The Playboy Club initially was a chain of nightclubs and resorts owned and operated by Playboy Enterprises. The first club opened at 116 E. Walton Street in downtown Chicago, Illinois, United States, on February 29, 1960. Each club generally featured a Living Room, a Playmate Bar, a Dining Room, and a Club Room. Members and their guests were served food and drinks by Playboy Bunnies, some of whom were featured in Playboy magazine. The clubs offered name entertainers and comedians in the Club Rooms, and in the Living Rooms were local musicians and the occasional close-up magician. Starting with the London and Jamaica club locations, the Playboy Club became international in scope. In 1991, with changing times, the club chain became defunct. In 2006, a few new clubs were re-launched, and as of 2012, there are operating clubs in Macao and Cancun. (The Las Vegas club closed on June 4, 2012.) Playboy will open its first club in India in December 2012. Playboy plans to open 120 clubs, bars, and cafes in India by 2022.
Hugh Hefner was inspired by Burton Brown's Chicago chain of Gaslight Clubs. The Gaslight Clubs opened in 1953, featuring women dressed in velvet, one-piece "bunny" type costumes and had live entertainment.
Read more about Playboy Club: History, Playboy Clubs in Popular Culture
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“The barriers of conventionality have been raised so high, and so strangely cemented by long existence, that the only hope of overthrowing them exists in the union of numbers linked together by common opinion and effort ... the united watchword of thousands would strike at the foundation of the false system and annihilate it.”
—Mme. Ellen Louise Demorest 1824–1898, U.S. women’s magazine editor and woman’s club movement pioneer. Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions, p. 203 (January 1870)