Its fourth and current clubhouse is located at 38 East 37th Street on the corner of Park Avenue, in the Murray Hill neighborhood of Manhattan.

[3] Union League clubs, which are legally separate but share similar histories and maintain reciprocal links with one another, are also located in Chicago and Philadelphia.

Thus, pro-Union men chose to form their own club, with the twin goals of cultivating "a profound national devotion" and to "strengthen a love and respect for the Union."

The New York League was founded by four prominent professionals and intellectuals: Henry Whitney Bellows, Frederick Law Olmsted, George Templeton Strong, and Oliver Wolcott Gibbs.

Olmsted especially desired to recruit the new generation of young, wealthy men, so that the club might teach them the obligations and duties of the upper class.

The national government enforced contracts, tariffs, and an expanding infrastructure, all in the best interest of the professionals in the merchant, financial, and manufacturing classes, which in turn, benefited the population at large.

These professionals also developed an economic interest in the federal government, because as the war progressed, Union League ideas had their effect and New York City's elite bore a disproportional amount of the nation's debt.

Authorized by the U.S. War Department, the club decided to recruit, train and equip a Colored infantry regiment for Union service.

The next month, it marched from the Union League Club, down Canal Street and over to the Hudson River piers to embark for duty in Louisiana.

It and its members helped to found the Metropolitan Museum of Art,[7] Grant's Tomb, and the Statue of Abraham Lincoln on Union Square, Manhattan.

The club then moved to Fifth Avenue and West 39th Street (1881); the building included decor designed by Frank Hill Smith, John La Farge, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and Will Hicok Low.

Many of its early members, notably cartoonist Thomas Nast, were instrumental in breaking "Boss" Tweed's corrupted political organization.

After running on the Bull Moose Party ticket in 1912, Roosevelt was persona non grata at the club for several years, being welcomed back after the United States entered World War I.

Among the Honorary Members were Sandra Day O'Connor, Henry Kissinger, Neil Armstrong, Margaret Thatcher, Antonin Scalia, Brent Scowcroft, Barbara Bush, and H. Norman Schwarzkopf.