Book Description

Deep in the Prohibition era The idea of a private retreat for the clubbable (with liquor lockers) struck a group of bright Chicago professionals who then set out to make it happen. The pioneers surveyed 100 potential members on the need for such a club and 99 signed up. Several of the originators were architects, others journalists, scholars, painters, musicians, a lawyer or two, several prominent merchants, many of them members of a well loved club, the Cliff Dwellers, that was taking Prohibition seriously. A couple of the architects were completing a new skyscraper with a panoramic view of Chicago from the floor at the base of its tower. This became the home of the new club, which they would name for the convivial inns of yore: The Tavern. When the plaster was dry great artists in the group set to work on the walls, one producing amusing whimsy, the other a famous mural. Committees were forming, creating charter and bylaws, engaging a decorator, buying kitchen equipment and furniture, signing up members. While this is going on, the book keeps us in touch with the site of the action: bustling Chicago, city of skyscraper builders and bootleggers, vibrant theater and music scene, speakeasys and bordellos, cops and politicians. Then in quick succession come the Great Depression and the World's Fair of 1933-34 (much of it built by club architects). After sensational super-parties, an entertainment style develops: "Fireside Chats" with visiting celebrities, breakfasts with visiting theater stars and sometimes whole casts. World War II impacts the club heavily as hosts of members go off to war or off to Washington, and clubbable army and navy officers assigned to Chicago make it a haven. Several future members are shot down over Germany, three of them meeting in one POW camp. The vibrant postwar era brought changing patterns of working, commuting, and entertainment sending fault lines across the foundations of downtown clubs, which The Tavern Club managed to navigate, in part by new emphasis on hosting catered events. The club's art works, major murals in two large rooms and a rotating collection of paintings and sculpture by its artists over the years plus a monthly art show always up on one long gallery wall--make it a comfortable resort for its members and an attractive venue for meetings of members or outsiders. New skyscrapers in the 1950s and later gradually encroached on three of The Tavern Club's fabulous views but the Chicago River and the Michigan Avenue Bridge preserve its striking north view along the "Miracle Mile" all the way to the Oak Street Beach on Lake Michigan. But all has not been amity and smooth sailing. As one new skyscraper obscured The Tavern's southern vista it offered the club space on its top floor. This divided pros and cons into rival camps. An advisory vote went by a whisker to move but the board decided to stay, and the wounds gradually healed. A dissident faction arose a couple of decades later over issues of club management, but after a few years of diligent bridge building the club began (as the title of the last chapter reveals, "pulling together again." An Epilogue reflects on the leaders of club and city over 75 years and their role in creating a unique social institution with a rich entertainment tradition, and deep ties to the history of the city and its cultural jewels.