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| Banquet of Haarlem's Cavilermen Civic Guard, by Cornelis Cornelisz Van Haarlem (Frans Hals Museum) |
Times change, but Chicago is still a city with plenty of private clubs, and I believe I've been to most — from the University Club, the Union League Club, the Chicago Club and the Cliff Dwellers Club, where I am honored to be a member, to the more obscure, like the Casino Club, which forced the John Hancock Building to redo its footprint by refusing to be forced off their land. Some are businessy, like the Metropolitan Club. Others artsy — the Arts Club of Chicago, obviously. Some are academic, like as the Quadrangle Club at the University of Chicago. A number, sadly, are no longer with us — the Standard Club, the Tavern Club and the Adventurers Club, which I wrote about in the go-go '90s, and share today because, well, I'm still on vacation, and can't face the prospect of putting words on paper, not until Thursday, when I'll have to come up with something for Friday. I tried to find out what happened to the Adventurers Club and could not — if anyone knows, please clue me in, and I'll share the information. I had just finished writing "Complete and Utter Failure" a couple of years earlier, and suspect the tone of this column was influenced by the chapter on all the expeditions that didn't make it to the top of Mount Everest.
Time: precisely noon. Conditions: light snow, scattered clouds, an air temperature of 11 degrees. Destination: adventure.
Alone, without dogteam or guides, I left the office, heading north up Wabash Avenue. I noticed several of the native Chicagoans, wearing their distinctive colorful hats and giant overcoats. At the corner of Wabash and Grand I caught sight of a bird of the Columbidae family — commonly known as a pigeon — on the wing. Breathtaking.
Turning west at Grand, a few minutes easy walk — no difficult ridges, no streams to ford — before my destination came into sight. The Adventurers Club! Chicago institution since 1911. Home to all those brave enough to face nature red in tooth and claw and master her. I went inside and had a beer.
My gaze was met by a walrus — stuffed, thankfully, one of the menagerie of big-game animals on display. At least two dozen trophies — a rhino, a moose, a cape buffalo, a sable, and many varieties of the antelope family — line both walls of the long room. Also, bears, full size, standing on hind legs, one grizzly, one polar, and a display case filled with shrunken heads and old pistols and other odd trinkets liberated from a variety of exotic destinations. If Ernest Hemingway is in heaven and has a rumpus room, it looks like this.
"Look at this stuff," said Robert M. Stahl, officially the executive chef but, at the moment, club bartender, standing behind the club's small bar, under a disturbing array of knives and penises. The knives were exotic weapons such as Panay gutrakers and hooked disemboweling knives. The penises, dried and not very penis-looking, were from two walruses and a whale. I will leave it to the helping professions to discern any deeper meaning behind the display.
If the volume of memorabilia is weighing on club members' minds more than it normally might, just by its gruesome strangeness, the reason is the club is being forced to move again. After spending 10 years in the old Red Cross Spaghetti Factory at 300 W. Grand, the club has to make way for loft condominiums.
"We're being evicted," said Rick Homstad, club president, adding that the club should have its new quarters selected soon. "I think we're going to have a better spot than we have now."
The Adventurers Club membership is tiny, as far as clubs go, with only 100 local members and another 100 non-resident members.
Though small, and looking for a home, the Adventurers Club is by no means an endangered species (unlike many of its trophies).
"It is a small club, always scraping by hand-to-mouth," said Homstad. "But we've managed to make it for 85 years."
The club was founded in the heady days of African safaris and Great White Hunters — a letter from Teddy Roosevelt himself, on Sagamore Hill stationery, enjoys a prime position among the treasures, which include the lock and key from the Civil War ironclad Monitor.
Club members champion an attitude that is not exactly embraced by every schoolchild nowadays. Members offer no apologies. In the current newsletter, new member Alan Rugendorf lists "killing in general" as among his hobbies.
"When you're here, you're talking to people who have been quite a few places," said Homstad, when asked how the club reacts to the obvious criticisms in today's environment of pervasive touchy-feeliness. "We have a limited clientele."
But a well-heeled one. Several members of the Walgreen family belong, as does auctioneer Leslie Hindman, one of its few female members.
"I love the Adventurers Club," Hindman said. "I think it is the greatest group of people. Very diverse and a lot of fun and wild and crazy . . . guys mostly, and a couple of girls."
Food was shared. Chef Stahl, who hails from New Orleans, gives an appealing Cajun flair to the Adventurers Club menu. Even the staunchest anti-vivisectionist might look kindly on the club after sampling Stahl's crawfish on angel hair pasta. Cheeks stuffed with chow, I eyed the morbid row of animal heads and thought: "Heck, why not? It's not as if we could bring 'em back to life or anything."
Properly fortified and my priorities rationalized into place, I once again donned my down-filled Eddie Bauer arctic expedition jacket and battled my way back to the office. Dangers of every kind lurked about me. I noticed packs of dogs, several of them big and possibly vicious, as I passed the windows of the Anti-Cruelty Society.
Thanks to cunning, and an easy-to-remember grid street system, I returned safely to the office, wise in the ways of the Adventurers Club and satisfied that I had accomplished my goal and accomplished it well.
—Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 29, 1996
I used to waitress and bartend at the Plaza Club, atop of the original Prudential Building, in the 80s. One July 3rd, a guest was over-served at lunch, during a relay race on the 39th floor below, he hit a window, it gave way and he plummeted into the crowds below gathering for the fireworks. It was very gruesome.
ReplyDeleteI did a brief search and funnily, AI said not much is known about the Adventurers Club and referred me back to your article. But! The club has a entry on Yelp, listed at 714 S Dearborn, with one very helpful review, from a Richard M. of Bloomington, IN, dated June 2021. I hope it's ok to paste it here, please feel free to delete or not publish this comment at all.
