Porcellian Club

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Porcellian Club
Location 1320-24 Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge, Massachusetts
MPS Cambridge MRA
NRHP Reference # 83000824
Added to NRHP June 30, 1983
A menu from a dinner at the Porcellian Club 1884 (original in the Buttolph collection of menus, NYPL)

The Porcellian Club is a men-only final club at Harvard University, sometimes called the Porc or the P.C. The year of founding is usually given as 1791, when a group began meeting under the name "the Argonauts,"[1] or as 1794, the year of the roast pig dinner at which the club, known first as "the Pig Club"[2] was formally founded. The club's motto, Dum vivimus vivamus (while we live, let us live) is literally Epicurean. The club emblem is the pig and some members sport golden pigs on watch-chains or neckties bearing pig's-head emblems.[3][4] The club was originally started by a group of 30 students from Massachusetts who wanted to avoid the dining halls and their food by roasting pigs.

The Porcellian is the iconic "hotsy-totsy final club,"[5] often bracketed with Yale's Skull and Bones, Princeton's Ivy Club, Dartmouth's Sphinx, University of Cambridge's Pitt Club, Cornell University's Quill and Dagger, and University of Oxford's Gridiron Club. A history of Harvard calls the Porcellian "the most final of them all."[6] Also, an urban legends website mentions a belief that "if members of the Porcellian do not earn their first million before they turn 40, the club will give it to them."[7]

Founding

According to a Harvard Crimson article of February 23, 1887:
This society was established in 1791. It occupies rooms on Harvard street and owns a library of some 7000 volumes. Its members are taken from the senior, junior and sophomore classes about eight from each class. The origin of its name is popularly supposed to be as follows:

In the year 1791, a student brought a pig into his room in Hollis. In those days the window-seats were merely long boxes with lids, used to store articles in. Said student having an antipathy to the proctor who roomed beneath, was accustomed to squeeze piggy's ears and make him squeal whenever said proctor was engaged in the study of the classics. The result would be a rush by the proctor for the student's rooms, where the student was to be found studying (?), peacefully seated on his window-seat. Piggy, in the mean time had been deposited beneath, and no sound disturbed the tranquillity of the scene. On the departure of the hated proctor, a broad grin would spread over the countenance of the joker and in a little while the scene would be repeated with variations. But when it was rumored that his room was to be searched by the faculty, the joker determined to cheat them of their prey. So he invited some of his classmates to the room and the pig being cooked, all present partook of a goodly feast. They enjoyed their midnight meal so much that they determined then and there to form a club and have such entertainments periodically. In order to render historical the origin of the club and also to give it a classic touch, they decided to call it the Porcellian from Latin "porcus."

In 1831, the society bearing the name of the "Order of the Knights of the Square Table" was joined to the Porcellian, as "the objects and interests of the two societies were identical."

Clubhouse

Known to members as the "Old Barn",[8] the Porcellian clubhouse is located at 1324 Massachusetts Avenue above the store of clothier J. August. The building was designed by the architect and clubmember William York Peters.[9] Its entrance faces the Harvard freshman dormitories and the entrance to Harvard Yard called the Porcellian, or McKean, Gate. The gate was donated by the club in 1901 and features a limestone carving of a boar's head.[10] Access to the clubhouse is strictly limited to members, but non-members are allowed in the first floor room known as the Bicycle Room.

Despite the exclusivity and mystique, some, like National Review columnist/editor, Ronald Reagan speechwriter and Dartmouth emeritus professor of English Jeffrey Hart, have noted the club's modest physical and metaphorical character. Hart (who had never actually been inside the club) wrote:

...To illustrate, may I invoke Harvard's famous Porcellian, an undergraduate club of extraordinary exclusiveness? ... [I]t is devilishly hard to join. But there is nothing there, hardly a club at all. The quarters consist entirely of a large room over a row of stores in Harvard Square. There is a bar, a billiards table and a mirror arranged so that members can sit and view Massachusetts Avenue outside without themselves being seen. That's it...Porcellian is the pinnacle of the Boston idea. Less is more. Zero is a triumph.[11]

Harvard Crimson, the university newspaper, published pictures of the interior.[12]

A portrait of George Washington Lewis, entitled "The Steward (Lewis of the Porcellian)" by Joseph DeCamp hangs in the clubhouse. An obituary in TIME Magazine on April 1, 1929 notes:

George Washington Lewis, of Cambridge, Mass., for over 45 years the esteemed Negro steward of the Porcellian Club at Harvard College; in Cambridge, Mass. Ancient and most esoteric of Harvard clubs is Porcellian, founded in 1791.* An oil portrait of Steward Lewis hangs in the clubhouse. Steward Lewis had ten Porcellian pallbearers.

