The club's founders were a group of men who met to play cards at Mrs. Rubicam's Coffeehouse at the northwest corner of 5th & Minor Streets in Philadelphia.

Thomas Butler died before the building's 1838 completion, and it stood vacant until its 1849 purchase by The Philadelphia Club.

It was altered in 1888-89 by Frank Furness, who designed a rear addition and expanded its kitchens and main dining room.

[2][3] Wilson Eyre renovated its interiors a decade later, and additional alterations were done by Horace Trumbauer in 1905 and 1908, and by Mellor, Meigs & Howe in 1916.

[6] Union Army General George Meade was admitted to club membership only after winning the Battle of Gettysburg.

Following Proclamation 87 - Celebration of George Washington's Birthday made by President Abraham Lincoln on February 19, 1862,[7] Philadelphia celebrated the Birthday of President George Washington with a military parade procession on Broad, Walnut and Chestnut Streets.

Philadelphia artist Joseph Boggs Beale recorded the club's tribute in his diary: The club house, 13th & Walnut, was illuminated with candles at every pane of glass, & had a beautiful American flag hanging so that the light on it showed it several squares away.

In one of their windows they had a pure white marble head of Washington & the American flag (silk) covering the pedestal & this was set off with a dark red background and brilliantly lighted from above.

According to Weilbaba's testimony, the police captured 401 quarts, 118 pints, and a 1-gallon jug of alcohol during the raid of member lockers on February 2, 1931.

The club's presidents have included Captain James Biddle, George H. Boker, Adolph E. Borie, General George Cadwalader, Mayor Richard Vaux, and Owen Wister, who wrote the club's 1934 centennial history.

Among the club's guests have been twelve U.S. presidents: John Quincy Adams,[13] Martin Van Buren, James K. Polk, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, William McKinley, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gerald R. Ford, and George H. W. Bush; soldiers and sailors George B. McClellan, William Tecumseh Sherman, William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, George Dewey, George Goethals and Jack Keane; writers, artists, actors and musicians: William Makepeace Thackeray, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Henry Irving, Charles Kemble, Edwin Booth, Booth Tarkington, John Barrymore, Joseph Pennell, Leopold Stokowski, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Bram Stoker, Eugene Ormandy, Louis Kahn and Roger Scruton; and other public men Talleyrand, Stephen A. Douglas, Lord Randolph Churchill, Grand Duke Alexander, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Duarte Pio, Henry Cabot Lodge, Winston Churchill, Lord Louis Mountbatten, and Henry Clay.

Unmarked outside but for a discreet awning logo, it is said to be one of the oldest men's clubs in the U.S., feeding the city's elite since 1834.