Founded without a location in 1865 by a group of Harvard University alumni, the club rented a townhouse in 1887 on 22nd Street for use as a clubhouse.

In the spring of 1970, four Harvard Business School students, Ellen Marram, Katie Metzger, Roslyn Braeman Payne, and Lynn Salvage, were turned away from membership interviews at the Harvard Club of New York because it was at the time a male only club.

[9]: 10  That fall, Marram and Salvage wrote to Morgan Wheelock, the president of the Harvard Club of New York, to request that women be granted equal membership privileges.

[9]: 12  Marram, Salvage, Metzler, Payne, and Filson, represented pro bono by Jed S. Rakoff, then prepared a gender discrimination claim to file with the New York Commission on Human Rights.

[9]: 13  Shortly before the vote, several Harvard alumni, including attorney and activist Brenda Feigen, co-founder of the ACLU Women's Rights Project, sued the Harvard Club in federal court, seeking revocation of the club's liquor license on sex discrimination grounds.

[13] Marram, Salvage, Metzler, Payne, and Filson then filed their complaint with the New York Commission on Human Rights.

[9]: 15  Commission chairwoman Eleanor Holmes Norton issued a two-page letter condemning the Harvard Club's exclusion of women.

[14][15][13] After the parties came before a New York Human Rights administrative judge, the Harvard Club's board of managers called another vote.