The New York Yacht Club Building is a seven-story Beaux-Arts clubhouse at 37 West 44th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, United States. Opened in 1901, the building was designed by architect Whitney Warren of Warren and Wetmore as the sixth clubhouse of the New York Yacht Club (NYYC). The clubhouse is part of Clubhouse Row, a concentration of clubhouses on 44th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues. The building is a New York City designated landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark.
Many of the facade and interior decorations are maritime–themed. The building's ornately decorated facade, on 44th Street, is clad with stone on its first four stories and is asymmetrically divided into four bays. The easternmost bay contains the entrance, while the western three bays contain double-height arches, ornamented with bay windows that resemble the sterns of ships. The upper stories are within a mansard roof that is slightly set back. Inside is a double-height entrance hall, visitors' room, and various other spaces in the basement and at ground level. On the second story is a double-height model room, measuring and containing over a thousand ship models. A private library/chartroom, dining rooms, and offices occupy the fourth story, and there are bedrooms on the remaining floors.
The NYYC, founded in 1844, was known for holding the America's Cup yachting trophy for much of the 19th and 20th centuries. By the 1890s, overcrowding at the club's previous headquarters prompted the NYYC to consider developing a new clubhouse. J. P. Morgan bought land for the new clubhouse on 44th Street in October 1898, and Warren & Wetmore won an architectural design competition for the building that December. The clubhouse formally opened on January 19, 1901, and has hosted the club's annual meetings and events since then. The clubhouse remained mostly unchanged during the 20th century, although some rooms were converted to different uses. The NYYC renovated the interior in the 1980s and restored the facade in 1992. The interior was renovated again for the clubhouse's centennial in 2001.
Site The New York Yacht Club Building is on 37 West 44th Street, on the north sidewalk between Sixth Avenue and Fifth Avenue, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The rectangular land lot covers , with a frontage of on 44th Street and a depth of . The site, which is the clubhouse for the New York Yacht Club (NYYC), is landlocked.
On the same block, the Algonquin, Iroquois, and Sofitel New York hotels are to the west, while the Harvard Club of New York City building is to the east. Other nearby buildings include the Belasco Theatre to the west; Americas Tower to the northwest; 1166 Avenue of the Americas to the north; the New York City Bar Association Building and the Royalton Hotel to the south; and the Penn Club of New York Building, General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, and Hotel Mansfield to the southeast.
The adjacent block of 44th Street is known as Club Row and contains several clubhouses. When the New York Yacht Club Building was developed at the end of the 19th century, several other clubhouses were being built in the area. By the early 1900s, these other clubs included the Harvard Club, Yale Club, New York City Bar Association, Century Association, and the City Club of New York, all of which remained in the area at the end of the 20th century. Prior to the development of the Yacht Club Building, the neighborhood contained a slaughterhouse, stables for stagecoach horses, and a train yard for the elevated Sixth Avenue Line. There had been many stagecoach stables on 43rd and 44th streets between Fifth and Sixth avenues, but only a few of these buildings remained by the end of the 20th century.
Architecture The architectural firm of Warren and Wetmore designed the New York Yacht Club Building, which was completed in 1901. The club was known for the America's Cup yachting trophy, which it held from 1857 to 1983. The building is designed in a Beaux-Arts style, though characterized by contemporary newspapers as being "modern Renaissance of the French school". The clubhouse was the first of many buildings that the firm designed in New York City; the firm later designed such structures as Grand Central Terminal and the New York Central Building. Whitney Warren, one of the partners at Warren & Wetmore, wrote of his firm's design: "We consider that externally and internally the arrangements should be such as to place the subject in evidence, and not to retire it and make the clubhouse appear as that of merely a social club."; As such, it was elaborately decorated with marine and nautical motifs.
Facade
The building is seven stories tall; the uppermost stories are within a mansard roof. The building's facade is made of finely-grained limestone, behind which is a brick wall.; Only the southern elevation of the facade, along 44th Street, is visible. As planned, the first four stories would have been clad with stone, and there would have been a brick facade above. The brick section of the facade, corresponding to the clubhouse's bedrooms, is set back from the street, and it would not have been visible from the opposite sidewalk. This was to reduce the cost of construction, since brick was less expensive than limestone. As constructed, the first four stories extend to the lot line along 44th Street, while the mansard roof is set back approximately from the lot line. The lower stories are divided vertically into four bays and are asymmetrical. Warren had deliberately designed an asymmetrical facade to maximize the size of the second-floor model room. The facade's asymmetry and sculpted details were intended to make the building appear larger than it actually was.
