Keepers of the Club
By Jenny Price ’96
Eight gargoyles peer out from the ivy that veils the portico of the brick Tudor Revival-style building overlooking Library Mall.
Each symbolizes a field of learning, but they could just as easily represent the misconceptions about the place where the stone carvings make their home.
During its lifetime, the University Club has housed both rowdy graduate students and World War II-era sailors in training; served as UW-Madison’s version of the Algonquin Round Table, where university leaders came together to share ideas and unwind; and hosted many a wedding celebration, including one during which a nude teenager rampaged through a reception and punched the groom.
Despite its colorful history, though, for many the century-old club remains a big unknown. Who belongs? Can just anyone go inside? What on earth goes on in there?
Eight gargoyles peer out from the ivy that veils the portico of the brick Tudor Revival-style building overlooking Library Mall.
Each symbolizes a field of learning, but they could just as easily represent the misconceptions about the place where the stone carvings make their home.
During its lifetime, the University Club has housed both rowdy graduate students and World War II-era sailors in training; served as UW-Madison’s version of the Algonquin Round Table, where university leaders came together to share ideas and unwind; and hosted many a wedding celebration, including one during which a nude teenager rampaged through a reception and punched the groom.
Despite its colorful history, though, for many the century-old club remains a big unknown. Who belongs? Can just anyone go inside? What on earth goes on in there?
“It’s always been kind of a mysterious place,” says Ernie Hanson, an emeritus business professor and treasurer for the club’s board of directors. In fact, Hanson says, it’s not unusual for alumni who never set foot in the building as students to admit upon return visits to campus that they always wondered what it was. Maybe it’s the stately exterior that intimidates people. It’s no wonder the club served as a stand-in for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft in recent years, hosting a Harry Potter party where children in black hats made wands and mixed potions. Or it could be Bob, the club’s resident ghost. More on him later.
The club offers students, university employees, and campus visitors a place to grab a drink from the coffee bar or check e-mail while sitting by the reading room’s fireplace. And it serves as neutral ground where UW administrators, faculty, and staff can discuss department issues or new campus initiatives over lunch.
“As beautiful as this university is, you know there aren’t many places where you have a comfortable ambiance to conduct a meeting to put people in the proper frame of mind,” says Tino Balio, the club’s board president and an emeritus professor of communication arts.
The club offers students, university employees, and campus visitors a place to grab a drink from the coffee bar or check e-mail while sitting by the reading room’s fireplace. And it serves as neutral ground where UW administrators, faculty, and staff can discuss department issues or new campus initiatives over lunch.
“As beautiful as this university is, you know there aren’t many places where you have a comfortable ambiance to conduct a meeting to put people in the proper frame of mind,” says Tino Balio, the club’s board president and an emeritus professor of communication arts.
Russell Panczenko, director of the Chazen Museum of Art, regards the neighboring club as the perfect atmosphere for lunch meetings. “Let’s say I’m talking with somebody about the possibility of his or her artwork coming to the museum — I want few distractions,” he says. “It’s a nice, quiet environment.”
For others, the location is the draw. Barry Alvarez, the UW’s athletic director and a longtime club member, says lunching there gets him away from his Camp Randall office and offers a spot where he can enjoy “all the action going on in the middle of campus.”
Today, in fact, the club is at the heart of a substantial makeover planned for east campus, which will include a pedestrian mall stretching from Lake Mendota to Regent Street. Club leaders believe the project could bring in more visitors and, eventually, new paying members from both the UW campus and the Madison community who want to take advantage of its meeting spaces, catering services, and performing arts and lecture series. Yet, while leaders hope the club can generate enough funding to improve its infrastructure, upgrade some of its features, and — as Balio says — “fluff up the pillows a little bit,” they don’t want to alter its architecture or character.
For others, the location is the draw. Barry Alvarez, the UW’s athletic director and a longtime club member, says lunching there gets him away from his Camp Randall office and offers a spot where he can enjoy “all the action going on in the middle of campus.”
Today, in fact, the club is at the heart of a substantial makeover planned for east campus, which will include a pedestrian mall stretching from Lake Mendota to Regent Street. Club leaders believe the project could bring in more visitors and, eventually, new paying members from both the UW campus and the Madison community who want to take advantage of its meeting spaces, catering services, and performing arts and lecture series. Yet, while leaders hope the club can generate enough funding to improve its infrastructure, upgrade some of its features, and — as Balio says — “fluff up the pillows a little bit,” they don’t want to alter its architecture or character.
The club got its start in 1907, when its founders raised enough money to buy a fire-damaged brick home at the corner of State and Murray Streets originally owned by John Sterling, one of the university’s first professors. The last of a series of additions to the house was completed in 1924, including a reception hall, dining room, writing room, and card room.
Back then, about one hundred junior faculty and graduate students lived upstairs among worn furniture with cigarette burns. Over the years, the university president and prominent faculty — including Mark Ingraham MA’22, who now has a room named for him in the club — sat at one giant table and were served lunch by waiters in white jackets. Afterward, they could play billiards or get haircuts from the club’s barber. Because the dining room had a dress code, some professors kept extra clothes at the club and quickly changed after coming from their laboratories. One scientist arrived to find his coat and tie missing, until an observant waiter pointed out a colleague who was seated in the dining room wearing the man’s clothing.
