University Club

University Club
Life Span: 1909-Present
Location: 76 E Monroe
Architect: Holabird & Roche

Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago, 1911
University Club of Chicago 76 E Monroe

Chicago Tribune, April 3, 1909

Rah, rah. rah! night at the University club!

The new $1,100,000 Michigan avenue clubhouse is to be dedicated tonight, and the program of festivities, fantastic and elaborate in conception, and which has been long in the making, is to be dominated by college spirit, the old, exuberant, ear splitting, “rip ’em up,” “tear ’em loose” brand. College spirit from scores of campuses, east and west, north and south, is scheduled to echo through the halls and corridors. That the affair is to be of an informal character is the word that has gone out in notices to 1,500 members from the inaugural and arrangements committees.

Bid Old Quarters Farewell.
At 8:30 o’clock members will meet at the old clubhouse on Dearborn street. Speeches significant of the departure from the old place and farewell songs are to be sung.

A march will then be made to the new building at Michigan avenue and Monroe streets. There various rooms have been assigned to the several college groups. In these rooms club members will find regalia that will put to shame those of the average Mardi Gras revelers. They will raiment of divers and sundry hues and fearfully and wonderfully made.

From the college rooms, processions will proceed to the banquet hall on the top floor, which has been chalked off into for each college. Delegations representative of Yale. Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, Chicago, Michigan, and other institutions will each occupy a plat and from these centers double barreled pandemonium is expected to radiate to the end of the meeting.

Yale and Harvard groups of the University club membership claim 125 each. Other colleges which have big representations are Chicago, Michigan, and Wisconsin universities. Cornell, Princeton, and Northwestern.

Scattered Colleges in Group.
One large group is made up of representatives of educational institutions that have only one or two members in the University club. Still another consists of physicians.

The regalia, which has been prepared under cover of great secrecy, is expected to dazzle the eyes of guests. Northwestern university men are to be clad in purple gowns, will carry purple canes and purple chrysanthemums. Crimson sashes will mark the Harvard men. Fezes of blue will top the suits worn by sons of Yale. The west will strive to outdo the east in elaborateness of attire.

In the banquet hail a pipe organ has been installed and to this will be added an orchestra of twenty-five pieces and the University Glee club of seventy-five members. One at a time the college songs and the yells of the institutions represented will be sung and cheered.

Glee Club Long in Rehearsal.
The new University Glee club, which includes many of the members, has been in rehearsal several weeks for the performance.

Ten immense banners, representing as many colleges and universities, are lodged in a balcony at one end of the banquet hall. Waved by a battery of electric fans, these will be thrown out over the heads of the members and their guests. and as each new pennant appears it will be the signal for its alma mater’s peculiar combination of yells.

The procession of colleges will be under the direction of Edward S. Rogers.

Arrangements for the opening have been in charge of the following committee: Angus Hibbard, chairman; George S. Isham, Harold F. McCormick, Edward S. Rogers, and George F. Porter.

Architectural Record, July, 1910

It has been a subject of regret among Illinois architects that no representation of the new University Club House appeared in the last exhibition of the Architectural Club; otherwise it would have been a close, if not successful, competitor for the medal. But it is a condition of the award that the only buildings eligible are those which are in some way exhibited.

Architectural Record, April, 1912

Chicago Tribune, April 21, 1978

Private clubs are changing their ways
All new members aren’t out of Social Register
By Michael Edgerton
One recent chilly day a seedy-looking young man and his girlfriend entered the vestibule of the University Club at 76 E. Monroe St. in search of warmth. They were politely informed by the doorman that they were in a private club.

A brief colloquy ensued:
“These places are for rich people,” the young man remarked.

“You have to be a university graduate to get in,” the doorman replied.

“So you have to be rich and smart to belong,” the young man said. Thus misinformed, he pulled his companion out into the freezing air.

When the University Club was founded in 1887, its most important membership requirement was graduation from a recognized university. Because degrees were less common then than they are today, membership was therefore more exclusive.

But even today, had the young visitors surveyed the membership list posted just inside the club’s door, they probably wouldn’t have recognized many names. Most of the club’s members more likely would be recognized by their peers in the management ranks at corporations, banks, and utilities and in the professions. Clubs these days aren’t just havens for the blue-bloods of the Social Register.

The University Club, like other private clubs in Chicago and across the country, has been under pressure to open its doors wider in recent years by declining membership and rising costs. There also have been periodic challenges from would-be members eager to abolish the right of private clubs to choose their own membership.

Unlike many clubs the University Club has responded by changing its ways. It has aggressively sought out new, young members, has hired a seasoned professional manager instead of giving the post to an old retainer, and has admitted more than two dozen women since November, 1976.

Despite stiff competition from downtown restaurants, country clubs, and popular private luncheon clubs, the University Club’s membership has begun to climb. About 2,200 members live within 40 miles of the club; another 1,000 live beyond that radius.

Who are these people?

“I wouldn’t characterize them as rich, but rather as success- or achievement-oriented,” says Michael Krauss, an advertising executive who recently joined..

University Club

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