Ah, the tribulations of the elite. So sad.
I'd favor turning their club into a soup kitchen and a therapeutic house for the well being of those damaged financially, physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually by the elite.
As to these elite members who are made apoplectic by minor irritations to their lives, let them find some less exalted space for them to both have and to eat their cake.
11
I admit that it's beside the point, but; the Arts section? I searched for some mention of the portrait at risk, or architecture in peril, but found none. Perhaps this story would be more at home in the Business section? It would be with its other "captain of industry" friends and I could've avoided it altogether.
*I'm not entirely anti-bougie club. I belonged to the Cornell Club (aka The Best Western of Ivy Clubs) for years.
9
This is exactly the kind of story that would have routinely appeared in early 20th century issues of The New York Times.
In fact, without looking, I'll bet any Times editor three highly placed sources in the federal agency of their choice that, if I go right now to the Times online archive, I will be able to quickly find some news story before 1910 about a fight between members at some exclusive NYC club over a proposed renovation.
But this is 2018. The last time JP Morgan got all hot and bothered about the placement of a drinking fountain at the University Club was over 125 years ago.
What in the world led any of your otherwise first-rate editors to think that -- in the current political and historical context -- this is news that anyone other than club members would give a hoot about?
Take the designs of some of the inhuman spaces in which immigrant children have been warehoused. You covered that still festering problem superbly.
But Harvard Hall?
I await your investigative reporting on how board members are chosen at the New York Yacht Club.
11
This story doesn't belong in the Arts section, but in the Buiness section, twinned with the nauseating story about the risks of recovering your investment in your gold-plated bathroom.
I assume the NYT surveys its readership on a regular basis, and has learned that either most of its readers are so rich that a story about the decor of the Harvard Club matters to them, or that--like the viewership of Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous--their readers are so masochistic that they pine for articles that punish them with details of the toys & accessories of the wealthy.
3
All these comments are boring. When someone sends a something a little more contraversial (but totally decent) you don’t print it. Same problem as the Harvard Club. Boring.
PS myself and several members of my family have multiple degrees from Harvard: AB to PhD
1
As a former member of the club I can tell you that the dues are extortionary, & you get very little for your money. No wonder the food and beverage service is not doing well: because it's airport pricing for substandard fare! You can go down the block to a great restaurant and pay less for much better cocktails and food. The irony of this non-controversy is that Harvard Hall is almost always empty! I cancelled my membership because there were few events worth attending, the food and drink is unaffordable and bad, and there was a general vacuousness.
11
I understand there is a New York real estate mogul named Trump who could turn this place around.
5
First-World problems...
7
OMG- the comments are better than the article!
11
Perhaps the emotion underlying this controversy is being fueled by an unacknowledged prior upheaval - the destruction of the Great Hall in Harvard's Freshman Union in the 1990s. The Union was also designed by McKim, Mead & White, the illustrious New York firm whose work for Harvard in the early 20th century is most responsible for Harvard's neo-Georgian ambience. This magnificent room, in which first year undergraduates ate their meals from the 1930s to the 1990s, was subsequently chopped up to make a series of offices and meeting rooms for a humanities center.
The Club's Harvard Hall was designed just three years after the Great Hall in the Union, and bears a strong resemblance to it, with its narrow proportions, great height, and material palette of stone and paneling. While the proposed changes to the Hall merely involve its repurposing, not its destruction, the possibility of any change may be triggering strong feelings in the older members of the Club; just as the design of Harvard Hall in New York may have been a conscious attempt on the part of the architects to evoke feelings of nostalgia for the members' college experience, potential changes to this venue may similarly evoke feelings of uncertainty, decline and loss. The Union they remember is no more, the memory of it fading into the mists along with their receding youths, and now this last vestige of its presence in their lives may be starting down the slippery slope of change.
14
I hope these folks aren't complaining about the prospect of ponying up an extra 200 bucks a year. I'll kick in just to get them started.
