These photos of the Cosmopolitan Club (also referred to as the Cos Club) were taken in 1932 at the club's final location: 122 East 66th Street. Unlike many of the places we revisit here, the club still stands there, operational, today. But they didn't move into the Thomas Harlan Ellett designed home (which earned him a Gold Medal from the Architectural League of New York) until that year. Previously it was housed in leased out spaces around Manhattan—in total, they had three homes.
The private social club was founded in 1909, when it leased a space in the Gibson Building on East 33rd Street. The New York Times described it as being "for the benefit of New York women interested in the arts, sciences, education, literature, and philanthropy or in sympathy with those interested." Those who belonged included Eleanor Roosevelt, Helen Hayes, Pearl Buck, Margaret Mead, and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller—dues were $20 a year.
In 1911 the club was formally incorporated under president Helen Gilman Brown—other founding members were Mrs. V. Everett Macy, Mrs. John Sherman Hoyt, Mrs. Albert Herter, Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr., Mrs. E.R. Hewitt, and Mrs. Ellwood Hendrick.
In 1914 they moved to 44th Street and Lexington Avenue, and three years later had a membership of around six hundred; that year they had an exhibition of paintings by Pablo Picasso.
The club (which has a strict "no jeans" policy even today) still looks pretty much the same, and is probably the most New Orleans-style building in all of Manhattan.
