Cosmopolitan Club (New York)

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The Cosmopolitan Club is a private women's club in New York City, located on 66th Street on the Upper East Side. Members have included Willa Cather, Ellen Glasgow, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jean Stafford, Helen Hayes, Pearl Buck, Marian Anderson, Margaret Mead, and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller.

[edit] History

In 1909, a club for governesses named itself the Cosmos Club and leased space in the Gibson building on East 33rd Street.[1] This group became, in 1910, the Women's Cosmopolitan Club, "organized," according to the New York Times, "for the benefit of New York women interested in the arts, sciences, education, literature, and philanthropy or in sympathy with those interested." [2] On March 22, 1911 the club was formally incorporated,[3] with Helen Gilman Brown as its president.[4] Dues were twenty dollars a year.

Early joiners were novelists Willa Cather and Ellen Glasgow, violinist Katherine Parlow, sculptor Anna Hyatt, dancer Adeline Genee, and Grace Dodge, widow of General Custer. In 1913 club members put on "An Evening in a Persian Garden," with snake dancers and readings of Persian verse. The success of this fête led to an increase in membership; in 1914, the club moved to larger quarters uptown at 44th Street and Lexington Avenue, and the name was shortened to the Cosmopolitan Club.

By 1917, the Cosmopolitan Club had six hundred members, with another four hundred on its waiting list.[5] In December of that year, the club put on an exhibition of paintings by Pablo Picasso.[6]

Guest speakers in that era included poets Amy Lowell, Vachel Lindsay, and Siegfried Sassoon, educator Maria Montessori, and Mrs. Herbert Hoover.

In 1932, the club moved further uptown to its current home, a ten-story balconied building designed by Thomas H. Ellett, situated on 66th Street between Park and Lexington. The new building, which won the Architectural League's gold medal in 1932,[7] had twenty-five guest rooms.[8] Visiting musicians included Sergei Prokofiev, Nadia Boulanger, Count Basie, and Lotte Lenya; other invited luminaries were Robert Frost, Dorothy Thompson, and Edward R. Murrow.

Currently the club offers, according to its website, a place for women to "nourish their intellects; exercise their artistic impulses; cultivate friends; and freely exchange ideas."[9] Blue jeans and running shoes aren't allowed.[10]

[edit] References

  1. ^ "A Short History of The Cosmopolitan Club," Cosmopolitan Club website.
  2. ^ "Behind the Scenes with Author Shaw," New York Times, April 7, 1910.
  3. ^ "New Club for New York Women," New York Times, March 22, 1911.
  4. ^ "A Short History of The Cosmopolitan Club," Cosmopolitan Club website.
  5. ^ "Cosmopolitan Club Buys 2 Houses," New York Times, February 22, 1917.
  6. ^ Picasso and American Art, Michael C. FitzGerald.
  7. ^ Thomas Harlan Ellett Collection, University of Pennsylvania.
  8. ^ "High Quality Marks East Side Building," New York Times, November 20, 1932.
  9. ^ "History of the Cosmopolitan Club," Cosmopolitan Club website.
  10. ^ "General Information," Cosmopolitan Club website.