For more than 150 years, The Standard Club has been the social nexus for Chicago’s Jewish elite, hosting everything from business lunches to weddings at the members-only downtown institution.
But times have changed. Facing dwindling membership and usage, the financially challenged club announced this week it is selling its storied building and closing May 1.
“Unfortunately, the club has recently faced challenging business circumstances similar to those that have faced many urban private clubs in terms of membership, usage and revenue,” The Standard Club said in a statement Wednesday. “The board has come to the very difficult decision that club operations are no longer sustainable.”
The club has retained commercial real estate broker CBRE to sell its longtime home, a 10-story building at 320 S. Plymouth Court, built in 1926.
Founded in 1869, The Standard Club was long a who’s who of Chicago Jewish business leaders. Early members included Julius Rosenwald, a former Sears president who helped found the Museum of Science and Industry, and Max Adler, a businessman and philanthropist who helped create the Adler Planetarium. Other notable members over the years have included Daniel Edelman, founder of the public relations firm bearing his name; Bulls and White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf; and Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
The club has a gym, swimming pool, banquet halls, hotel rooms, lounges and dining facilities, hosting everything from weddings and bar mitzvahs to special events. It was also known for its business power lunches, where three-course schmoozing closed countless deals.
“I have the greatest memories of The Standard Club,” said Richard Edelman, 65, president and CEO of Edelman, whose dad was a member from 1948 until his death in 2013. “I was in The Standard Club Saturday morning gym class from age six to 12 years old. It was a key part of my life growing up.”
Edelman said he regularly played paddle ball with his father, followed by a schvitz in the steam room, where he found himself sweating next to everyone from influential Chicago federal judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz to legendary Chicago Bears quarterback Sid Luckman.
It was a memorable education, Edelman said.
“I would go into the steam room and I’m sitting there with all these Chicago judges and politicians talking about how deals were going down,” Edelman said. “I was 10 years old.”
But in recent years, The Standard Club, like a number of private urban clubs, has struggled to attract a new generation of members. And the facilities have fallen into some disrepair. Last year, the club asked members to pay extra assessments to address the aging infrastructure.
A similar fate met the Chicago Athletic Association, a private, century-old club at 12 S. Michigan Ave., where civic leaders such as Marshall Field, Potter Palmer and Cyrus McCormick once played sports and hung out. It closed its doors in 2007, reopening under new owners as a boutique hotel.
Dwindling membership and the growing cost of keeping The Standard Club going led to the decision to sell the building. The Standard Club is holding out the possibility that it will find “a new home for a new type of club” after the sale.
Whether The Standard Club survives in any form after May 1, it is the end of an era in Chicago history.
“It was the center of Jewish recreational life in the city,” Edelman said. “It’s a real passage of something important.”
