Harvard Club of New York City

 university, clubhouse

8-story Neo-Georgian clubhouse originally completed in 1894. Designed by McKim, Mead & White, it later has additions added in 1905 and 1915 by the original architect. The Harvard Club of New York City was founded in 1865. Within a year, there were 98 members who met at Delmonico’s restaurant and other rented quarters. By the early 1890s, with 600 members, a permanent home was needed, and ended up being built at 27 West 44th Street in 1894. The first addition - at the rear - included Harvard Hall, the Grill Room, a new library, a billiard room, and two floors of guest rooms. The second addition - of seven floors on the west - doubled the building’s size by constructing the Main Dining Room, a bar, additional guestrooms, banquet rooms, and athletic facilities including a 7th floor swimming pool. As the Great Depression ended and World War II began, the swimming pool area was floored over to create more sleeping rooms.

The main building is clad in limestone and red brick. The front elevation consists of a handsome motif, where a main entrance doorway at street level is surmounted by a central round-headed window, flanked by two pairs of limestone Ionic columns which rest on the 2nd floor ledge and support the delicately refined 3rd-floor cornice. Directly above this and centered between two windows is the handsomely carved shield of Harvard University. At the roof line, the stone coping, covering the brick parapet wall, supports a central crowning element composed of a star-studded stone ball flanked by two horizontally placed consoles. Flanking the central section are windows on each side, those on the 3rd floor being shorter than on the two lower floors. Each has a splayed stone lintel, and there are planter boxes below the ground-floor windows. Those on the 2nd floor have wrought-iron balconies, and are topped by stone panels of swags, above the lintels.

The west addition is two bays wide, and matches the original facade's end bays in materials and design, except that there are small horizontal windows instead of swag panels above the 2nd-floor windows, and the 3rd-floor windows have no lintels. The 4th & 5th floors also match, with stone cornices, and the double-height top level has three round-arches with alternating brick and stone impost blocks across the arches. Another stone cornice marks the roof line of the taller addition. The east-facing elevation of the addition matches the main, south facade, but with four bays of round-arches at the top.

The modern 2003 addition at the west end is clad in limestone and blue-green glass. There is a square glass curtain wall at the 2nd-4th floors, framed by projecting stone, and set-back upper floors that also have a curtain wall at the right, and indentations at the left from the curtain wall of single-windows at all four upper floors.

The north facade on 45th Street is very interesting and its design is considered by many to be equal in quality to that of the entrance facade. The low ground floor is faced in limestone, with low window openings covered by wrought-iron grilles. There is a center entrance in a recessed bay, and another doorway at the west end. There are four slightly-projecting bays; the two on the east have blind panels at the 2nd floor, and round-arched niches with keystones at the 3rd-4th floors. The western two have multi-paned windows, as do most of the other bays. This exterior wall contains 3-story round-headed windows set between brick pilasters, which light the great lounge, considered by many architectural historians to be the finest club room in America. At the east half, the arch top is flanked by a pair of limestone panels with crests, while at the west half, the arch top is flanked by small, stone-enframed windows that also appear in the other west-half bays. The corresponding east-half bays have stone panels instead. The entire north facade has a dentiled stone cornice running across the 5th floor, supported by Ionic capitals on the pilasters. The 6th floor has stone-enframed single-windows, with the center one in the main bay of the east side replaced by a large stone panel with the Harvard seal. Above another cornice, the top floor has green, triangular dormers for each window.

A modern-styled third addition in 2003 by David Brody Bond, and then an internal expansion was made around 2012 by Marvel Architects.

www.hcny.com
digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/c8e76340-1404-0136-e0...
hdl.handle.net/2027/uva.x001789125?urlappend=%3Bseq=639
architizer.com/projects/harvard-club-of-new-york-city/
marveldesigns.com/project/harvard-club-expansion/
www.knutehaglund.com/harvard-club