Through the Haze:
Inside a New York City Gentleman's Club

by Tom Maher
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January 14, 2000 | Page 1, 2

A friend of my family recently invited me to have a drink with him at a private men's club in New York City. Now, this was not the kind of club men go to alone with a fistful of single dollar bills - rather, it was the kind that allows no women at all.

I took the subway from my office and walked a few blocks more. This brief journey took me from Manhattan's Silicon Alley in lower Midtown.com to the warrens of old money that thrive in and around Park Avenue.

The subway has a funny way of leaving you feeling slightly displaced, even in a familiar city. You go underground in one place and pop up in another, and I've never been very comfortable with that feeling. When I emerged at the station, the rush hour traffic literally pushed me up and out into a new land.

The club itself was a short walk from the subway station. I passed blockfront facades that were not easily identified as individual structures - they seemed cut from one imposing stone. My destination was no different. The only architectural indication that the club was a separate building at all was the entrance itself; low slung granite steps led up to the heavy oak doors.

Entering the club was one of those rare moments when you feel like you've passed a test without doing anything at all. The wide lobby with its cool marble walls refracted the low noise of men's voices in all directions. The atmosphere was so thick it hung, almost perceptibly, in clouds around me. It smothered the honking traffic outside, and when the doors closed with a thud the outside world vanished. Walking into a gentleman's club prompts a moment of sudden self-awareness, the same way a cathedral or a hospital or a funeral home makes you reevaluate where you are.

The white-haired doorman went to call my host and I walked the length of the rotunda lobby while I waited. Along the walls were hung the portraits of past presidents of the club's Board, with the appropriate collegiate credentials (Ivy) on brass tags beneath them. Interspersed between these at slightly higher heights were photos and old-fashioned daguerreotypes of other men.

I stopped and looked up at Benjamin Rush, a stiffly composed fellow, who I later discovered was one of the leading revolutionaries in the colonies' early fight for independence from the British. He was a classicist, apparently, an appropriately genteel occupation.

My host met me below Mr. Rush and took me several flights upstairs by elevator to the Smoking Club. Here was the essence of the place. No money was seen changing hands over the uncluttered expanse of the bar, no music played, no television hung on the wall. No women accompanied the men lounging in thick leather chairs. The men sat together in small clusters, and occasionally exchanged greetings as one or the other walked by.

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