Dinner at the Metropolitan Club

One hundred years ago today … The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company held a dinner for its directors and officers. The site was the Metropolitan Club (no relation), then as now at 60th Street and 5th Avenue. Oxtail soup was on the menu. So was a seating chart.

New York Public Library.

The Metropolitan Club had been formed as a social club for rich white men in 1891 by J. Pierpont Morgan in order “to challenge the Union Club, which had rejected some of his new money friends” (Insider). Its founding members had names like Vanderbilt, Roosevelt, and Whitney. They bought property from the Duchess of Marlborough and hired Stanford Ford to build their clubhouse on it.

Here it is in 1914:

Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. "Manhattan: 5th Avenue - 60th Street" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1914. — Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. "Manhattan: 5th Avenue - 60th Street" *The New York Public Library Digital Collections*. 1914.

Here it is one hundred years later, in a 2014 Google Street View image. The buildingnot been changed, though the Club has acquired additional property further east on 60th Street.

The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company was at the time the largest life insurer in the United States (Botti, 140).

References/Further reading

Botti, Timothy. Envy of the World: A History of the U.S. Economy & Big Business. New York, NY: Algora Publishing, 2006.

“Inside 10 of New York City's most exclusive private clubs.” Untapped Cities, 26 October, 2015. BusinessInsider.com.

– Jonathan Goldman, April 25, 2021

TAGS: Food, cuisine, wealth, corporations, high society, business