3
Do these people have a sense of shame? People are starving, children are being detained in concentration camps away from their parents having to eat spam if they are lucky; and we are discussing nonsense like this?
I am ashamed to hear that the institution I owe a ton for my intellectual development is going through this type of pettiness. The money to be spent here should be donated for scholarships so that young people with a true desire to learn rather than legacy candidates will get in and waste four years drinking in Finals Clubs and play lacrosse.
Keep the club the way it is. We don’t need another dining room. The one there is great and by the way within a radius of half a mile you have restaurants that are superb.
6
Stuffed animal heads are part of colonial dominance behaviour and predate understanding and respect for fellow creatures. Elephants and whales in particular are creatures of great intelligence and have highly-developed social expressions of family and community. Displaying the head of an elephant for status and amusement is a blunt statement of insensitivity and disrespect for life and living creatures. It is passed time to remove such grotesqueries from display. It is not something to be proud of, particularly for an organization supposedly representing enlightenment.
26
@MJM Yes, no animal trophies. It is barbaric and it sucks. I won't speak in a genteel fashion about this.
Save the architecture. It is an important part of our intellectual past.
But round up and jail the people that killed those poor beautiful creatures. It is 2018 and send them all to jail.
3
@MJM
Well said!!
While the club and its architectural details may be sacred, its functions are not. Turn it into a dining room. Dinners will enjoy the interior Beaux Arts details; an irreplacable part of the delight in dining in a space that adds its own spice!
8
$2,147 in annual dues?
Is that all? And you get a gym? It can't be.
That's not enough to stem losses in the food and beverage business of the club.
Increase the dues and the meal and beverage prices in order to maintain tradition.
27
Is there a sliding scale for the Harvard grads who become school teachers or social workers or ministers or any other kind of poorly paid public-good worker, or is the club only for people for whom $2k is pocket change?
16
Perhaps the University could spare a few hundred thousand out of its outrageously huge endowment accounts not just to save the looks of the club that bears its name, but also make it accessible to ALL its alums, not just the six-seven-or-eight-digit salaried crowd.
17
@Crimson... in Embarrassment
The University doesn’t own the Harvard Club. It’s a totally separate entity that is sanctioned by Harvard but otherwise independent, as is the case with most such alumni clubs.
1
It's precisely this type of elitism that's causing our society to polarize.
Democrats should be the party of equality and freedom for ALL. In that sense, Democrats should oppose this type of elitism all together. Elitism saps away empathy and divides the nation into haves and have-nots.
The highly educated people should be the leaders to lead by example.
9
@BLOG joekimgroup.com
I’m sorry, how did you get from an internal dispute about room layouts in a local club to the Democratic Party and the fate of Western civilization? I think I missed your steps.
10
I love the elephant! They should get more.
15
@John
Booo!
1
I am just made to recall when women had to enter the club through a ground-level side door into a long narrow hallway.
This place has never been a bastion of enlightened social perspective.
30
And no women are quoting the article. Of course maybe they have better things to do.
31
I think you meant “quoted in the article,” but I get your point.
1
Thanks for this article. My life problems seem so much less important.
56
$2,147 annually? And only a 10% increase in dues? I don't think you could rent a parking space in New York for that price.
Separately, the Times should actually do more spreads like this into the wealth and privilege average Americans have no access to. They voted for the guy with gold toilets because he told them they'd be laughed out of the room by people like Harvard Club members, and... he was right.
39
Same thing happened at the original Boston Club; they've gutted the place of life, the main Harvard Hall is actually an event center and has zero use by actual members. In fact, even the remaining rooms and the original library were repurposed for public events or outright eliminated. New York will become like the Boston Club - an event center with a gym and the Harvard name, such a shame.
18
Taxidermy?
Ceiling heights?
Ivy League club financial deficits?
“The worst thing ever.”
New York is sooo boring and sooo out of touch with reality.
