Americans are a friendly breed. We love parties, commerce,
war and big cars. And we're joiners. The American handshake
is a joyous, kinetic event, and it hurts a little bit, because
we like to squeeze. When Alexis de Tocqueville was in between
throwing back pints with the likes of Andrew Jackson, he wrote
that an American without drinking buddies "would be robbed
of one half his existence...his wretchedness would be unbearable."
Not wanting to feel wretched, Portlanders seek out places
to be around people like themselves. Artists scribble away
in coffee shops. Hustlers lounge in pool halls. And rich
folks join private clubs. Though it would make for a more
exciting story, Portland clubs aren't exactly blood-sealed
covens of druidic illuminati. Like the rest of us, steel-haired
steel heirs want to drink, play cards, tell dirty jokes
and do favors for their friends. But while one of my favors
might involve swapping a bag of day-old pastries for a bouquet,
private club hook-ups begin with a single malt and end in
mergers, plywood sales and campaign contributions.
For a time, explicit bylaws and tacit understandings excluded
Portland women, blacks and Jews from these private deals.
But decades of agitation by City Council, judges and private
citizens have opened up even Arlington Club, Portland's
"supreme bastion of gentile male chauvinism," according
to historian E. Kimbark MacColl's The Shaping of a City.
They may smell like your attic, but private clubs remain
formidable conglomerates of wealth, connections and power.
Will they be around for much of the next century? Here are
our predictions.
Arlington
Club
Location: 811 SW Salmon St., at the
South Park Blocks.
Founded: 1869, by local alpha males and self-made
WASPs. Charter membership roll includes the names Reed,
Macleay, Ladd, Failing and Cicero H. Lewis (the guy who
helped found the Portland Art Museum and the county library
system).
Insignia: Interlocked red "A" and "C" on a white
field
Raison d'Être: The club's charter focuses
on the "development...social advantage, improvement and
enjoyment" of its members. Arlington once provided grist
for bored society-page columnists, a service now performed
by the Trail Blazers.
Building: The neoclassical, ivy-cloaked brick and
spotless alabaster pillars evoke Monticello, Harvard, the
Pantheon and the structural foresight of the third little
pig. Inside, the club offers a wine room, a card room, a
large bar, a formal dining room and several private rooms
for meetings and rest. Business documents are not permitted
in public areas.
Members and Guests: Of the nine Chamber of Commerce
Executive Committee members WW contacted, eight were
Arlington members, including the president of U.S. Bank
of Oregon and a senior vice president for Portland General
Electric.
Dirt: Jews were tacitly banned from club membership
until the late 1960s, when the feared Chief Judge Gus J.
Solomon campaigned against the policy, allowing prominent
attorney Moe Tonkon to join. Women gained entry in 1990.
As recently as 1989, minority Arlington members numbered
less than 3 percent. There are also persistent rumors of
a cabinet full of Playboy.
Cost: The approximately 500 members pay $750 each
in annual dues.
Prospects: The recent resurgence of martinis, steaks,
cigars, swing dancing and massive capital gains should preserve
the club until 2030, when colonization of city industries
by multinationals finally renders local deal-making anachronistic.
(Recently colonized territory includes PGE, Blitz Weinhard,
The Oregonian and Fred Meyer.)
The
University Club
Location: 1225 SW 6th Ave.
Founded: 1898, by college graduates who desired
an Oregon equivalent of East Coast university clubs. Sixteen
of the University Club's 56 charter members were members
of Arlington Club.
Insignia: Arlingtonesque union of a "U" and "C"
Raison d'Être: Academic camaraderie and discussion
of the day's events. Possible covert usurpation of Arlington
Club.
Building: A superb Jacobethan façade of looming
brick and high-arched windows makes the University Club
resemble a spookily large gingerbread house. The interior,
which club manager John Elmore was kind enough to offer
a tour of, is somewhere between a musty rec room and the
Musée d'Orsay. More than 200 individual dice cups
decorate the bar so members can roll for drinks and dinner.
A formal dining room with 30-foot rafters is finished, fittingly,
in Oregon Douglas fir. You're more likely to find Grisham
and Koontz in the lending library than Plutarch or Browning.
Members and Guests: As maximum fellowship has given
way to maximum convenience, the crossover membership between
the University and Arlington has dwindled. The club now
seems to be composed of an old guard of scholarly attorneys
and a younger generation of junior partners and real-estate
agents hoping to climb the ladder up to Arlington. One member
says that when the club discounted memberships for last
year's 100th anniversary, "every Realtor in town picked
one up." Billion-heir Steve Forbes and former Sens. Mark
Hatfield and Bob Packwood have all put in appearances.
Dirt: In the spirit of wholesome, collegiate fun,
University boys can get a little wild. The club's first
meeting place was next door to a house of ill repute, and
two members lost their dignity and real-estate jobs after
being caught in the rough with a tarty golf strumpet at
the club's 1990 Waverly tourney. The University Club also
excluded Jews until the late 60s but accepted women as non-voting
members before Arlington would even allow them on its premises.
Cost: Less than $1,000 annually. The club has approximately
1,000 members, including 71 women.
Prospects: The University Club has slowed its decline
with a willingness to adapt, allowing business papers and
smoking in certain public areas and instituting a Dockers-friendly
dress code. If it doesn't get ransacked by Y2K looters,
the club should coast along until 2010.
The
Snowshoe Club
Location: Cloud Cap, near
Cooper Spur, Mount Hood
Founded: Organized in 1904 by Wesley Ladd (of Ladd's
Addition) for a chummy "annual winter outing."
Raison d'Être: To the 40-odd members of the
Snowshoe Club, the bluest of Portland bluebloods, money
alone does not confer status. It's in the genes. The hyper-exclusive
Snowshoe provides members a place to escape the petty concerns
of Arlington Club pecking orders and enjoy each other's
company on the pristine north side of the mountain.
Members and Guests: Approximately half of the current
members are the sons or daughters of older members. Other
members include expert mountain-climbers and blue-collar
journeymen who help with the club's upkeep. One member recalled
a group of wandering hikers who were invited into the cabin
as guests and treated to a night's shelter and some hot
grog.
Cost: A few hundred dollars annually for maintenance
and utility bills.
Prospects: Given steady birth rates and the perpetual
attraction of winter sports, the club should survive forever.
The
Town Club
Location: 2115 SW Salmon St.
Founded: 1928, by forlorn ladies whose husbands
were spending all their time at Arlington Club
Insignia: The club's doorway. Closed, naturally.
Raison d'Être: Manager Mike Roberts insists
that "this is just a place where ladies eat lunch." One
former employee agrees, saying "the club exists to give
women who are too rich to have to do anything something
to do." Ladies play arcane parlor games like whist, pitch
and cribbage and nip at the rare cocktail.
Building: A Spanish-roofed brick structure enclosing
a sunken garden. Folger Johnson, the architect, recalled
"having seen on a trip to northern Italy, a structure...its
unusual architectural merit residing almost exclusively
in its form and fenestration."
Dirt, or the Closest Thing: The club has been a
job-market haven for struggling young artists: Past employees
reportedly include King Black Acid frontman Daniel Riddle
and poet Melody Jordan.
Cost: The club doesn't disclose dues for its 400
members, but they could be a bit higher than the other clubs',
given the Town Club's notorious fetish for redecorating.
Prospect: The club's filigreed wall of decorum should
fall to the feminist movement's 40-year siege around 2005.
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Willamette Week | originally
published July 14, 1999
|