Back then, about one hundred junior faculty and graduate students lived upstairs among worn furniture with cigarette burns. Over the years, the university president and prominent faculty — including Mark Ingraham MA’22, who now has a room named for him in the club — sat at one giant table and were served lunch by waiters in white jackets. Afterward, they could play billiards or get haircuts from the club’s barber. Because the dining room had a dress code, some professors kept extra clothes at the club and quickly changed after coming from their laboratories. One scientist arrived to find his coat and tie missing, until an observant waiter pointed out a colleague who was seated in the dining room wearing the man’s clothing.
Female faculty demanded and won membership in 1933, but the culture didn’t change overnight. While the main floor reading room intended for male members was stocked with the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, the ladies’ sitting room downstairs offered Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. A brochure from the 1950s urging faculty and staff to join featured a cartoon of two men in suits shaking hands. During the same era, a caption accompanying a newspaper photo described the club’s lounge as “one place University of Wisconsin faculty members can get away from both women and students.”
Colleen McCabe ’66, secretary of the UW’s academic staff, worked at the club as an undergraduate in the 1960s. She fondly remembers operating its old-fashioned switchboard and selling toothpaste, shaving supplies, and cigars to the graduate students and unmarried faculty members who lived there. She also recalls a group from Panama that would gather there to play “really lively games of dominoes” and her conversations with Professor Frederic Cassidy, who started the Dictionary of American Regional English. “He would come and ask me how I would pronounce certain words,” she says.
Colleen McCabe ’66, secretary of the UW’s academic staff, worked at the club as an undergraduate in the 1960s. She fondly remembers operating its old-fashioned switchboard and selling toothpaste, shaving supplies, and cigars to the graduate students and unmarried faculty members who lived there. She also recalls a group from Panama that would gather there to play “really lively games of dominoes” and her conversations with Professor Frederic Cassidy, who started the Dictionary of American Regional English. “He would come and ask me how I would pronounce certain words,” she says.
While the upstairs was for men only, a club resident McCabe was dating told tales of women somehow climbing up the building’s exterior and crawling in through the windows.
But by the early 1970s, the once-vibrant club’s future was in jeopardy. Paying members dipped below one hundred and fifty, and an article in the Wisconsin State Journal projected the club would shut down due to “changing times and lifestyles.” Around that time, there was a movement to tear down the club to make room for expanding the then-called Elvehjem Museum of Art — an idea quashed by Chancellor Ed Young. “He said, ‘We can’t do without the University Club. Don’t be ridiculous,’ ” says Jane Hutchison PhD’64, an art history professor, board member, and past president.
Since then, the club’s membership has both shrunk and swelled, particularly as the facility was opened up to all university faculty and staff, and the public. The club now occupies only the basement and ground floor of the building’s State Street side, with offices for student financial services, and the rehabilitation psychology and special education department taking up the rest.
But by the early 1970s, the once-vibrant club’s future was in jeopardy. Paying members dipped below one hundred and fifty, and an article in the Wisconsin State Journal projected the club would shut down due to “changing times and lifestyles.” Around that time, there was a movement to tear down the club to make room for expanding the then-called Elvehjem Museum of Art — an idea quashed by Chancellor Ed Young. “He said, ‘We can’t do without the University Club. Don’t be ridiculous,’ ” says Jane Hutchison PhD’64, an art history professor, board member, and past president.
Since then, the club’s membership has both shrunk and swelled, particularly as the facility was opened up to all university faculty and staff, and the public. The club now occupies only the basement and ground floor of the building’s State Street side, with offices for student financial services, and the rehabilitation psychology and special education department taking up the rest.
Because the faculty population has grown and spread out, the club is “the last vestige of faculty spirit,” Hutchison says.
Today, perception is one of the club’s main challenges, with some believing the club is either exclusive, expensive, or both. But while the lunch menu includes offerings such as seared sea scallops and fennel salad, diners can also order cheeseburgers and fries.
“More people should just come in here, rather than walking down State Street,” says Richard Leffler MA’69 PhD’94, deputy director for the UW’s Ratification of the Constitution Project, who first started going to the club as a guest in the 1980s and eventually joined and served on its board.
Today, perception is one of the club’s main challenges, with some believing the club is either exclusive, expensive, or both. But while the lunch menu includes offerings such as seared sea scallops and fennel salad, diners can also order cheeseburgers and fries.
“More people should just come in here, rather than walking down State Street,” says Richard Leffler MA’69 PhD’94, deputy director for the UW’s Ratification of the Constitution Project, who first started going to the club as a guest in the 1980s and eventually joined and served on its board.
And then there’s Bob. Ed Zaleski, the club’s general manager, calls him a friendly ghost, and if the stories are to be believed, he moves furniture — including a five-hundred-pound reading table on loan from the Wisconsin Historical Society — turns pictures askew on the walls, and rattles gates. One legend says Bob is the spirit of a cadaver that long-ago medical students who roomed upstairs brought back from Science Hall and put in the bed of a fellow student. Zaleski says he thought the notion was “hokey” when he first started working at the club. But now, he says, “You’ll just see a shadow go in front of you — and you’re the only one in the building. ... It kind of turned me into a believer.”
Jenny Price ‘96 is a writer for On Wisconsin.
Jenny Price ‘96 is a writer for On Wisconsin.