Historical significance

Theodore Roosevelt and other members of the Roosevelt family belonged to the club, but Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was president of the Harvard Crimson, never managed to be elected a member. At some time, in his late thirties, he told his relative Sheffield Cowles that this had been "the greatest disappointment in his life".[13] Harvard graduate Joseph P. Kennedy was also blackballed from the Porcellian Club; a biographer writes that "For years later, Joe Kennedy remembered the day he didn't make the Porcellian Club, the most desired in his mind, realizing that none of the Catholics he knew at Harvard had been selected."[14]

An 1870 travel book said:

A notice of Harvard would be as incomplete without a reference to the Porcellian Club as a notice of Oxford or Cambridge would be in which the Union Debating Society held no place. This and the Hasty Pudding Club, an organization for performing amateur theatricals, are the two lions of Harvard. The Porcellian Club is hardly a place of resort for those who cultivate the intellect at the expense of the body. The list of active members is small, owing in part to the largeness of the annual subscription. The great desire of every student is to become a member of it... the doings of the club are shrouded in secrecy... All that can be said by a stranger who has been privileged to step behind the scenes is that the mysteries are rites which can be practised without much labor and yield a pleasure which is fraught with no unpleasant consequences.[15]

A telling indication of the position of the Porcellian in the Boston establishment is given by an historian of Boston's Trinity Church, H. H. Richardson's architectural masterpiece. In speculating as to why Richardson was chosen, he writes:

the thirty-four-year-old possessed one great advantage over the other candidates: as a popular Harvard undergraduate he had been a member of several clubs, including the prestigious Porcellian; thus he needed no introduction to the rector, Phillips Brooks, or five of the eleven-man building committee—they were all fellow Porcellian members."[16]

Membership criteria

A biography of Norman Mailer says that when he was at Harvard "it would have been unthinkable... for a Jew to be invited to join one of the so-called final clubs like Porcellian, A.D. Club, Fly, or Spee."[17] A history of Harvard notes the decline in Boston Brahmin influence at Harvard during the last quarter of the 1900s, and says "a third of [the presidents of the Final Clubs] were Jewish by 1986 and one was black. The Porcellian... took an occasional Jew and in 1983 (to the horror of some elders) admitted a black—who had gone to St. Paul's."[6]

More recent information on the membership of the Porcellian Club may be found in a 1994 Harvard Crimson article by Joseph Mathews. He writes, "Prep school background, region and legacy status do not appear to be the sole determinants of membership they may once have been, but ... they remain factors."[8]

Joseph McKean Gate

In 1901 a gate to Harvard Yard, directly opposite the clubhouse, was erected. According to a notice published in the Harvard Crimson, on March 20, 1909:

A gate is to be erected at the entrance to the Yard between Wadsworth House and Boylston Hall. It is to be erected by members of the Porcellian Club in memory of Joseph McKean 1794, S.T.D., LL.D. Boylston Professor of Rhetoric, Oratory and Elocution, and also the founder of the Porcellian Club.

The gate features prominently the symbol of the club, the pig's head and is a famous Harvard landmark.

Notable members

According to a 1940 Time article:[21]

The Pork had as members James Russell Lowell, the two famed Oliver Wendell Holmeses (the author of Autocrat of the Breakfast Table and the Supreme Court Justice), Owen Wister, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, President Theodore Roosevelt (the Franklin Roosevelts go Fly Club). Among its living members are Massachusetts' Governor Leverett Saltonstall, Congressman Hamilton Fish, Yachtsman Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, Poloist Thomas Hitchcock Jr., U. S. Ambassador to Italy William Phillips, Journalist Joseph Alsop, Richard Whitney, now of Sing Sing Prison, of whom all good Porkies prefer not to speak. The Pore is very much a family affair. Upon its roster, generation after generation, appear the same proud Boston names—Adams, Ames, Amory, Cabot, Gushing, etc.

