The Chicago Club

The Chicago Club is a private city club at 81 East Van Buren Street in the Loop, founded in January 1869 by former members of the Dearborn Club. It lost its first home in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and moved several times before occupying a Burnham and Root building -- originally built for the Art Institute of Chicago -- from 1893. The present eight-storey granite Romanesque Revival clubhouse, designed by Alfred Hoyt Granger and John Carlisle Bollenbacher, dates from 1929 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005. The club runs dining rooms including The Grill, a lounge, overnight rooms, private office suites and catering and event space, and supports the building through a separate Chicago Club Preservation Foundation, a 501(c)(3) established in 2007 and funded by member donations. Its published membership policy is a single line: membership is by invitation only, with enquiries directed to the Director of Membership. No eligibility criteria, application process, fee schedule or member count is published. What is published in detail is the club's four-tier dress code and a rule confining voice calls to phone booths, private meeting rooms and guest rooms.

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Members use one clubhouse in the Loop for dining, meetings, private events, overnight stays and private office suites. Valet parking is complimentary for members during the day, with a $25 overnight rate; registered overnight hotel guests pay $50. Building preservation is handled through the separately incorporated Chicago Club Preservation Foundation. The club appears on other clubs' reciprocal lists, including the Duquesne Club's, but publishes no reciprocal directory of its own.

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Not publicly disclosed. Wikipedia records that charter members included Anson Stager, Robert Todd Lincoln, Potter Palmer, Marshall Field and George Pullman, but the club publishes nothing about its present membership.

The Chicago Club states its admission rule more plainly than most peers -- invitation only, full stop -- and then stops. There is no eligibility statement, no proposer-and-seconder description, no fee schedule and no member count, so any figure circulating online should be treated as unverified; Wikipedia's approximately 1,200 members is the only one in general circulation and carries no date. The published dress code is worth reading before visiting: four separate standards apply in different rooms, and the club bans untucked shirts, athletic shoes and jean jackets outright while permitting conservative denim only under the Club Casual standard. The Preservation Foundation is a useful signal of how the club funds capital work: rather than assessing members directly for the granite facade or the fire systems, it solicits tax-deductible gifts through a separate charity.

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