The New Old Boy's Club

With membership drying up (and members dying off) exclusive societies like the Yale Club and the National Arts Club have to recruit new lifeblood or risk extinction. Even it if means staying open past 10 p.m. Joshua David Stein reports.

It’s 7:30 on a Sunday night, in the Yale Club’s main room, and 27-year-old Michael sits on the edge of a plush upholstered sofa beneath a portrait of 41st President George H.W. Bush. The lounge is capacious, full of fireplaces and settees, and located on the second floor of the 160-year-old club, housed in an elegant Gilded Age building which towers above Grand Central Station. Large portraits of the five U.S. Presidents who attended the university hang on the wall: Both Bushes, Taft, Clinton and Ford stare somewhat glumly out into the muted room.

“Lux et Veritas,” the Yale motto of “Light and Truth,” is engraved in blocky gold scrawl on the fireplace mantle. Two young, blocky, golden-haired women sit sipping martinis opposite two wholesome-looking men. The gentlemen wear navy blazers over salmon-hued shirts and khaki pants. The ladies wear pearls over turtlenecks. Michael, a 2003 Yalie who describes himself as a writer, apologizes for being late—he had to go home to change into proper pants. “Cashmere,” he says. Jeans are not allowed at the Yale Club.

Michael tries in vain to flag down a waiter. “As Gertrude would say, ‘Pigeons on the grass, pigeons on the grass,’” he sighs. The Googleable allusion comes from the second act of Gertrude Stein’s opera, Four Saints in Three Acts. It’s exactly the kind of quote Wes Anderson might put into the mouths of one of his quirky corduroyed characters. In fact, with its mash of oriental and floral patterns and walls heavy with painted portraits of men named Kingman Brewster and Alfred Whitney Griswold (Yale University presidents), the whole club seems like it lumbered from the soundstage of Wes Anderson’s latest movie. Which would make Michael Robinson perhaps Owen Wilson and that isn’t such a bad thing.

Extra olives, a murmuring fire, dead animals, a dress code, old people—these do not seem the trappings of youth. In place of a large bouncer, there is a polite yet firm concierge. Yet more and more under thirtyfivers are eschewing the clamor of deejays and draught beer for the more refined atmosphere of wine and rosés. And the clubs, always in need of an influx of new blood (and new money) are changing to accommodate the young’uns: relaxing dress codes, holding mixers, staying open past 10 pm. University-affiliated establishments like the Yale and Harvard Clubs function as a sort of real life Facebook where alumni can meet to relive their fading college days and quote obscure passages of Gertrude Stein.

“You’re not going to socially network on Facebook with a 60-year-old managing director,” says Manish Vora, a 27-year-old class of ’02 Yalie and club member who runs artlog.com, a social networking site for creatives. At the club, however, that 60-year-old managing director may be nursing his Scotch on the stool next to you and eager to talk. A handshake and few fingers of scotch later and he might be your new boss. But professional gain only partially explains the draw.
“I come here, I suppose,” reflects Michael, “when I feel nostalgic for ribbon belts and missing the unfortunate magnanimity of mothballs.” Unfortunate magnanimity notwithstanding, Michael, along with nearly 500 other young members, cough up around $1,000 a year in dues for the privilege of membership.

The appeal is apparent. The Yale Club houses squash courts that are rumored to be the best in the city. The drinking water comes with a different sliced fruit—canteloupe, cucumber, orange—floating in the cooler every day of the week. The bartender in the Tap Room, says Manish, “is this dope guy who makes these awesome cocktails.” Said awesome cocktails can be swilled in a variety of cush settings, fireside, pool table side and even pool side. Most importantly though, they can be downed in the company of people more successful than oneself. Since a lime is 50 cents at Fairway, water is free and old men drinking at bars alone are usually all too eager to talk, the real appeal of these private clubs is less tangible. Manish admits, “There’s also the social status of joining these things.” Meaning, it’s cool to have a place where you can’t wear jeans, where, even if people don’t know your name, they know where your degree is from. “Meet me at the Yale Club,” is part come on, part boast and part resume. It has an allure that “Meet me at Motor City” does not.

As much as Michael and Manish need the Yale Club to survive in Scotch-and-soda world of business, New York’s grown-up fraternities, which also include the Harvard, Montauk, University, Century, Lotos and National Arts Clubs, need members like them to stay alive. Twenty blocks south, the National Arts Club—founded in 1898—is housed in a classic brownstone on the southern edge of Gramercy Park. The bohemian answer to the Yale Club, it once boasted a membership of three presidents and a menagerie of well-known artists such as the famed Western painter Frederic Remington, the Beaux Arts sculptor Auguste Saint-Gaudens and the pioneering photographer Alfred Stieglitz. By the 1970s, however, the once illustrious club began to slowly asphyxiate. (That’s the thing about old boys clubs. Old boys die off.) The domed stained-glass ceiling of the bar presided morosely over an aging membership. The parlor—a beautifully appointed room overlooking Gramercy Park—lay fallow. Often the only sounds to be heard were the plaintive chirps of 150 lovebirds, kept in elaborate birdcages in the front room.

