Cosmopolitan Club (New York)
Encyclopedia
Gentlemen's club
A gentlemen's club is a members-only private club of a type originally set up by and for British upper class men in the eighteenth century, and popularised by English upper-middle class men and women in the late nineteenth century. Today, some are more open about the gender and social status of...
on the Upper East Side
Upper East Side
The Upper East Side is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, between Central Park and the East River. The Upper East Side lies within an area bounded by 59th Street to 96th Street, and the East River to Fifth Avenue-Central Park...
of Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, USA
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Located at 122 East 66th Street
66th Street (Manhattan)
66th Street is a crosstown street in the New York City borough of Manhattan with portions on the Upper East Side and Upper West Side connected across Central Park via the 65th Street Transverse...
, east of Park Avenue, it was founded as a women's club and remains a club exclusively for women to this day. Members have included Willa Cather
Willa Cather
Willa Seibert Cather was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours , a novel set during World War I...
, Ellen Glasgow
Ellen Glasgow
Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist who portrayed the changing world of the contemporary south.-Biography:...
, Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...
, Jean Stafford
Jean Stafford
Jean Stafford was an American short story writer and novelist, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford in 1970....
, Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes Brown was an American actress whose career spanned almost 70 years. She eventually garnered the nickname "First Lady of the American Theatre" and was one of twelve people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award...
, Pearl Buck, Marian Anderson
Marian Anderson
Marian Anderson was an African-American contralto and one of the most celebrated singers of the twentieth century...
, Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist, who was frequently a featured writer and speaker in the mass media throughout the 1960s and 1970s....
, and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, , was a prominent socialite and philanthropist and the second-generation matriarch of the renowned Rockefeller family...
.
History
In 1909, a club for governessGoverness
A governess is a girl or woman employed to teach and train children in a private household. In contrast to a nanny or a babysitter, she concentrates on teaching children, not on meeting their physical needs...
es named itself the Cosmos Club and leased space in the Gibson building on East 33rd Street. This group became, in 1910, the Women's Cosmopolitan Club, "organized," according to the New York Times, "for the benefit of New York women interested in the arts, sciences, education, literature, and philanthropy or in sympathy with those interested." On March 22, 1911 the club was formally incorporated, with Helen Gilman Brown as its president. The other six founding members were Mrs. V. Everett Macy, Mrs. John Sherman Hoyt, Mrs. Albert Herter, Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr., Mrs. E.R. Hewitt, and Mrs. Ellwood Hendrick. Dues were twenty dollars a year.
Early joiners were novelists Willa Cather
Willa Cather
Willa Seibert Cather was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours , a novel set during World War I...
and Ellen Glasgow
Ellen Glasgow
Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist who portrayed the changing world of the contemporary south.-Biography:...
, violinist Kathleen Parlow
Kathleen Parlow
Kathleen Parlow was a child prodigy with her outstanding technique with a violin, which earned her the nickname "The lady of the golden bow"...
, sculptor Anna Hyatt
Anna Hyatt Huntington
Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington was an American sculptor.-Life and career:Huntington was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her father, Alpheus Hyatt, was a professor of paleontology and zoology at Harvard University and MIT, and served as a contributing factor to her early interest in animals and...
, dancer Adeline Genee
Adeline Genée
Dame Adeline Genée DBE was a Danish/British ballet dancer.-Early years:Anina Kirstina Margarete Petra Jensen was born in Århus, Denmark. Her uncle, Alexandre Genée, gave her dancing lessons from the age of three. When she was eight, Alexandre and his wife, the former Antonia Zimmerman, adopted her...
, Grace Dodge
Grace Hoadley Dodge
-Biography:She was the great-granddaughter of David Low Dodge, and granddaughter of William E. Dodge. Grace Dodge donated about $1.5 million and many years of service to philanthropic work. She was instrumental in forming the Kitchen Garden Association, which became the Industrial Education...
, and Elizabeth Clift Bacon Custer
Elizabeth Bacon Custer
Elizabeth Bacon Custer was the wife of General George Armstrong Custer. After his death, she became an outspoken advocate for her husband's legacy through her popular books and lectures...
, widow of General Custer. In 1913 club members put on "An Evening in a Persian Garden," with snake dancers and readings of Persian verse. The success of this fête led to an increase in membership; in 1914, the club moved to larger quarters uptown at 44th Street and Lexington Avenue, and the name was shortened to the Cosmopolitan Club.
By 1917, the Cosmopolitan Club had six hundred members, with another four hundred on its waiting list. In December of that year, the club put on an exhibition of paintings by Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
.
Guest speakers in that era included poets Amy Lowell
Amy Lowell
Amy Lawrence Lowell was an American poet of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926.- Personal life:...
, Vachel Lindsay
Vachel Lindsay
Nicholas Vachel Lindsay was an American poet. He is considered the father of modern singing poetry, as he referred to it, in which verses are meant to be sung or chanted...
, and Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Loraine Sassoon CBE MC was an English poet, author and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches, and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's...
, educator Maria Montessori
Maria Montessori
Maria Montessori was an Italian physician and educator, a noted humanitarian and devout Catholic best known for the philosophy of education which bears her name...
, and Mrs. Herbert Hoover
Lou Henry Hoover
Lou Henry Hoover was the wife of President of the United States Herbert Hoover and First Lady of the United States, 1929-1933. Mrs. Hoover was president of the Girl Scouts of the USA for two terms, 1922-1925 and 1935-1937....
.
In 1932, the club moved further uptown to its current home, a ten-story brick building with wrought-iron balconies, designed by the architect Thomas Harlan Ellett
Ellett
Ellett is the surname of the following people:* David Ellett, professional ice hockey player* Henry T. Ellett, Mississippi politician and U.S. Representative to Congress* Neil Ellett, Canadian soccer player* Tazewell Ellett, Virginia politician and U.S...
, situated on 66th Street between Park and Lexington across the street from the Seventh Regiment Armory
Seventh Regiment Armory
The Seventh Regiment Armory, located at 643 Park Avenue also known as in New York, New York, United States, is an historic brick building that fills an entire city block on New York's Upper East Side.- History :...
. The new building won the Architectural League's
Architectural League of New York
The Architectural League of New York is a non-profit organization "for creative and intellectual work in architecture, urbanism, and related disciplines"....
gold medal in 1932 with the comment ‘A fresh and personal interpretation beautiful in its simplicity of form and material’, and had twenty-five guest rooms. Visiting musicians included Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
, Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger
Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...
, Count Basie
Count Basie
William "Count" Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Basie led his jazz orchestra almost continuously for nearly 50 years...
, and Lotte Lenya
Lotte Lenya
Lotte Lenya was an Austrian singer, diseuse, and actress. In the German-speaking and classical music world she is best remembered for her performances of the songs of her husband, Kurt Weill. In English-language film she is remembered for her Academy Award-nominated role in The Roman Spring of Mrs...
; other invited luminaries were Robert Frost
Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...
, Dorothy Thompson
Dorothy Thompson
Dorothy Thompson was an American journalist and radio broadcaster, who in 1939 was recognized by Time magazine as the second most influential women in America next to Eleanor Roosevelt...
, and Edward R. Murrow
Edward R. Murrow
Edward Roscoe Murrow, KBE was an American broadcast journalist. He first came to prominence with a series of radio news broadcasts during World War II, which were followed by millions of listeners in the United States and Canada.Fellow journalists Eric Sevareid, Ed Bliss, and Alexander Kendrick...
.
Currently the club offers, according to its website, a place for women to "nourish their intellects; exercise their artistic impulses; cultivate friends; and freely exchange ideas." Blue jeans and running shoes aren't allowed.