ReplyDelete"The Adventurers Club of Chicago is no longer located at this address.
The club had to move because the building owners were going to renovate the building for commercial use and condos so the club is temporarily searching for a new club location.
The Adventurers Club of Chicago is a private Club formed in 1911 by General W. Robert Foran. Among our members have included Teddy Roosevelt, Stephen Fossett, Roald Amundsen, Marlon Perkins, and many others.
A requisite of regular membership is over a period of years is to do an adventure that is approved by the club and you carry a flag and plant it at the end of your adventure.
One of our members has ridden on horseback from the tip of Northern Alaska to the tip of Tierra del Fuego. Another member has crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a row boat. While one of our women members has scaled the 5 highest mountains in the world including Mount Everest. Finally, one of our members walked (not on a sled with dogs) to the North Pole.
These people make presentations to the club over dinner and drinks and there is a duplicate flag that goes on the club wall. Club luncheons allow you to get to know everyone as they are fellow Adventurers. This is a very interesting club.
I anticipate the club might briefly share the premises of another Chicago club in the near future till we reincarnate in our own clubhouse."
https://www.yelp.com/biz/adventurers-club-of-chicago-chicago
I would guess that the club is defunct, based on the following, which appeared on Facebook: theadventurersclub.com
ReplyDeleteThis domain name is for sale
Give us a call (855) 687-0658
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john
Adventurers Club of Chicago
ReplyDeleteClub in Chicago, Illinois
Permanently closed
Address: 714 S Dearborn St # 6, Chicago, IL 60605
Phone: (312) 987-1911
Suggest an edit · Own this business?
Looks like the Club was a victim of declining membership and changing times. To me the most interesting story is -- What happened to all of their "trophys"??? I've had to close down a few offices in my life and many of us have experienced the challenge of clearing out parents homes, or our own, of years of accumulated belongings. There are organizations that accept furniture, any public school will welcome office supplies, and various charities welcome other items, but you can't exactly dump a taxidermied moose head or polar bear on Goodwill!
ReplyDeleteIt looks like the former President/Treasurer of The Adventurers Club is around and reachable. Neil if you don't pursue this story, I hope you don't mind if I do because I'm dying to know the answer!
Please do. I officially deputize you as an Every Goddamn Day Investigator. I find that people who seem reachable can be harder to pin down when you actually try to do it. But if he wants to explain the club's demise, I think that could go in a newspaper.
DeleteGo for it, Monica! I think we're all anxious to find out where you park a stuffed moose.
Deletejohn
I look forward to that!
ReplyDeleteA shame it closed down, as it was the club I most wanted to belong to once I became stupidly wealthy and could belong to a club.
ReplyDelete(Belonging to a club is nice- I was married at the University Club thanks to my wife's parent's belonging, and it's a lovely place. Just not worth the dues to have the right to eat at their restaurant and so on. But the Adventurer's Club appealed to me thanks to the slightly silly nature of it.)
In 1979 I became a law clerk to Judge Thomas Fairchild, then chief judge of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. Our offices were in the federal courthouse. It was the judge's tradition to celebrate staff birthdays by bringing his entire office staff--two clerks, two secretaries, and himself--to lunch at one of the nearby clubs of which he was an honorary member. The club of choice had been the Union League Club until two women clerks a few years before me--one of whom subsequently became a federal judge herself--refused to use the back elevator as mandated for women by the club rules. So he switched to the Standard Club. My first meal there I ordered a sandwich and was picking it up to eat it when I realized everyone else was daintily cutting up their sandwich and eating it with a fork. It was one of those "I'm not in Kansas anymore" moments.
ReplyDeleteChicago’s gentile clubs barred Jews, most of whom were German immigrants. They, in turn, started the Standard Club after the Civil War, and barred the later immigrants, the Jews from Eastern Europe. And those Jews founded the Covenant Club during World War I. Jews discriminating against other Jews? Hell, yeah...the same way light-skinned people of color have often treated darker members of their own race. Prejudice is a universal impulse among humankind.
ReplyDeleteMy father's parents emigrated from Poland and Russia, and some of their sons were Covenant Club members. Went to a number of weddings and bar mitzvahs there. Quite a "swanky" place, as I recall from my kid days. But at that age, the food was all that mattered. And it was good.
The Covenant Club closed down in the 1980s, due to declining enrollment, and the aging of the existing membership. The Standard Club finally closed five years ago. Succeeding generations did not share as much enthusiasm for exclusive (and exclusionary) clubs. Maybe there was less of a need, as anti-Semitism seemed to be diminishing. But today...who knows? Such clubs might easily start coming back.
My uncles were quite proud members, but my father was never impressed. He let his older brothers buy him meals at their club, but he never joined. Many of Chicago's Jewish movers, shakers, and wheeler-dealers, especially those of eastern European descent, conducted a good deal of business there--over lunch and drinks. My old man was a non-drinker, and not much of a schmoozer. He preferred to work in his office, at his desk,
Neil, thank you for this. I hope Monica is successful. Would love to hear the rest of the Adventure Club story. Your vigilant support of art and the Van Haarlem painting above are a reminder of how important those clubs have been to Chicago's cultural climate. The Union League Club has one of the most important collections around. The Cliff Dwellers Club, founded for the purpose of promoting artists, architects and authors, spent 100 years atop Orchestra Hall. The University Club of Chicago, where I was fortunate enough to exhibit my work in 2007, has an extensive history of supporting artists. And, of course, there is, as you mentioned, the Arts Club of Chicago that once hosted Gertrude Stein, Jean Dubuffet and other luminaries. How lucky we are to have such institutions. And how lucky also to have EGD to bring them to life.
ReplyDelete