The Century Association is a private social, arts, and dining club in New York City, founded in 1847.

Named after the first 100 people proposed as members, the first meeting on January 13, 1847, created the club known as the Century; it was incorporated in 1857.

Members of the club have included artists and writers William Cullen Bryant, Frederic Church, Asher B. Durand, John La Farge, Winslow Homer, Paul Manship, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Louis Comfort Tiffany, John Quincy Adams Ward, and J. Alden Weir.

Architect members have included Calvert Vaux, Carrère and Hastings, Frederick Law Olmsted, James Renwick Jr., McKim, Mead & White, and York and Sawyer.

The Century Association resulted from the merger of two earlier private clubs for men "of similar social standing or shared interests."

[18] The club put up a military map of Europe in its halls, which General Horace Sewell, part of New York's British Library of Information, maintained daily.

[19] In late 1945, members began returning from the armed forces; the club gave an official welcome back to the veterans in spring 1946.

[23] Public Law 63, a New York City law enacted in October 1984,[24] made it illegal for clubs to discriminate based on sex, race, origin, or other factors, unless the club was "distinctly private", defined as having fewer than 400 members and not providing regular meals or collecting regular dues or payment from nonmembers.

[24] Members were divided on the issue, as some found that the convening of "authors, artists and amateurs" would not change with the admittance of women; others determined "delightful difference of the sexes" was a benefit not to be eliminated by what was deemed a "fashionable whim".

[27] One Garrick Club member told London's The Daily Telegraph that he "would not be mourning the loss of his colonial cousins – or access to their facilities.

"[28] A male Century Association member told the New York Observer that giving up infrequent visits to the Garrick Club "versus condoning the discrimination of women" seemed like "a pretty easy trade-off".

Henry L. Pierson supervised the move-in, and used his collection of copies of casts of the works of Bertel Thorvaldsen to adorn the rooms.

[10][9] Continuing its growth in both membership and programs during and after the Civil War, the Century Association required larger facilities.

Post, with noted young architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–1886), who had recently returned from his architectural training in France and joined the Century Association.

Although Richardson would later develop a highly personal Romanesque style, his training at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris equipped him to design in neo-Grec with its abstracted classical features that worked well in modern materials such as the brick employed here.

[4] The exterior was restored and the interior converted in 1996–97[4] by Beyer Blinder Belle,[33] and in recent years it has been the Century Center for the Performing Arts, which had a 248-seat theatre, a ballroom and a studio.

[35] McKim, Mead & White was retained; their design established a preferred style for private clubhouse buildings all over the United States in the following decades.

A number of members have made significant contributions in the fields of government, law, science, academia, business, arts, journalism, and athletics, among others.

[36] Chief Justices have included Charles Evans Hughes, Harlan Fiske Stone, and William Howard Taft; associate justices included Samuel Blatchford, William J. Brennan Jr., Benjamin N. Cardozo, John Marshall Harlan, Lewis F. Powell Jr., Edward T. Sanford, and Potter Stewart.