Faculty Club records, 1905-1975

In 1905, an old building from the Bloomingdale Asylum, South Hall, was refitted to serve as a faculty clubhouse or the first Men's Faculty Club. The Club was open to all officers of administration and instruction in the University and held its first meeting in January 1906. The Club had dining rooms, a reading room, a smoking room and, upstairs, bedrooms which were occupied on occasion by members or guests of the University. The original Faculty Club stood at the northeast corner of Broadway and 116th Street until it was razed in 1922 to make room for the original home of the School of Business, Dodge Hall. A new clubhouse was erected in 1923 known as Faculty House, situated at Morningside Drive and 117th Street. Faculty House had private offices, billiards rooms, dining rooms, a cocktail lounge, and a separate reception room for women guests. There was a library on the second floor with chess and card tables and a collection of books and magazines for the leisure hours of its members. Members could also use the club to host events such as weddings, dances, and parties.

The Women's Faculty Club first met in 1913. All women on the teaching staffs of Barnard College, Teachers College, Horace Mann and Speyer Schools, and those holding certain administrative positions were eligible for membership. The object of the club was "to promote good fellowship, a community of interests, and a closer co-operation among the women of the University and its allied institutions." The new Club originally met in an apartment on Morningside Drive, generously placed at its disposal by Mrs. Helen Hartley Jenkins, of the Board of Trustees of Teachers College. Its first elected President was Professor Adelaide Nutting of Teachers College and its First Vice-President was Dean Virginia Gildersleeve of Barnard College. In 1925, the Women's Faculty Club was given a permanent home on campus in rooms on the first and second floors of the new Johnson Hall, the women's residence hall now known as Wien Hall. An enclosed passage connected it with the Men's Faculty House.

Due to economic difficulties, the two previously independent and member-funded clubs, the Men's and Women's Faculty Clubs, merged in 1972. The joint club was renamed the Faculty House Association. By 1973, the University assumed complete responsibility for the operation of Faculty House.