[1] The club's name honors the essayist Charles Lamb and his sister Mary, who during the early 19th century played host to actors and literati at their famed salon in London.

The name was unanimously adopted; it came from Charles and Mary Lamb, the English brother and sister who were friendly towards actors in Georgian England.

[4] On August 11, 1878, the Club suffered its first great loss, the death of Shepherd Henry J. Montague in San Francisco.

Broadway impresario J. Lester Wallack–who would go on to serve seven terms as Shepherd–gave Montague a space in his family plot in Green-Wood Cemetery; the two rest next to each other today.

It was a period of “prosperity, joy, sorrow and calamity.” In this era The Lambs entertained Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, newspaper editor Charles A. Dana, and English actor Sir Henry Irving.

Playwright Clay M. Greene suggested the Club put on its own shows, thus launching decades of Lambs’ Gambols.

In 1964, long-time syndicated columnist Earl Wilson put it this way: "Long ago a New Yorker asked the difference between the Lambs, Friars, and Players, since the membership was, at the time, predominantly from Broadway."

Since its founding, there have been more than 6,700 Lambs, including: Fred Astaire, Irving Berlin, Henry Blossom,[10] Sid Caesar, James Cagney, Eddie Cantor, George M. Cohan, Cecil B. DeMille, W.C. Fields, Albert Hague, Mark Hart,[11] Silvio Hein, Ken Howard, Al Jolson, John F. Madden, Conrad Nagel, Eugene O'Neill, Donald Pippin, Joyce Randolph Cliff Robertson, Edward G. Robinson, Will Rogers, John Philip Sousa, Spencer Tracy,[12] Abe Vigoda, Fred Waring, and Jack Whiting.

[13] The Club owns portraits and busts of every shepherd, painted by artists such as Howard Chandler Christy, James Montgomery Flagg, Everett Raymond Kinstler, and Michael Shane Neal.

[21] The building was designated a New York City Landmark[22] in September 1974 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 3, 1982.

[23] The Lambs has elected more than 6,700 members over the decades, counting actors and theater owners, playwrights and painters, singers and sculptors, and today’s podcasters and comedy writers.

Over the decades it was at The Lambs that hit shows and songs were launched, partnerships and friendships formed, and bonds of fellowship made.

The club’s art collection of oil paintings, theatrical memorabilia, and playbills, together with a private research library, is a museum of American entertainment history.

Starting in 1974, the Lambs has donated thousands of important historic documents to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.