With the onset of the Great Depression and World War II, half the members had left by 1945, when the club narrowly avoided bankruptcy.

By the 1870s, the board of governors frequently blackballed, or rejected, several prominent figures' membership applications on spurious grounds.

[6] Morgan's friend William Watts Sherman drafted a constitution for a new club and invited 25 Gilded Age moguls to serve as co-founders.

[21][22][23] The new club's members opened a temporary office at the Madison Square Bank Building, at the intersection of Fifth Avenue, 23rd Street, and Broadway.

[49] McKim, Mead & White hired David H. King Jr. as the general contractor,[47][50] and Morgan was heavily involved with many aspects of the design, including such minute details as the carpets.

[81] The club continued to lose money, and the board of governors levied additional fees on existing members to cover the shortfall.

[88] Simultaneously, the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT) was planning to build a New York City Subway station at Fifth Avenue–59th Street, next to the clubhouse.

[86] The Metropolitan's board of governors voted in 1917 to endorse the war effort,[92] and the club simplified its menu the same year, citing wartime shortages.

[97] After a failed attempt to increase membership fees in 1922, the board appointed a committee to discuss proposals for the club's future.

[107] The southern ground-level lounge was converted into a bar, and the club also began allowing women to eat dinner in the main clubhouse.

[100] Parts of the clubhouse were converted to bedrooms for soldiers, and the club waived membership fees for members who fought in the war.

[127] The next year, the club's board voted to retain control over the building, amid proposals to replace the clubhouse with a tower[127] or sell it to the Russian government for use as a consulate.

[129] Individual donors provided funds for various restoration projects,[129] which were usually small in scope and did not involve the entire clubhouse.

[130] The Metropolitan discussed the possibility of merging with, or cross-honoring the memberships of, the Lotos, Manhattan, and Houston clubs during the early 1960s; none of these proposals passed.

[151] To raise money for the clubhouse's maintenance, the Metropolitan created the One East Sixtieth Street Historical Foundation, a tax-exempt nonprofit organization, in 1985.

[159] Although the project's supporters claimed the tower would include space for organizations and raise money for the club, local groups and preservationists objected to the plan on aesthetic grounds.

[124] During the late 1990s, the Metropolitan also renovated the second- and third-story rooms, re-gilded some window frames, replaced the elevators, and installed air-conditioning systems.

[173] In addition, the club began planning a rooftop dining area on the clubhouse's sixth floor, also designed by Acheson Thornton Doyle.

[211] The skylight is surrounded by a gilded coved ceiling with escutcheons,[195] as well as irregularly shaped light-blue panels with Cupid motifs, both designed by Edward Simmons.

[196] The main dining room to the west was decorated in the Louis XIV style, with walls painted in a white, pink, and yellow palette.

[214] By contrast, The Art Amateur magazine disdained the clubhouse, saying that the design was bland but not vulgar and that the entrance hall and stairway were unwelcoming.

[197] Scientific American Building Edition regarded the interior as successful though it described the Great Hall as cold and severe compared with the other rooms.

[225] In a 1994 book about New York City's architecture, the writer Donald Reynolds stated that "the lines of the building are clean and fine and the proportions monumental".

[226] A five-member executive committee controlled day-to-day operations, meeting every week to discuss topics such as staff firing and hiring, supplies, and prices.

For example, there were originally horse-drawn carriages traveling from the clubhouse to the intersection of Sixth Avenue and 53rd Street, where club members could transfer to elevated trains.

[253] Female visitors were originally banned from the main clubhouse, although they were allowed into the two-story rear wing,[34][185][48] which male members could enter only if accompanied by a woman.

[1][257] During January and February of each year, members of high society tended to congregate in New York City, and the club hosted several high-society events.

[277]In addition, various non-members have been named as honorary life guests, including military personnel and heads of state.

These have included Harold Alexander, William R. Anderson, Edward L. Beach Jr., Winston Churchill, Garrison H. Davidson, Frederick H. Ecker, Frederik IX, Alfred M. Gruenther, Ingrid of Sweden, Douglas MacArthur, Richard C. Patterson Jr., Arthur W. Radford, and Albert C.

[127] Former U.S. presidents Herbert Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower,[127] Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan were also given life memberships.