19
@Dan L
This doesn't represent the vast majority of NYC. Most of us think it's absurd.
@Dan L
“All the news that’s fit to print.” Why do you waste your valuable reading and commenting on it if you don’t care? There are other articles.
2
@Dan L So true
1
Harvard has long looked away from its early Christian roots and values. The motto “Veritas” used to be “Christo et Ecclesiae Veritas”.
6
@Working Stiff
And the institution used to be devoted to the established church of a divinely anointed monarch. The change to a pillar of democratic society that respects freedom of conscience and separates church and state was for the better and the motto change reflects that. Also, what has this to do with floor plans?
11
@Cormac
The inference is that rich people ought not to make all the decisions just because of a check book
1
This is what Capitalism is all about. People who have lots of money - Moonves- $120 million in severance pay. How many of the commenters would happily join if they had the credentials? I don't begrudge people spending their money any way they like. I don't have to judge them! Enjoy it while you have it.
Turn it into a soup kitchen.
40
@Dudesworth
But wouldn't that open it to Cornell graduates?
30
@brian
And perhaps to non-Ivy's? Heaven forfend.
1
@brian
Fantastic riposte!
I've been a member of the Yale Club for 35 years. I'll disregard the snark about the Yale Club being too "corporate." I will note, however, that at least the Yale Club's Main Lounge doesn't resemble a tired waiting room in a train station.
22
Wow! another first world problem of the uber rich. I say perhaps it's time to give those Harvard Club fees to the poor for a year or two for repentence. An elephant head how manly and how completely sad.
15
"Agree with me, or I'll hit you with a ten per cent increase in fees."
We should have seen this coming, when they stopped serving drinks in the Charles River Room.
13
It amazes me what excites and agitates the rich and the privileged. This is disturbing and raises hackles, but income equality, glass ceilings, and a living wage,?Hhhmmmmmmmmmm...not so much.
Welcome to the New Gilded Age.>
40
Good grief, it is so much more dark, stuffy and stagnant than the Oxford and Cambridge Club on Pall Mall, a building of large windows and light motifs. Harvard Hall looks like a place for the living dead. Get with the times, misery, out of touch Harvard grads - evolve in the way that your more senior academic brethren have.
9
@Ralph
There may be mold.
2
Wait a minute. A bunch of Harvard graduates can't come up with some Cirque du Soleil style accounting trick to make the balance sheet appear rosier? Isn't this why we make them CEOs? Come on guys, you're just not trying hard enough.
42
Harvard Hall looks like the dining hall at Hogwarts!
https://i.stack.imgur.com/oRIVs.png
24
@Noodles
Thank You for the perfect observation / comparison to Hogwarts, and why the dining hall and the Harvard Hall should be kept as is.
Let the Harvard Club's gilded era resonance be used as a movie set once in a while; preferably for films about rebel magicians like Harry Potter - financial problems solved.
I confess I have great childhood memories of dining there- best chocolate eclairs ever. Then we always walked around the Harvard Hall looking at the portraits of the so and sos, a few relatives, who looked down on us, while we made astute and snarky childhood observations back at them.
It wasn't lost on us that these captains of often twisted intellect at best, and of dubious rapacious pursuits at worst, were the same ones who coerced their sons, argued for the tax code- also the one who argued against it; obliterated first nations people, ignored their own children and relegated the ladies downstairs to the women's powder room.
Those chocolate eclairs were worth it only as long as it took to feel the existential price.
7
@Julie Congratulations. You've successfully convinced yourself that the readers of the NY Times care about this issue, your lineage, and your use of language. As a child, you made snarky comments about privilege, and now as an adult you want everyone to know that you had that privilege.
2
That poor elephant.
29
I feel sorry for the Harvard Club members. Maybe we should set up a go fund me page for them.
44
“If we destroy Harvard Hall,” he (Ivan Shumkov) said that night, “I think it will be the worst thing ever.”
