The Penn Club of New York (usually referred to as Penn Club) is an American private, social club located on Clubhouse Row in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The club's 14-story building, which is a designated landmark, is located at 30 West 44th Street and initially was occupied by The Yale Club of New York City.
For numerous consecutive terms, The Penn Club has been a Platinum Club of America award-winning establishment, placing it in the top 3% among 6,000 clubs in the U.S. for professional management and service excellence, and ranked second-best city club in New York City, and Top 14 club in the U.S.
History
In November 1886, the first local group of University of Pennsylvania alumni outside of Philadelphia was formed in New York over dinner at Delmonico's Restaurant. At the alumni group's annual banquet at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in January 1900, they presented a plan to secure "a convenient suite of rooms in the middle of the city, adjacent to a cafe."
Royalton Hotel (W. 44th Street) On October 6, 1900, the Penn Club of New York opened in four groundfloor rooms in the Royalton Hotel, just next door to today's clubhouse. It soon had more than 150 members at a time when only 400 alumni lived in the New York area, and received its charter from the New York Legislature in 1901.
Hotel Stanley (W. 47th Street) In 1905, the Club moved to "new and commodious quarters" in Hotel Stanley at 124 West 47th Street, where it remained until 1910. Between 1911 and 1922 (during World War I), the club temporarily did away with a clubhouse, instead focusing on their annual banquet.
Townhouses (E. 50th Street) In 1922, after a three-year search, the club's directors leased two townhouses on East 50th Street, next to today's New York Palace Hotel. Throughout the 1920s, the Penn Club on East 50th Street was active and successful. Its dining and guest rooms were regularly filled and its dinners and programs were highly attended. During the Great Depression in 1935, it vacated its townhouses.
Cornell Club, Phi Gamma Delta Club, and Biltmore Hotel (E. 38th-W. 56th Streets) Thereafter, it shared space in the Cornell Club formerly on East 38th Street, moved to two other clubs, and landed in the Phi Gamma Delta Club on West 56th Street, where it remained until 1961, when it moved to the Biltmore Hotel. The Club stayed in the Biltmore Hotel until the hotel was gutted and made an office tower in 1981 by Paul Milstein.
Former Yale Club at 30 West 44th Street
The Penn Club's next clubhouse was at 30 West 44th Street, developed between 1900 and 1901 for the Yale Club of New York City. The Yale Building Company was formed to oversee the clubhouse's development, obtaining a mortgage loan to fund the project. The architects filed plans with the New York City Department of Buildings in July 1900, and Marc Eidlitz & Son began work on the building that October. The building cost $250,000 (), with furnishings amounting to $300,000 total clubhouse costs. The Yale Club opened its building on May 1, 1901, and occupied it until 1915. The building was next occupied by the newly-organized Delta Kappa Epsilon from 1917 to 1925. The Army and Navy Club of America occupied the structure from 1925 to 1933 when it went bankrupt. After standing vacant for a decade, the building was acquired by the federal government of the United States in 1943. The building housed the United States Maritime Service Center during World War II in 1944, then the Organized Reserve Corps of the Army from 1948 to 1949, then the Army Reserve School in 1951. In 1971, the government donated 30 West 44th Street to the newly-established Jewish Touro College. After Touro became involved in various controversies encountered difficulties opening its law school, and acquiring other buildings for its campus, the Touro Law Center finally opened at 30 West 44th Street a decade later in 1981, before outgrowing it and buying a main building elsewhere.
