The Standard Club

The Standard Club was organized in Chicago in 1869 by German-Jewish business leaders barred from the Chicago Club, which had formed only months earlier. It was chartered on February 14, 1887, for “the social and mental improvement of its members by social intercourse and by various educational means.”

Three clubhouses followed: Michigan Avenue at 13th Street from 1869; an Adler & Sullivan stone box at Michigan and 24th from 1889; and, from 1926, Albert Kahn’s building at 320 South Plymouth Court, the Club’s longtime Loop home.

Julius Rosenwald, the Sears president, was a founder of the Museum of Science and Industry; Max Adler gave the city its planetarium. After the Great Fire of 1871 the Club “gave up the club-house to the relief work of the city.” Albert Einstein spoke there on his 54th birthday, March 14, 1933.

The Club marked its 150th anniversary in 2019, the same year it asked members for emergency money. Closure was announced on March 4, 2020, effective May 1. The clubhouse shut that March as the pandemic began, so there was no farewell. The building sold in 2022.

The Club’s archives — minutes, member records, photographs, scrapbooks — are at the Newberry Library.