California Club

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The California Club is a prestigious private social club established in 1887 in downtown Los Angeles, California. It is the oldest private social club in Southern California. The California Club has always been a vital factor in the business, social, cultural and civic life of the City of Los Angeles and its environs. The Club's membership has included the pioneers, the first families, and generations of the leading citizens prominent in finance, industry, commerce, the professions and in most all walks of life, while its non-resident members include many of the prominent people of the nation. Membership, which is by invitation only, is open to both men and women, without regard to race, religion or national origin. Originally founded as a private gentlemen's club, women have been admitted as members since 1987.

Construction on the current clubhouse, located at 538 South Flower Street, Los Angeles, California, was commenced in late 1928 and completed on August 25, 1930. The building was designed Robert D. Farquhar, an architect trained at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris. The American Institute of Architects awarded Farquhar its Distinguished Honor Award for the design of the California Club building.^[1] The clubhouse has numerous dining rooms, private meeting rooms, sleeping rooms, bars, a library, business center, gym, saunas, steam rooms and other facilities for its members and guests. The Club has a nationally reputed chef on staff and is known in Southern California for gourmet dining and its extensive wine cellar.

In addition to fine antiques and handcrafted furniture, the clubhouse is decorated with an important collection of western-themed, plein air paintings by such American landscape painters as J. Bond Francisco, Elmer Wachtel, Franz A. Bischoff, George Kennedy Brandriff, William Wendt and Paul Lauritz.

[edit] History

The California Club was founded on May 20, 1887 and was incorporated under the laws of the State of California on December 24, 1888, just a little over a century after the founding of Los Angeles in 1781 by Governor Felipe de Neve. For nearly a hundred years until 1880, Los Angeles was a tiny, sleepy Mexican Village. The Club was established when Los Angeles was still a small Spanish-English speaking pueblo of perhaps 35,000 people, with its few cable cars, gas lights, horse-drawn vehicles and unpaved streets, nurtured by its livestock, vines and fruit orchards.

Los Angeles oranges, which just three years before had taken the blue ribbon at the New Orleans Cotton Exposition, the red wines from her vineyards, her green olives - these three symbols reflected in the yellow, red and green vertical stripes of the present-day official city flag - bespoke the agricultural background of that early day. Her oil was as yet a mere potential. Her industry and commerce were relatively non-existent. And the movies had not yet been a dream. A decade before, the Southern Pacific Railroad had pushed down through the San Joaquin Valley to link this pueblo with the railroad world. Three years before the opening of the Club, the Santa Fe steamed its first transcontinental locomotive into town, precipitating a severe rate war. Out of this arose the tourist business, which in turn sowed the seed of Southern California in the East as a health resort.

The real estate "boom" of 1885-87 brought the first wave of American immigrants in such numbers that the population doubled in just two years. Charles Dudley Warner's book, "Our Italy," was written after a visit here and did much to sell this section of the West Coast to the world. Travelers of all types - particularly excursionists and home-seekers - came in droves. Many of the nation's elite and wealthy also "discovered" Los Angeles, arriving in their private railway cars.

This is the atmosphere in which The California Club was founded, with the days of the "gay nineties" - and their problems of the harbor and aqueducts - and the far distant years of the twenty-first century - with their movies, airports and networks of highways and freeways serving a city of four million and a county of ten million - still in the future.

The Club's first location was in the second floor rooms over the Tally-Ho Stables at the Northwest corner of First and Fort (now Broadway) Streets, where the Los Angeles County Law Library now stands. Here the Club remained until the Wilcox Building at the Southeast corner of Second and Spring Streets had been completed. It moved there in 1895, occupying the two top floors, the fourth and fifth. This building was locally distinguished as the first in this city of seventy-five thousand to have two elevators - one for the public and the other for Members of The California Club. The men's dining room, reading room, bar and lounge were on the top floor with a good view of the city. On the floor below was the ladies' dining room.

The Club remained at the Wilcox Building for ten years, until the really meteoric growth of Los Angeles started, and increased Membership forced the Club to seek a new location in the direction of the expansion of the city, South and West. In 1904 it was moved to the northwest corner of Fifth and Hill Streets. This third residence was a new five-story, modern, Club-owned building with basement and roof garden and all the modern conveniences of the day.

As Los Angeles approached a million-and-a-half population mark - at the end of the 1920's - Club members realized that even these quarters were becoming inadequate, not alone because of the growing membership but also because of limited parking and garage facilities. The purchase of land at 538 South Flower Street was negotiated and in 1929 the present distinctive modern structure was built.

David L. Clark, A History of The California Club, 1887-1997. Maynard McFie, The History of The California Club.