According to a note to the obituary of the Club Steward on Monday, April 1, 1929, in Time:

The Porcellian roster includes Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., Poet Oliver Wendell Holmes, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Nicholas Longworth, Poet James Russell Lowell, Richard Henry (Two Years Before the Mast) Dana, Novelist Owen Wister, John Jay Chapman. The club's favorite brew is a mixture of beer and gin.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Sheldon, Henry Davidson (1901). Student Life and Customs. D. Appleton. , p. 171: source for 1791 origins as the "Argonauts;" later named "The Pig Club", "The Gentlemen's Club", finally "The Porcellian". "Small as the membership has been, the roll of graduates shows many of the most famous of the Sons of Harvard, including Wendell Phillips, Channing, [Joseph] Story, [Edward] Everett, Prescott, Adams, Palfrey, Charles Sumner, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell and John Lothrop Motley." Online at Google Books
  2. ↑ Shand-Tucci, Douglas (2001). Harvard University. Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 1-56898-280-1.  p. 89: "...Harvard's still-extant Porcellian Club, which arose out of a legendary dinner of roast pig (hence the club's name) in 1794 at Moore's Tavern. Unlike [Phi Beta Kappa], the Porcellian's motto, Dum Vivimus Vivamus, indicates that they were not beguiled by concerns academical or even literary, but, rather by pure conviviality.
  3. ↑ Sedgwick, John, "Brotherhood of the Pig", GQ: Gentlemen's Quarterly 58 (November 1988), p. 30, as quoted by Horwitz, Richard P. (1998). Hog Ties : Pigs, Manure and Mortality in American Culture. Palgrave MacMillan. ISBN 0-312-21443-X.  pp. 27-28: ""My father was generally oblivious to the animal world, but he did have an unusual affection for pigs. Around our house... he had porcelain pigs, ceramic pigs, carved pigs, embroidered pigs, painted pigs.... They overran our living-room mantelpiece, swept over the tabletops, covered his bureau, popped up on his cuff links, watch chain and ties and even appeared on our drinking glasses and saltcellar.... Why all these pigs? Because my father was a Brother Porcellian... the pig is the club's emblem."
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Schlesinger, Arthur Meier (2003) [1958]. The Coming of the New Deal. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-618-34086-6.  p. 461. [NYSE president] Richard Whitney "had attended Groton and Harvard.... his clubs were the Links, the Turf, the Field, the Racquet and the Knickerbocker; from his watch chain there dangled the gold pig of Harvard's Porcellian."
  5. ↑ Myrer, Anton (2002). The Last Convertible. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-093405-0.  p. 130, "I ... pulled up in front of the Porcellian or Sphinx or Onyx or whichever hotsy-totsy final club it was"
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Keller, Morton; Phyllis Keller (2001). Making Harvard Modern: The Rise of America's University. Oxford University Press U.S. ISBN 0-19-514457-0.  p. 472
  7. ↑ Mann, Elizabeth (1993), "The First Abridged Dictionary of Harvard Myths", The Harvard Independent December 9, 1993 pp.10-11 as quoted by the alt.folklore.urban website in Harvard Legends
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Matthews, Joe (1994). The Harvard Crimson, March 5, 2004
  9. ↑ http://www.bullworks.net/virtual/signat/peters.htm
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Gewertz, Ken (2005) "Enter to grow in wisdom: A tour of Harvard's gates". The Harvard Gazette (a publication of the Harvard News Office), December 15, 2005
  11. ↑ Hart, Jeffrey (1996) "What is American?". National Review, 48, (April 22, 1996); Online at , p4
  12. ↑ "In Da Club". The Harvard Crimson: FM Magazine, (February 6, 2003). Archived online October 26, 2004 at
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Frances Richardson Keller, Fictions of U. S. History : A Theory & Four Illustrations, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2002, p. 116.
  14. ↑ Thomas Maier (2004). The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-04317-8. , p. 72
  15. ↑ Rae, W. Fraser (1870). Westward by Rail: The New Route to the East. Longmans, Green, And Co.  p. 354-5. Google Books text
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 O'Gorman, James F. (2004). The Makers of Trinity Church in the City of Boston. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-436-7.  p. 14
  17. ↑ Dearborn, Mary (2001). Mailer: A Biography. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-618-15460-4.  p. 23
  18. ↑ Beam, Alex (2002). Gracefully Insane: The Rise and Fall of America's Premier Mental Hospital. Public Affairs. ISBN 1-891620-75-4.  p. 174: "After a stint on Bowditch Hall, where Robert Lowell immortalized Louis Agassiz Shaw II as 'Bobbie...'" Beam quotes two pages of "Walking in the Blue", apparently as an introduction to the book, just before Chapter I.
  19. ↑ "How the mentally ill have been treated — and mistreated — in America", Chicago Tribune, May 15, 2002.
  20. ↑ LaFerla, Ruth (2002), "Where the Upper Crust Crumbled Politely"; The New York Times, (Review of Alex Beam's book, Gracefully Insane). July 28, 2002
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 21.3 21.4 "The Pore" Time Magazine, February 26, 1940 website archive
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