Clubhouse History

The clubhouse is located on what we now know as Park Street, though long before the early 19th century when a line of elegant homes stretched from Beacon Street to the Park Street Church, this simple lane was known as Sentry Street.

In fact, a 1722 map of Boston by Captain John Bonner shows Sentry Street as running along the Western boundary of the "Burying Place" North to Beacon Street. Laid down in 1640, Sentry Street was described as a "rude pathway leading across the Easterly part of the Common," through the present Statehouse to the "Beacon" atop what was then known as Sentry Hill.

Sentry Street saw its first building with the construction of a town almshouse at its intersection with Beacon Street. An 18th-century observer noted that Boston provided well for its poor: "There are about a hundred poor persons in this house, and no such thing to be seen as a strolling beggar."

In time the house became a place of confinement for criminals and vagrants as well. In 1720 the town's pound was moved to the current site of the Paulist Center (now 5 Park Street), where any horses, cattle or sheep found feeding on the common land, or wandering through the town, were impounded.

The historic, and present layout of Park Street, was the work of noted architect Charles Bulfinch, who also designed the nearby State House. Sentry Street was renamed Park Street in 1803, and all Park Street property deeds included a provision that houses built there "be regular and uniform, and of brick and stone, and covered with slate or tile or some other material that will resist fire."

At the time Bulfinch had already begun construction of Nos. 1 through 4, and it became known as "Bulfinch Row." The parcel at No. 8 was sold to Dr. John Jeffries at around this time. Dr. Jeffries was quite famous in his day as a physician who cared for British soldiers wounded at the Battle of Bunker Hill, as a balloonist making the first trans-Channel flight from England to France, and as one of the founders of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.

By the end of the first decade of the 19th-century, a row of elegant private homes filled every available lot from the Park Street Church to Beacon Street. The last two lots on Park Street to receive houses were those on which the Union Club of Boston stand today. John Gore completed the house at No. 8 in November 1809, and it was then that the alley between Nos. 8 and 9 was created.

In 1836, Abbot Lawrence purchased the home. Lawrence was the "head of the greatest American mercantile house of the day" and founded both the City of Lawrence, Massachusetts, and the Lawrence Scientific School—Harvard University's first school of engineering and physical sciences.

The home of John Amory Lowell, at No. 7, was built by John Gore in 1809, and was sold to Artemus Ward, son of the Revolutionary War General of the same name. Ward served in Congress (1813 – 1815), as a delegate to the 1820 Massachusetts State Constitutional Convention, and as Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Court of Common Pleas (1821 – 1839). In 1869 the house was sold to John Amory Lowell. Lowell was treasurer for the Merrimack Manufacturing Company and for Boott Cotton Mills, both textile companies in the city of Lowell, Massachusetts. For more than 40 years Lowell was the trustee of the Lowell Institute, which played a significant role in the educational and cultural life of Boston and continues today as part of Northeastern University.

In March 1863, the trustees of the Lawrence estate, joined by the Lawrence children, transferred title of the house at No. 8 to the Union Club. Gridley J. F. Bryant, the architect of the new City Hall on School Street, was engaged to prepare plans for the alterations necessary to convert the house to a clubhouse.

On October 15, the Union Club moved to the new clubhouse, with Club leaders writing that the repairs and improvements "have unquestionably been of great permanent value... our kitchen, with all its furniture and appurtenances, is confessedly as complete and as perfect anything of the kind in the country."

The Union Club purchased the house outright, in 1868, for $75,000.00. Eventually a morning room, a cloakroom, an office, a servant’s hall, kitchen and pantries were located on the first floor, while the second floor contained the drawing room, the library, and the smoking room. On the third floor there were card rooms, a private dining room, and a large club dining room that ran the length of the house; on the fourth floor and in the attic, visitors would find a billiard room, and bedrooms for attendants.

After Lowell’s death in 1881, members of the Union Club requested a special meeting to consider the purchase of No. 7. A committee concluded that the cost was prohibitive, and instead it was decided to enlarge and improve No. 8, including the conversion of the club’s lighting from gas to electricity, and the addition of an elevator and another floor. The estimated cost of $50,000 became $66,873.94 due to unexpected repairs and additions to the project.  

In the meantime, No. 7 was leased by the Mayflower Club, a women’s club taking occupancy in 1893. In 1894 No. 7 became available for purchase at a price of $120,000.00, and at a special meeting in May 1896, the Club members, in a closely divided vote, determined to acquire the house.

The Union Club now sought to absorb its new space. The former Lowell residence was demolished because, being further down the hill, the floors at No. 7 were not level with No. 8. The design of the replacement building was commissioned to the noted architectural firm of Ball and Dabney.

The project, completed in 1898, produced the clubhouse's now familiar unified facade. What we know today as the Oak Room, and all the rooms beneath it, are on the site of the Lowell home at No 7, while the Granary Room is located where there had previously been a stable.

In the decades after the Civil War, the Union Club's neighborhood began to change, and this process accelerated in the 20th-century. No. 3 was replaced by the Warren Institution for Savings, while No. 4 became the home to Houghton Mifflin Publishing Company, from which the "Atlantic Monthly" was produced for many years.

A photo dated 1924 shows a Bulfinch-designed home sporting a very large Coca-Cola billboard on its roof, reflecting just how commercial Park Street had become.

In the 1940's, under the leadership of Richard Cardinal Cushing, the buildings at Nos. 4, 5, and 6 Park Street were acquired and later demolished by the Roman Catholic Church who wanted to establish a presence on Beacon Hill. The Paulist Center's cornerstone was laid in 1956, and dedicated the following year. And by the latter part of the 20th-century the Park Street Church had acquired the buildings at Nos. 1, 2, and 3 for their use.