The Holocaust, the Plague, the decimation of the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere, slavery in the Americas, etc., all pale in comparison to making a dining hall?
About perspective, what do Harvard graduates come away with?
38
@blairga
Perhaps the man referred to the worst thing ever for the Harvard Club, and not the worst thing ever in the history of the world. Perspective matters.
24
I found this story to be absolutely, laugh out loud, funny. Nothing more humorous than witnessing a one-percenter hissy fit. Thanks, NYT!
56
I argue with the statement that the club is more corporate than collegial. We only use the club several times a year but are always made to feel welcome and comfortable. We are on first name terms with some staff. The food is excellent and the new terrace on the top floor is one of the treats of New York. The dining room is elegant and appropriate for a club with class. Harvard Hall and other spaces on the ground floor are already used regularly in my experience for social occasions (nothing like a Bar Mitzvah party for enthusiastic activity). It seems to work the way it is, so why change?
8
@Dr. J. David A first name basis with staff! You astound me, sir. How egalitarian of you!
31
@Dr. J. David
Those first names are all changed to George though, to prevent confusion.
14
Do they still have a quota for Bar Mitzvah parties?
3
It's a beautiful room. I think they should do their best to preserve it and just ask for more money from their members instead of turning it into a commercial enterprise. There are so few places like that left. It's almost is like a Wildlife Preserve...
33
Perhaps they could join the Cornell Club. They always have the best food and service with their top-ranked Hotel School.
11
That elephant head display is disgusting.
47
I'm not a Harvard alum and wouldn't want to join an exclusive club anyway. (I toyed with the University Club, but they make you wear a jacket and tie to breakfast! I don't wear one at all, if I can avoid it).
The article only touches on the real problem here: only 8% of the members use the dining service. Is this worth paying the cost of a full-time kitchen staff? Clearly something has to be done to stop losing money on the dining service, though it's not clear the solution is turning Harvard Hall into the dining room.
16
If the leadership of the club who are in favor of this change had been more transparent in presenting their proposal, perhaps there could be more civil discourse. Just which aspects of dining are losing money? What kind of changes could be made in the dining experience to make up what is said to be a $100,000 annual deficit. (Also the threat of a 10% increase in membership fees adds up to a lot more than $100,000.) Is it dinner service that is losing money? Is it the new rooftop bar that is generating a loss? Is it the Grill Room? Is it breakfast or lunch? This is a proposal to generate more income from renting out the club to outside events, yet the proposal is described as something that would make the member experience better. I don't think that's what this is. Transparency, please. I've been a member for 20 years,and I don't appreciate being treated like a child. And -- it is Jonathan Davis, not Jonathan David.
18
Well it’s clear what the elephant in the room is. Perhaps it’s time for it to go.
60
...don't change anything in The Club.
Increase membership fees !
Thank-you.
19
Indeed! Why worry about including your lesser-paid do-gooder fellow alumni/ae? If they were so stupid to waste their Harvard degree on helping the poor or helping vulnerable children or ministering to the
elderly rather than parlaying it into million-dollar salaries and more in stock options and bonuses, they don’t deserve the comforts of our Alma Mater Club. In fact, they so despoil that sacred name with their lower earning potential and weird values, they should be stripped of their degrees!
Not!
1
As a past member of two major Ivy Clubs in NYC I can see the value of tradition. How this is interpreted by the membership is a reflection upon their values, or lack thereof.
As a private club where financial sustainability is essential, practical decisions must be made, just as in the rest of life. Yes, I can certainly life quite happily without any of these "Ivy Refuges" because I have vivid memories of the best that they represent. Younger alumni have not had the same experiences and, to attract their support for the Universities, having such Clubs helps.
If this is so important to Harvard Alums, why don't some of the mega-wealthy "ra-ra" zealots endow the club? Simple solution out of newly-enriched Trumpian pocket change. Personally, I feel there are much more crucial problems at hand that can use MY resources for the betterment of humanity.