The first story is treated as a podium and contains windows with grilles. On the second and third stories, the westernmost three bays are placed within a small colonnade, which consists of a Doric-style pier at either end and two Ionic-style engaged columns in the center. Each of the westernmost three bays contains a double-height, round-arched window. There is a bay window in the lower part of each archway, which is surrounded by an ornate frame. These frames are patterned after the sterns of 18th-century men-of-war, variously described as Baroque boats, Dutch yachts, and Spanish galleons. According to yachting historian and longtime NYYC member John Rousmaniere, the shapes of the frames most closely resemble a Dutch yacht. These frames also contain carvings of seaweed, waves, and garlands, which hang from console brackets below the center of each bay window, as well as dolphins on either side of the console bracket. The original plans had called for torchères to be installed along the facade, but this was never carried out.
The easternmost bay projects slightly from the rest of the facade and is flanked by triple-height pilasters, each of which contains a carving of the NYYC's shield. At ground level is an entrance topped by a carved cartouche, which depicts a sea shell topped by an octopus with curved tentacles. There is a segmentally-arched window at the second story, which is divided into multiple panes. The arch is topped by a keystone with the head of Poseidon, the ancient Greek god of the sea. Flagpoles are affixed to either pilaster above the second story, projecting diagonally above the sidewalk. The easternmost bay contains a rectangular transom window at the third story, which is recessed from the facade.
Above the third story, an entablature with modillions runs horizontally across the entire facade. The upper stories are also divided into four bays, with broad pilasters between each bay. The fourth story contains small, recessed rectangular windows flanked by smaller piers. Above the fourth story, the broad pilasters between each bay are designed as freestanding piers, which support a pergola above the fifth story. A balustrade runs between each set of piers above the fifth story. There was originally a roof garden on the fifth story, beneath this pergola. In the original plans, the pergola was to have contained plantings, which were never installed. The mansard roof is recessed from the facade and is pierced by multiple tiers of windows.
Features Warren & Wetmore manufactured oak furniture and ornamental lighting fixtures for the New York Yacht Club Building. The interior was mostly upholstered in dark green leather. As with the facade, many of the decorations contain a maritime theme. The walls also contain maritime artwork from painters such as James E. Buttersworth. Most of the rooms were placed on different levels.
Lower stories Immediately inside the main entrance, a short staircase ascends to a double-height entrance hall. This space contains Caen stone walls and a marble staircase in the center, leading to the model room on the second floor. Originally, the clerk's office was to the right (east) of the hall, while the visitors' room, coatroom, letterboxes, and telephones were to the left. The visitors' room was decorated with photographs of large yachts. All non-members were originally directed to the visitors' room, where they waited for a member to accompany them upstairs; this space was later converted into a reception desk. The coatroom was at the bottom of the grand staircase. On the opposite side of the entrance hall was a stair leading to the club's cafe.
On the left side of the entrance hall, next to the coatroom and behind the visitors' room, a narrow staircase descended a half-story to a grill room and billiards room. The grill room measured either or and was used as a dining room. The entire room was intended to resemble a ship. The oak decorations, including a low beamed ceiling and curved walls, were meant to evoke a ship's tweendecks. Unstained-oak benches, medieval-styled iron lamps on the ceiling, and clusters of electric lamps on the walls all further contributed to the ship-like ambiance of the grill room. There was a large fireplace on one wall, which was surrounded by a mantel with an oval panel. The grill room's "stern" faced south toward 44th Street and contained a relic of the Gimcrack, the ship on which the NYYC had been founded in 1845.
At the rear of the grill room were glass doors, which led to a billiards room with four billiards tables and another large fireplace. The billiards room was wainscoted in dark oak, and the walls above the wainscoting were covered with green burlap panels. When the billiards room was converted to a bar, the glass doors were replaced with a wall. Above the billiards room was a cafe. A curved double stair connected the cafe and billiards room. The cafe originally contained green leather furniture but was converted into a sailing-trophy room after World War II. The trophy room is circular in plan, measuring across, with a double-height domed ceiling. A bronze-and-gold chandelier hangs from the center of the dome. The walls of this room are made of Caen stone and originally contained mirrored glass panels, held into place by mullions. Another staircase leads up to the second-story landing of the clubhouse's main staircase.
The mechanical equipment and the culinary staff were placed in the basement. From the entrance hall, a passageway led to the kitchen, pantries, engine and boiler rooms, and cellars. The pantries originally had iceboxes lined with oak, although the iceboxes have been since changed into refrigerators.
Model room