These days however, most of the lovebirds have been given away, replaced by an African White-Necked Raven named Reverend, a few wah mei songbirds and a slew of members under 35. Flamboyant bowtied president O. Aldon James, who identifies himself as well “over 35, the club’s Mason Dixon line,” says, “We realized that to assure the continuation of the club, money in the bank isn’t enough. We needed young people to man the oars.” A few years ago, he abolished the dress code of slacks and blazers. Today’s typical uniform could be termed “upscale slacker.” Jeans are okay. Dress shirts are always appreciated. But even hoodies make occasional appearances. (“A member explained to me that his grandson wears blue jeans that cost three figures so they’re okay now,” Aldon says).

The club began to actively court youth around 2004, when hot librarian Brooke Geahan ran the Accompanied Library, a much-abuzzed literary salon among the writerly set from an upstairs apartment. Though the library was evicted in 2006, the club has since hosted a steady stream of fashionable events including an afterparty for the fashion label Heatherette, a music industry showcase for buzz band Lavender Diamond, and the launch party for the floating socialite dinner party, Supper Club.
Of the 2,000 National Arts Club paying members, 190 of them are under 35. This includes Franck Raharinosy, 32, and Jonathan Bricklin, 30, who recently joined. The two pay an annual dues of $650 plus a one time initiation fee of $400. Jonathan, the boyish son of an automotive tycoon, and Franck, an impish Madagascar-born music producer, first encountered the National Arts Club in November of 2007 when they hosted a popular and rather misleadingly titled Naked Ping Pong event there. (Ping pong, yes. Naked, no.)

Sitting in a parlor alcove on a recent Sunday afternoon, Jonathan is taking advantage of the relaxed dress code. He wears a red knit cap and a hoodie. Franck sports a black leather jacket and a gray cashmere scarf. Past the window, Franck’s car, a dark blue 1971 Plymouth Fury III, contrasts with the bright green grass of Gramercy Park. “We try to make our lives as cinematic as possible,” Jonathan says, gazing at the surroundings. “This place,” adds Franck, alluding to the gilt picture frames, bay windows and Gothic flourishes around him, “is like a movie set.”

But to experience the apotheosis of the quirky Wes Anderson aesthetic, one must head to Park Slope. There on the corner of Plaza Place and 8th Avenue, in a magnificent Venetian palazzo, the Montauk Club opened its heavy mahogany doors in 1891. The rooms of the mansion are filled with friezes of Native Americans, brilliant indigo Moorish tile fireplaces and a rather hideous bronze sculpture of a black man playing a banjo. Though the club used to boast a basement bowling alley and a year-long waiting list, by the mid-nineties, what few members the Montauk Club had were as dim and dotty as the club’s future. The bowling alley had been converted into a real estate office. The top two floors had been turned condo. The club survived by pimping itself out to neighborhood organizations.

Though the air of threadbare luxury lost pervades, the club has found new life in younger members. On a recent weekday night, the bar on the second floor dining room was buzzing. The club, according to David Carter, a 44-year-old board member, decorative arts appraiser and bowtie-wearing National Arts Club defector, has been attracting around 10 new members a month. “Most of them are under 35,” he says gleefully. One of the leaders of the vanguard, an arch 32-year-old named who works for Nickelodeon named Miles Rowan, is showing a couple of prospective members around the place. Dressed in a bonny blue corduroy suit—he is the President and Founder of something called the Corduroy Appreciation Club—Miles herds the couple through the club’s well-appointed rooms He pauses in what he calls the “board room. “You can have events here,” he says. “The wine class and book club meet here.”
Prospective member Stacey Rollins, 31, a grad students and the author of an unpublished novel called Truer Faults, asks, “Can we have puppet shows here?”
“Puppets?” Miles drolly replies.
“I like puppets!”
Evan, a blonde 31-year-old investment banker and another prospective member, who earlier had described his aesthetic as “19th century bourgeoisie English Country upper class,” becomes momentarily excited. “Yes, maybe even experimental poetry or something!” Later Evan pays $300 and becomes a member.
Upstairs in the dining room, a gaggle of young Park Slope men, also prospective members, are drinking red wine and talking loudly, preparing to enjoy a meal from the executive chef, 32-year-old Joel Tompkins. (Joel is also known for running Coach Peaches, a secretive, mobile dinner party in Brooklyn.) With trendy entrees like Maple-Braised Flying Pigs Farm Pork Belly with Jonny Cakes and Wilted Greens, the menu is just as trendy and a la mode as the new members. But just a few feet away, a group of old women are gathered around a coffee table. Marilyn Courtney, a small “50 something” realtor who’s been a Montauk member for well over a decade looks over at the young bucks grazing a plate of fancy hors d’oeuvres. “You know,” Marilyn sighs with a look of wistful resignation, “I remember when you used to be able to just get a hamburger here.”