28
Uh-oh. My loyalties to both of these Ivy-League clubs is being testes....."While refugees of the Yale Club, for example, have long complained it is more corporate than clubby, the Harvard Club, on West 44th Street, has maintained a familial appeal...."
This is not true. the Yale Club has a lot of quiet, contemplative space. Thats why I'm a member and why I stay there. Its hard to find peace and quiet, since every luxury hotel now has turned "empty space" in to a sellable item. The Grammercy Park Hotel outsourced its lovely rooftop dining area so hotel guests cant use it because its sold off for birthdays and weddings. The Mandarin now regularly closes of its lunge and bard on Saturdays for more private events.
10
@Working doc
Where to begin: "loyalties to . . . testes"
Where to end: "lunge and bard . . .for more private events"
Your spell check is hilarious!
2
I have been lucky enough to have been a guest for dinner at the Harvard Club on more than one occasion. I still remember the first time I saw Harvard Hall. It was a visual delight unlike any space I'd seen. Yes, it is a product of another age, but oh what a loss it would be if it became a dining room.
40
Gosh, my state college doesn't have problems like this. We've got a food court.
I get that your readers include members of the Harvard Club and that some of them find this of great personal interest. But if I could afford to channel two thousand bucks a year for a quiet place to eat, I'd give that two thousand bucks to an organization that – you know, as the Bible says – feeds the hungry.
80
@Howard
They give boat loads to charity too.
Most members can afford to donate a lot to people who need food and can still belong to a boat load of clubs.
13
@Howard Churches get government handouts. Private clubs don't. Churches don't pay municipal fees, either.
5
@diane mead Full disclosure. I am poor. I never went to an Ivy. The Hall is gorgeous and as someone whose little, historic register town has demolished so many important buildings, I gotta hope this gorgeous room stays in good repair. And I would have a tough time donating 10 bucks to the cause. But I do understand culture. That Hall and Morgan Library are two places I feel I understand and relish great design and preservation.
“But we view the current proposal as ill-considered, insufficiently researched and unnecessarily disruptive.”
Of course that is the case, as it always is in academia, so why would it be different here at a "club" whose members are culled from one specific academic institution. It is also the go-to modus operandi for management to rule by chaos. Disrupt unnecessarily.
Some were concerned that they would have limited access to quiet rooms if the Harvard Club rented out more space to outsiders.
Oh outsiders, those lumpen masses also known as "The Help."
This is nothing a couple of soda machines and a few vending machines could solve. They take credit / debit these days. And not only is it NYC, but it's a PRIVATE club, so they could store beer / wine / spirits in one of the soda machines. For those who would so choose, before retreating into the nearest available quiet room.
8
In my view, the "drama" portrayed in this article speaks to a more significant phenomena in US society: the increasing presence of members of the financial sector (fund managers, private equity, investments bankers and such) in elite organizations, such as the Harvard Club of New York. Those in finance, such as Mr. Holland ("the owner of a private investment firm") have a strong incentive to join such organizations because they provide networking opportunities and demonstrate status and connections (which is always a selling point), and so fits their ambition to advance themselves and their business interests. The financial types by the very nature bring a focus on the money-side of the entity - the need to run it profitably and efficiently. Thus, one tends to see a type of corporatization of these older institutions, rather than a focus on collegiality, ambiance and the club as refuge from the wider world.
One sees the phenomena all over. I went to an elite boys prep school (The Roxbury Latin School, in Boston) and in my era in the 1980s the trustees were a mix of academics, medical professors, private school heads, and professionals. Now the board of trustees is far less intellectually diverse, as over the last decade plus it has been nearly exclusively populated by private money men and women with a few lawyers and real estate developers and management consultants/business people (handmaidens to the money crow) supplementing them ....
71
@William M. Palmer, Esq. Around one-third of Harvard students go into finance upon graduation.
I guarantee you that the large majority of these students did not state this as their ambition in their application.
