Somerset Club

The Somerset Club is a private club at 42 Beacon Street on Beacon Hill in Boston. Wikipedia traces its origins to an informal group from 1826 that became known as the Temple, records that it opened to members in 1852 as the Beacon Club and was renamed the Somerset Club that year, and notes that it bought the David Sears townhouse at 42 Beacon Street -- designed by Alexander Parris and built in 1819 -- in 1871, later adding the adjoining Crowninshield-Amory house at number 43 to form a single clubhouse. Political division during the Civil War led dissident members to found the Union Club of Boston in 1863. The club's public presence is minimal: three pages, one of them a login. The only substantive public content is guest information, which sets out a dress code requiring a suit jacket and tie, dresses, skirts or pantsuits in all public areas other than the Grill Room and Billiards Room, where a jacket but no tie is required, and rules out denim, shorts and athletic clothing. Electronic devices of any kind are banned in the dining and public areas, with one first-floor room set aside for personal communication, and photography requires prior approval.

How it works

Members and their guests use one Beacon Hill clubhouse. Nothing else about the club's operation is published: there is no events calendar, no accommodation or dining information, no reciprocal directory and no membership section on the public site. The club is a 501(c)(7) social club and reported $2.4m of revenue and $16.5m of assets in its 2023 tax filing.

Typical member

Not publicly disclosed. Wikipedia describes the club historically as a centre of Boston Brahmin families; the club publishes nothing about its present membership.

The Somerset Club publishes less than any other club in this batch and less than almost any comparable American club. Three pages, no history, no membership information, no fee schedule, no member count; the entire public output is a dress code, a devices ban and driving directions, including the detail that the building carries no name and only the number 42 to identify it. Everything else in circulation comes from secondary accounts. Wikipedia places it among what it calls the big four American clubs alongside the Knickerbocker in New York, the Metropolitan in Washington and the Pacific-Union in San Francisco, and describes it as a centre of Boston Brahmin families, but has nothing on membership size, admission or the admission of women. The practical consequence is that there is no published route in and no way to price it from outside; the only hard current data are the IRS filings, which show a club far smaller by revenue than the Harvard Club of Boston a mile away.

Editorial analysis by Peer Group Guide editors. It is separated from the record above and follows the editorial policy.