Metropolitan Club Building

History and architecture

Described by the 19th-century architectural historian Montgomery Schuyler as "the largest, most imposing, and most luxurious of the club-houses of New York" the Metropolitan Club Building was designed by Stanford White, a partner in the firm of McKim, Mead & White, and was built between 1892 and 1894.2 Executed on a grand scale in a restrained Italian Renaissance manner, the building incorporated the prestige and dignity of the Club's founding numbers.

Located at the foot of What was becoming "Millionaires Row," the site was part of the newest and most fashionable districts in the city. Since the beginning of the 19th century, well-to-do New Yorkers had moved their residences progressively uptown in advance of the commercial development which was expanding northward from lower Manhattan. By the 1880s the elegant Vanderbilt chateaux characterized Fifth Avenue from 51st to 58th Streets.

The general move uptown and the vast stretches of land fronting Central Park soon attracted the wealthy into the region beyond 59th Street . By the 1880s New York boasted a truly wealthy class. Two New Yorkers, presumably J. P. Morgan and John A. Astor were worth over 100 million dollars, six had amassed over 50 million dollars, and thirty had accrued between 20 and 40 million dollars. Besides the throe grand hotels which were being developed around the Grand Amy Plaza, the new homes of such prestigious New Yorkers as John Jacob Astor, Mrs. M. Hartley Dodge and Hamilton Fish joined the new clubhouse on Fifth Avenue. By World War I nearly 70 mansions came to line the mile and a half along Fifth Avenue from 59th to 90th Streets.