NEW YORK ASSOCIATION AND THE DARTMOUTH CLUB OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK

The New York alumni have two distinct organizations known respectively as the Association and the Club. The Association is believed to be the oldest non-local college organization in the city of New York, having been established somewhere in the early sixties and having held a dinner each year from the beginning. Up to within the last dozen or fifteen years these dinners have been more or less informal, that is, the speaking generally partook in, if it did not wholly consist of, free discussion .with all its ramifications, and there was no attempt to make of the dinners anything more than an opportunity for Dartmouth men to get together and' talk things over. The annual dinners of the Association to-day are like all public dinners in New York. Prominent men are invited as guests and, as a rule, they do most of the talking, which is carefully planned in advance, so '.hat the dinner, instead of being of interest merely to the participants, is reported extensively in the press. Each year the Association compiles and publishes a directory of alumni living in New York City and the vicinity, and after it,has published this directory and given its formal dinner its function ceases until another year.

The desire of many of the alumni to meet oftener than once a year led, in the fall of 1889, to the formation of what was known as the Lunch Club, the general object of which was to provide an informal dinner as often as every three months. These dinners were well attended and thoroughly enjoyed. The acquaintance and good fellowship which they promoted led to the formation of the Dartmouth Club which was incorporated in the spring of 1904 and into which the Lunch Club was merged.

The Dartmouth Club of New York was a perfectly natural outgrowth of the conditions which existed. The same reason for the development of the annual dinner of the Association from an informal gathering of a more or less private nature into one of the public dinners of the winter season may be assigned to the origin of the Club, viz: the environment in which it found itself. In New York there are very few public social organizations which do not have their club houses. The appointments of the various New York Clubs differ, to be sure, in their comfort, luxury, and elegance. The Dartmouth Club, which has something less than two hundred members, cannot offer the conveniences of the University Club, which has nearly four thousand, but it is comfortably housed and provides what was desired most of all — a public meeting place for Dartmouth men in New York. The Club Rooms are. at The Mansfield, a bachelor apartment hotel at 12 West 44th Street, with Sherry's and the Yale Club on either side and with the Harvard Club almost directly opposite. While there are no regular sleeping, rooms included in the Club quarters at the present time, one can generally secure from the management of The Mansfield comfortable quarters for any night. Substantially everything which a club can furnish except sleeping rooms is available to members of the Dartmouth Club of New York. The annual dues of the Club are $12.00 a year for all resident members and #5.00 a year for non-resident members and for members who have not been out of college for at least five years. On this basis the Club was run very succesfully the first year.

Club night is every Tuesday night. Informal dinners are held by the Club from time to time at The Mansfield and, beginning with October, 1905, will be held once a month on every second Tuesday thereof. Gatherings, such as occur on Saturdays in the fall to get the football scores, occur often and are much enjoyed by all who attend them. All meetings of the Dartmouth Alumni in New York are held, as far as practicable, at the Club. The Club has established what is known as a business information committee which will probably become very useful to younger Dartmouth men. This committee receives from any source, that is, from the Alumni or from others, any information concerning positions and employment suitable for college men and gives such information to any Dartmouth men who apply. It is not the object of this committee to find a position for a man, but rather to collect and give such information as may lead to the placing of the right kind of a man. There are many other details about the Club's history and about its different functions which might be referred to, but which the allotment of space will not permit in this article.

The annual dinner of the Association, which has generally occurred on the last Friday in January, will be held December 12, at the University Club. The reason for changing the date of the dinner is that it has been found that in the last four out of six years a heavy storm has interfered considerably with the attendance and it has been suggested that there is less likelihood that a storm will occur in the first two weeks of December. Another reason for the change of date is that there are so many dinners in January some find it inconvenient to attend. President Tucker's convenience will also be better suited by the change than by continuing the dinners as formerly.

Secretary, Lucius E. Varney '99, 38 ParkRow, New York City