offering, with facilities like a hammam and vinyl lounge, alongside more typical wellness offerings found in comparable modern clubs.

For the conclusion of this feature, see Part 3, which looks at the clubs of Downtown and Midtown Manhattan.

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