Harmonie Club

After this nomadic period, the club purchased land at 45 West Forty-Second Street to erect a permanent location and raised enough funds to have architect Henry Fernbach design the building.

Later, this building was refurbished and had an annex added, both of which were designed by Herts and Tallant, architects of the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Coram Library at Bates College.

These changes included the first events for non-married members, a declining interest in large social gatherings such as dances, and increasing property taxes along Forty-Second Street.

The growth of the Harmonie Club was slowed by the outbreak of World War I and related anti-German sentiment, as well as, the wartime service of current and potential members.

The Board of Governors began a large scale renovation of the building on Sixtieth Street under the expertise of architect Benjamin Morris in the late 1930s.

The new facilities along with a series of changes in the club's bylaws were designed to modernize the organization and attracted a large number of new and young members.

[3] In 1939, Dudley Pierrepont Gilbert and James Campbell testified to the Dies Committee that several members of the Harmonie Club were engaged in a plot to instigate a communist revolution that would overthrow the U.S.

Albert Einstein and other prominent Anti-Nazi figures of the day sponsored events at the club to raise awareness of the Nazis' persecution of the Jews.

Over the years its political role in the community appeared to have moderated, and it became more of a social center, as well as extending its membership to include non-German Jews and others.

Nonetheless, a perceived lack of diversity caused member Michael Bloomberg to resign in 2001, in anticipation of his initial mayoral run.

[6] As a New York cultural institution, the Harmonie Club has been host to numerous political and cultural luminaries in recent years, including a visit and address from former U.S. President Bill Clinton in 2007, presentations or panel discussions with Senators Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Representative Charles Rangel, every New York mayor and governor since Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr., and Governor Herbert H. Lehman.

H. Horatio Joyce, "Disharmony in the Clubhouse: Exclusion, Identity, and the Making of McKim, Mead & White's Harmonie Club of New York City."

42nd Street Location
Current Location
A Stanford White drawing of the facade