Harvard does not care about this misallocation of an extraordinary educational resource as they get paid back for its perversion in spades.
12
@William M. Palmer, Esq.
Best comment I’ve seen in the Times in a while.
But it is worth reflecting on the reasons for this change. Your old school’s board has almost certainly changed because fundraising has became more difficult and more money is needed to continue to attract students in a competitive environment. It is an institution trying to survive in a society where wealth has become ever more unevenly distributed (dramatically so) and all aspects of life have become a “business” competitively focus on maximization of wealth and power.
Our institutions merely reflect our culture.
6
What would be the increase in membership fees that would result to offset the food and beverage losses? Let them pay for having their cake and their quiet room, too.
25
Management 101: Fail.
The history of bringing in "experts" to impose top down changes is littered with bloody conflict.
If money is the problem, set up a structure for club members to explore and debate possible solutions. Members are your lifeblood and not people to alienate.
48
OMG, the drama ... as Kissinger once said, the reason university politics are so vicious is because the stakes are so small.
114
@omartraore I have always loved that quote but did not realize that Kissinger had coined it. It seems like most of the club members are former students, though.
2
@omartraore That is such a canard! Having worked at MIT for almost a decade and having also watched my spouse occasionally engage in university politics for the past 30+ years, it is not true that the stakes are always small. It depends on the nature of the program in question. Applied, physical and natural sciences, computer science and other departments at research universities are routinely allocating millions of dollars. At stake are how many grad students one can support, how much facility space, equipment, travel and research funds, etc. Those are not small stakes. Perhaps in a Department of Classics the stakes are in the few thousands of dollars but the issues still apply -- grad student funding, space allocation, travel & research funding. Update your understanding of the term 'academia.' Much of it is not Animal House or Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and hasn't been for many decades.
8
@Jzzy55
You failed to mention 'ceiling height' in your list.
1
Sigh... First world problems...
69
As I read this article, I couldn’t help but think of the 13 million American children that regularly don’t have enough to eat. Perhaps these folks volunteering and fighting at this ratified Club could spend their energy trying to solve that problem vs. fighting over in which fancy room they should eat their fancy meals.
109
@Redsoxshel me too. You have to say to yourself: "seriously" with poverty, no medical care these guys/gals only care about an elephant head (stuffed) and the ambiance of 'money'. Nothing has changed.
5
@Redsoxshel Children don't have enough to eat because their parents either vote for people like Donald Trump or don't vote at all. The members of the Harvard Club are not the problem.
A significant percentage of the American poor have been shooting themselves in the feet for decades via their decision to place fake machismo, guns, and religion over their economic interests. I'm growing tired of the sob stories.
4
What is the significance of the high ceiling in the current members reading room. Is it that private conversations remain private under a high ceiling? If so that could be an advantage to a 'business' lunch.
3
@Anthony Horan, MD
Looks like the ceilings are very high to make room for the tapestries.
2
@Michael I bet the tapestries were selected (or commissioned) to fit the ceilings.
@Ro Ma
Actually, I suspect not. McKim Mead and White, the architects are reknownwd for have shaped rooms specifically around antiques, Renaissance and Clasical art that they import area by the freighter load from Europe. The mark up on such items was a significant income stream for them (White particularly). So it is quite likely the room was adjusted specifically for the tapestries.
Preserve the Hall for contemplation, but maybe store the poor elephant in a warehouse it could share with the American Museum of Natural History's equestrian Teddy Roosevelt?
Taxidermied elephants belong together with that outdated monument to colonial racism that affronts Central Park West.
58
@Wendy Aronson yes and then ask all members to contribute to resources for the homeless and poor in NYC.
4
Why merely ask? Why not force them? Round up and jail any who refuse! Or better yet, lop off their heads and affix them to the wall so perhaps the elephant can have its revenge and Rest In Peace. (I am constantly amazed at the number of people who choose to decide what other people should do with their money...)
1