Henry S. Marsteller started the club in his Columbia Avenue apartment in 1889, and it quickly grew from 12 to more than 130 members, so that in less than a decade the Society relocated to four-story building at 1811 North Broad Street.
The main interest was in photography which was catered with six darkrooms and a sky-lit studio, but there was a strong social element to activities.
[1] Members of the club's ‘Wheelman’ committee organised regular weekend cycling and photographing excursions to Perkiomen, the Brandywine and Atlantic City and the resulting images were shown in lantern-slide shows accompanied by music.
[2] Camera, originally the Society's gossip sheet, soon became a magazine and achieved national circulation.
[1] Its articles catered to the amateur, being largely concerned with technical considerations and avoided the controversies over Pictorialism that occupied more serious publications of the period, though it reproduced work by accomplished Pictorialists, such as Leonard Misonne and Robert S. Redfield.