Founded as a pro-women's suffrage group, the League initially fought for passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and provided general education on social and political issues.
[3] The other attendees in the first meeting included Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, Catherine Amor Bennett Abbe (1843–1920), Lucia Gilbert Runkle (1844–1927), Lee Wood Haggin (1856–1934), and Adele Marion Fielde.
[1] The League's fight for passage of the Nineteenth Amendment led them to commission the building of a meeting space where people of every rank and station could be educated on the important issues of the day.
Town Hall not only became a meeting place for educational programs, gatherings of activists, and host for controversial speakers (such as the American advocate of birth control, Margaret Sanger, who was arrested and carried off The Town Hall stage on November 13, 1921, for attempting to speak to a mixed-sex audience about contraception), but as one of New York City's premier performance spaces for music, dance, and other performing arts.
While the lecture series and courses on political and non-political subjects sponsored by the League continued to be held there, The Town Hall quickly established a reputation as an arts center during the first fifteen years of its existence.