A club, according to Dr. Samuel Johnson's famed dictionary, is "an assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions." The conditions have changed considerably during the last generation or so, and the good fellows of another era would choke on their bathtub gin to see some of the things that are going on today in those citadels of the social order known as gentlemen's clubs.
Ladies swish and titter in rooms once sacrosanct to cognac and cigars. Clubs that once disdained "activities" now stage musical evenings, lectures, seminars and even dances to lure members and their guests to the board and bar. Membership rolls have been expanded while services have been curtailed; a drink costs as much as or more than it does at the restaurant around the corner, and many a club member is doing well to get a ham sandwich on a summer weekend.
Old & Bent. The cold fiscal facts of club life are laid out in a financial study of 50 city clubs published this month by the New York accounting firm of Harris, Kerr, Forster & Co. Its gist: city-club expenses are steadily increasing while income is decreasing. In 1961-62 the total revenues of the 50 clubs were $52.1 million—down $170,000 from the preceding year—while operating costs were up $259,000 over a year ago. Compared with 1952-53, city-club revenues are 26% higher, but operating costs have risen by 29%.
Behind these figures lies a constellation of social changes. One piece of trouble for the clubs is the steady move to the suburbs. Says an officer of Boston's 600-member Union Club: "Years ago, our membership consisted of prominent Bostonians who lived on nearby Beacon and Marlboro Streets. Now they've moved to the outskirts, and our membership is largely professional people who work in the city. And they go home to the suburbs at night. The Union used to be a club in the pure sense of the word. Now it's a businessmen's luncheon restaurant." A member of Chicago's swank Chicago Club feels that even more crucial to the club is the out-of-town migration of business and industry: "Who's going to come into the city during lunch hour?"
For those clubs that are virtually a must for top businessmen—such as San Francisco's Pacific Union, the Arizona Club in Phoenix, or the Missouri Athletic Club in St. Louis—the trend to country living has had little effect on membership. But the evening flight from the city has generally depleted club revenues from food and drink. Says Lieut. General Milton G. Baker, superintendent of the Valley Forge Military Academy and a longtime member of Philadelphia's century-old Union League Club: "These days you won't find 15 men in the League's card, billiard or game rooms, or the libraries on any one night, and the ones that are there are old and bent. Thirty or forty years ago the place was jumping every night."