The clubhouse is the former Beaux-Arts mansion on Embassy Row built for Herbert and Martha Blow Wadsworth and designed by noted architect George Cary.

In 1932 a group of local women led by Mabel Thorp Boardman established the Sulgrave Club and purchased the mansion.

While their home was being remodeled, the Van Wyck family moved into the deserted church, which was a surprise to everyone in the fashionable Dupont Circle neighborhood.

Members of St. Thomas' Parish began meeting in the building in 1890 until their new sanctuary was built a few years later on the corner of 18th and Church Streets NW.

[1][2][3][4] Herbert and Martha Blow Wadsworth, a wealthy couple from Geneseo, New York who had married in 1888, wanted a winter residence in Washington, D.C., and chose Dupont Circle as the location of their new home.

[1][6] The couple chose a longtime friend, New York architect George Cary, to design their new house in the popular Beaux-Arts style.

This included a two-story ballroom, a musician's gallery, a porte-cochère similar to the one across the street at the William J. Boardman House, and a new feature in the city, an automobile room that served as an internal parking garage.

[3] It is believed the porte-cochère, vestibule, servants hall, kitchen, back hallway, and automobile room incorporated the former church building.

[1] After the house was completed by builder Charles A. Langley, Martha began years of organizing and hosting social events.

These included standard social gatherings such as dances, dinners, and musicals, but she also hosted lessons for singing, beauty, jujutsu, and even held an ugliest baby photograph competition.

[3][6] In 1932 during the Great Depression a group of 20 local women, led by Mabel Thorp Boardman who lived across the street, purchased the property for $125,000 to serve as headquarters of their new private social club.

The members raised this money during the Great Depression by taking out a $50,000 mortgage, receiving a private loan of $3,000, selling bonds worth $74,500, and collecting $1000 a piece from 41 women who would not have to pay an initiate fee or annual dues.

[10] The Sulgrave Club was incorporated in April 1933 and according to its charter, the group was founded for "literary, musical, artistic and philanthropic purposes, and for promotion of social intercourse.

[12] In addition to Boardman, Sulgrave Club founders include: Henrietta Brooke, May Palmer Depew, Christine Gillett, Laura M. Gross, Bell Gurnee, Florence Jaffray Harriman, Sallie Aley Hert, Adelaide Wellington Houghton, Boardman's sister Florence Boardman Keep, Ellen Warder Leonard, Agnes E. Meyer, Louise Norman, Cissy Patterson, Isabel Weld Perkins, Elizabeth Hope Gammell Slater, Nelly Katherine Sweeney, Mildred Fuller Wallace, Annie Louise Bliss Warren and Maie Hewitt Williams.

The club began hosting musical and artistic gatherings, dinners, debutante balls, and other events that attracted the city's high-profile women.

[3][2] Within months of its founding, the Sulgrave Club had already hosted prominent events including an official dinner for UK Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald.

In 1952 the entrance was remodeled and replaced with a canopy supported by iron corbels, a limestone stoop, and eight glazed French door panels.