Metropolitan Club (New York City)

The Metropolitan Club is a private social club on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was originally founded as a gentlemen's club in 1891. The current building at Fifth Avenue and 60th Street was designed by McKim, Mead & White and completed in 1893.

History
The Metropolitan Club was formed in 1891 by J. P. Morgan, who served as its first president. It was actually the second organization with that name in its neighborhood. The New York Times reported on March 10, 1891, about the name selected two days previous:

There is already a Metropolitan Club, which for some years has occupied quarters in the neighborhood in which the millionaires think of building.

Other original members of the club included William Kissam Vanderbilt and James A. Roosevelt. "Each member, which included Vanderbilts and Whitneys, contributed $5,000 to buy the plot of land."

In May 1945, the Club was able to avoid bankruptcy by selling $1,800,000 in bonds to its membership of 800 men.

Clubhouse
The architects of the original building (erected in 1893) were McKim, Mead & White. Seeking the finest workmanship rather than necessarily the lowest bidder in April 1892, the firm signed on David H. King, Jr., as the general contractor. The east wing, erected in 1912, was designed by Ogden Codman Jr.

Its 1894 clubhouse, designed by Stanford White, stands at 1 East 60th Street, on the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue. The land on which the Clubhouse stands (with a frontage of 100 ft on Fifth Avenue and 200 ft on 60th Street) was acquired from the Duchess of Marlborough who signed the purchase agreement in the United States Consulate in London. Cornelius Vanderbilt II signed the purchase agreement on behalf of the club.

House rules
The Metropolitan Club maintains a dress code as part of its house rules:


 * Men must wear jackets and ties – "turtlenecks and ascots are not acceptable."
 * Ladies should wear "dresses, skirts, dressy pant suits, or business pant suits."
 * "Jeans, shorts, stirrup pants, leggings, stretch pants, tight pants, sweats and T-shirts are absolutely not acceptable."

Cell phones and laptops are prohibited in the Club except in private meeting rooms and bedrooms.

Activities
The club has had an ongoing involvement in the social life of the upper class, including fundraising, black tie balls, and sports.

Founding members

 * J. P. Morgan (1837–1913), financier, banker, philanthropist, art collector, and the club's founder and first president
 * John Lambert Cadwalader (1836–1914), lawyer
 * Robert Goelet (1841–1899), real estate developer
 * George G. Haven, Jr. (1866–1925), businessman
 * James A. Roosevelt (1825–1898), merchant
 * Cornelius Vanderbilt II (1843–1899), industrialist, philanthropist
 * William Kissam Vanderbilt (1849–1920), horse breeder
 * Monte Waterbury (1876–1920), businessman, polo player
 * William Collins Whitney (1841–1904), United States Secretary of the Navy, financier

Other notable members

 * Charles Pierrepont Henry Gilbert (1861–1952), architect
 * Charles H. Tenney (1842–1919), merchant and banker
 * Edward Eugene Loomis (1864–1937), railroad executive
 * Frederick Townsend Martin (1849–1914), writer and advocate for the poor
 * George Goelet Kip (1845-1926), lawyer
 * Guy Eastman Tripp (1865-1927), business executive and U.S. army general
 * James L. Holloway III (1922–2019), United States Navy admiral and naval aviator
 * James T. Woodward (1837–1910), banker
 * Jerauld Wright (1898–1995), United States Navy admiral
 * Larry Pressler (born 1942), Republican politician and the first Vietnam veteran to be elected to the United States Senate
 * Levi Parsons Morton (1824–1920), minister to France, Republican vice president under Benjamin Harrison, governor of New York and second president of The Metropolitan Club
 * Pippa Malmgren (born 1962), politics and policy expert
 * Edwin B. Parker (1868–1929), lawyer and public official
 * Ray Price (1930–2019), chief speechwriter of President Richard Nixon
 * Robert Maclay (1834–1898), merchant, business executive, and civic activist
 * Robert Winthrop (1833–1892), banker
 * Spruille Braden (1894–1978), diplomat, businessman, member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and past president
 * Walter Eli Clark (1869–1950), journalist and newspaper publisher
 * Walter J. Cummings, Jr. (1916–1999), United States Solicitor General and federal judge
 * William Astor Chanler (1867–1934), soldier, explorer, and United States Representative
 * William Dawes Miller (c. 1918–1993), engineer and past president
 * William L. Harkness (1858–1919), Standard Oil heir and philanthropist
 * Woodbury Kane (1859–1905), yachtsman and member of Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders