Penn Club of New York City - History of The Penn Club

History of The Penn Club

In November 1886, the first local group of University of Pennsylvania alumni outside of Philadelphia was formed in New York at a dinner at Delmonico's Restaurant. At the alumni group's annual banquet at The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in January, 1900, they presented a plan to secure "a convenient suite of rooms in the middle of the city, adjacent to a cafe." Thereafter, on October 6, 1900, the University of Pennsylvania's Club of New York opened in four ground-floor rooms in the Royalton Hotel, just 200 feet (61 m) west of today's clubhouse. The Penn Club soon had more than 150 members at a time when only 400 alumni lived in the New York area. The Penn Club received its charter from the New York Legislature in 1901.

In 1905, the Club moved to "new and commodious quarters" in the Hotel Stanley at 124 West 47th Street, where it remained until 1910. Between 1911 and 1922, however, the Club did away with a clubhouse, instead focusing on their annual banquet. In 1922, after a three-year search, the Club's directors leased two townhouses on East 50th Street, next to what today is the New York Palace Hotel.

Throughout the 1920s, the Penn Club on East 50th Street was active and successful. Its dining and guest rooms were regularly filled and its dinners and programs were highly attended. The Great Depression, though, quickly hit the Club hard, and it vacated its townhouses in 1935. Thereafter, it shared space in the Cornell Club on East 38th Street, moved to two other clubs, and finally settled in the Phi Gamma Delta Club on West 56th Street, where it remained until 1961, when it moved to the Biltmore Hotel. The Club stayed in the Biltmore Hotel until the hotel was gutted and made an office tower in 1981 by the late Paul Milstein. After two years of construction, the Club moved to its current location.