Originally called the New York Sketch Class,[4] and later the New York Sketch Club,[5] the Salmagundi Club had its beginnings at the eastern edge of Greenwich Village in sculptor Jonathan Scott Hartley's Broadway studio, where a group of artists, students, and friends at the National Academy of Design, which at the time was located at Fourth Avenue and Twenty-third Street,[6] gathered weekly on Saturday evenings.

[7] In April 1917, following a three-year search, the club purchased Irad and Sarah Hawley's 1853 Italianate-style brownstone townhouse at 47 Fifth Avenue between East Eleventh and East Twelfth Streets from the estate of William G. Park for $75,000.00 and erected a two-story annex in the rear at an additional cost of $20,000.00 to house its primary art gallery and a billiard room.

[4][5][7] In 1918, the club spearheaded a national effort to produce range-finder paintings used to train military gunners for World War I.

Chatterton, Frederick Stuart Church, Jay Hall Connaway, Francis S. Dixon, John Henry Dolph, Charles Dana Gibson, Gordon H. Grant, Walter Granville-Smith, Edmund Greacen, Charles P. Gruppé,[13] Emile Gruppe,[14] William Hart, Childe Hassam, Ernest Martin Hennings, Harry Hoffman, Alexander Pope Humphrey, George Inness Jr., Lajos "Louis" Jambor,[15] John LaFarge, Ernest Lawson, Austin W. Lord, Frank Mason, Leopold Matzal, Samizu Matsuki, John Francis Murphy, Spencer Baird Nichols, Richard C. Pionk, Howard Pyle, Will J. Quinlan, Norman Rockwell, Harry Roseland, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, R. F. Schabelitz, Leopold Seyffert, Channel Pickering Townsley,[16] Louis Comfort Tiffany, Edward Charles Volkert, J. Alden Weir, Jack Wemp, Stanford White, William Wilson (physicist), Stuart Williamson, Joseph Mortimer Lichtenauer and N.C. Wyeth.

Honorary members[7] have included Paul Cadmus, Schuyler Chapin, Winston Churchill, Buckminster Fuller, Al Hirschfeld, and Thomas Hoving.