The Society
The Park Avenue Social Club is a small, private circle of friends and neighbours convened for the pleasures of good company, considered conversation, and the occasional spirited debate.
The Club takes as its model the older societies of London and the university towns — the Oxford and Cambridge Club foremost among them — while declining to take itself altogether so seriously. Our purpose, if it can be called that, is simply to keep a good room warm and a good table laid, and to do so with a degree of care.
Members and their guests are received throughout the year for dinners, suppers, readings, working lunches, and the long, undirected evenings that are increasingly rare in this city. The Club keeps no fixed calendar; its hours are the hours of its members.
The Clubhouse
Discreetly situated on a quiet stretch of the Rose Hill neighbourhood, the Clubhouse occupies a single, well-appointed floor and the roof above it. The rooms are open to members and their introduced guests.
The Drawing Room
The first of the rooms one enters, and the longest occupied. Comfortable seating, a working hearth, and the day's papers on the side table.
The Library
A modest collection — fiction, history, the occasional volume of poetry — with two armchairs and a coffee long enough to last a chapter.
The Kitchen
A full working kitchen, in regular use. Members are encouraged to cook, or to sit at the counter while someone else does.
The Butler's Pantry
Panelled in oak and kept stocked for those evenings when dinner runs a little long. Cocktails are mixed here, glassware kept here, and decisions occasionally made here.
The Roof Terrace
Open from spring to late autumn, weather permitting. The view is to the north and west, taking in a fair stretch of the skyline.
The Guest Chambers
Two rooms are kept made up for members travelling from out of town, and for those evenings on which it is wiser not to go home.
The Neighbourhood
Rose Hill is the older name for the quarter of Manhattan that lies, broadly speaking, between Madison Square Park and Murray Hill, with Park Avenue running through it as a kind of arterial spine. It is a neighbourhood of brownstones, prewar apartment houses, a handful of churches of architectural interest, and an unusually high concentration of pleasant ground-floor restaurants.
The Club takes its name and its temperament from this stretch of the avenue. We do not give the exact address; members know it, and prospective guests are told.
Membership
Membership in the Park Avenue Social Club is by introduction only. The Club is not advertised, does not solicit applications, and maintains no waiting list. Members propose new members; the Secretary keeps a quiet book.
There are no dues. The customary contribution to the running of the Club is a good bottle, a useful introduction, or a willingness to wash up.
Guests are welcome and may be brought up to four at a time, on the understanding that they conduct themselves as one would in any well-kept private room.
House Rules
- Coats may be left in the entrance hall.
- Mobile telephones are silenced at the dining table and on the terrace after dusk.
- Business may be discussed; business may not be transacted.
- Members are responsible for their guests, and for the state in which they leave the room.
- Bring something to share, or do not. Stay as long as you like, or do not.
- What is said in the Club stays in the Club — including, on most evenings, the members.
Correspondence
Members and properly introduced guests may write to the Secretary at secretary@parkave.social. The Secretary answers correspondence on Thursdays, generally, and at no other particular time.
The Club has no telephone.