University Club of New York (New York City, New York)

 university, clubhouse, interesting place, 1899_construction, Renaissance Revival (architecture)

9-story Mediterranean Revival Italian Renaissance palazzo-style clubhouse completed in 1899. Designed by McKim, Mead and White with some structural elements by Guastavino Fireproof Tile Co., the building is particularly noted for its spectacular reading room (with ceiling murals by H. Siddons Mowbray modeled after the Vatican's Borgia Apartments), dining room, and the attempt made by the architects to disguise a 9-story building behind what seems to be a 3-story facade. Many of the lighting fixtures were produced by E.F. Caldwell & Co.

The University Club of New York (also known as University Club or UClub) is a private social club that received its charter in 1865, but the origins date back to the autumn of 1861 when a group of college friends, principally Yale alumni, founded the club hoping to extend their collegiate ties. The club is not affiliated with any other University Club or college alumni clubs.

By the 1890s, with its membership limited by the size of its building to 1,500 resident members and 900 who lived elsewhere, the Club was looking for a larger space, because it had nearly 600 people on a waiting list to join. It acquired the St. Luke's Hospital site and proceeded to seek an architecture firm. The firm of Charles McKim, William Mead and Stanford White, who were all members, got the architectural commission and went on to design what remains one of the grandest clubhouses of the city's prominent social clubs.

It is clad in rusticated granite, with a narrow wing extending to 55th Street. The handsome facade is divided into three main horizontal divisions separated by two strongly defined band courses; the first band course has a frieze with a row of crests, and the 2nd is dentiled. The east facade on the avenue is five bays wide, and the south facade on 54th Street extends seven bays, with a small 1-story connecting section spanning a light court to a final bay at the west end.

Each of the three divisions contains a row of large, double-height, round-arched windows with scrolled keystones topped by carved heroic heads. The first two divisions above street level have small, rectangular mezzanine windows above the arched windows, alternating with carved, marble shields; there are paired windows above the middle bay on both main facades. Each of the shields has a different design and Latin inscription. The small windows below the first band course have rounded iron railings.

The elaborate main entrance is in the middle of the seven main bays on the south facade. This dominant arched doorway is enframed by two offset pairs of handsome rusticated columns with ornate carved banding, supporting a heavily ornamented lintel and cornice. A set of low steps leads up to the glass double-doors and sidelights, topped by a curved glass-and-metal canopy and round-arched glass pane at the top, with a keystone bearing a carved face and flanking acanthus leaves.

The building corners are slightly projected, rising the full height of the building, to create a feeling of enframement and strength in this truly imposing structure. On the south facade there are three projecting stone balconies with ornate wrought-iron railings above the lower band course. The center one is wider, carried on two sets of paired console brackets, and the outer balconies are carried on single pairs of brackets. An enormous cartouche decorates the pair of mezzanine windows at the 2nd tier, with another central balcony across the dentiled band course, shorter than the one below it. Each of the balconies has rosettes carved on the undersides.

On the east facade there is a single wide balcony spanning the middle three bays at the first band course, and a narrower balcony at the 2nd band course. At the upper tier, the large round-arched windows have animal heads gracing the keystones. On the Fifth Avenue side, short attic windows are ingeniously worked into the frieze of the modillioned and dentiled cornice crowning the building. The cornice also features an egg-and-dart molding between the dentils and modillions.

The end section at the west end on 54th Street has a large, segmental-arched tripartite window at the ground floor, with another scrolled keystone bearing a heroic head. The small 1-story connecting section to the right has an iron gate. The end section rises five floors, with two bays of single-windows on the upper floors, and a stone balustrade above a frieze of garlands at the top. The inward-facing walls of the light well are brick with rusticated stone at the front edges. They have square-headed windows on the east-facing wall and a mixture of round-arched and smaller square-headed windows on the west-facing wall, following the pattern of the main facades. A stone bridge crosses the rear of the light well above the 5th floor, with stone balustraded railings above a frieze of garlands.

The smaller north wing annex fronting on 55th Street is plainer, with a 3-story base clad in stone (rusticated at the ground level), and buff-colored brick at the upper floors, with banded stone at the end piers. The facade is four bays wide, with small openings covered with iron grilles at three of the ground-floor bays, and a metal service door in the east bay. The extra-tall 2nd floor has round-arched windows above balusters, and the rest of the windows are smaller and square-headed, although those on the 4th, 6th, & 8th floors are topped by brick round-arches. The top floor has paneling betw
een each bay, and is topped by a dentiled cornice.

www.universityclubny.org/

www.universityclubny.org/files/UClubFinal.pdf
s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/0263.pdf
archive.org/details/landmarksofnewyo0006eddiam_h5l5/pag...
hdl.handle.net/2027/gri.ark:/13960/t43r7pv4g?urlappend=...
digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/e90631b0-5102-0134-9f...
digital-libraries.artic.edu/digital/collection/mqc/id/3...