- Cosmos Club
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Cosmos Club
Cosmos Club in February 2010Location: 2121 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. Coordinates: 38°54′41″N 77°2′54″W / 38.91139°N 77.04833°WCoordinates: 38°54′41″N 77°2′54″W / 38.91139°N 77.04833°W Built: 1898 Architect: Carrère and Hastings Architectural style: Beaux Arts Governing body: Private Part of: Massachusetts Avenue Historic District (#74002166) NRHP Reference#: 73002079
[1]Added to NRHP: April 03, 1973 The Cosmos Club is a private social club in Washington, D.C., founded by John Wesley Powell in 1878. In addition to Powell, original members included Clarence Edward Dutton, Henry Smith Pritchett, William Harkness, and John Shaw Billings. Among its stated goals is "The advancement of its members in science, literature, and art".[1] Cosmos Club members have included many recipients of the Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize, and Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Since 1952 the Club's headquarters have been in the Mary Scott (Mrs Richard T.) Townsend house,[2] at 2121 Massachusetts Avenue, NW in the Dupont Circle neighborhood. The free-standing house, set in almost an acre of garden, was designed in the Beaux Arts French style by architects Carrère and Hastings in 1898 and essentially completed in 1901. The mansion continued to be occupied by Mrs Townsend's daughter, who was Mrs B. Sumner Welles, until World War II. It was purchased from Mrs Welles' estate by the Cosmos Club in 1950 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. It is a contributing property to the Dupont Circle Historic District and Massachusetts Avenue Historic District.
Contents
History
Cosmos Club, ca. 1921, before its move to the Townsend house.
The Club originally met in the Corcoran Building on the corner of 15th and F Streets, NW, but moved to Lafayette Square in 1882. Eventually, the Club occupied the Tayloe and Dolley Madison Houses on the eastern side of the Square, and razed two rowhouses between them for additional space. Prompted to relocate by the federal government, the Club moved to the Townsend House in 1952.
Since 1887, the regular meeting place of the Philosophical Society of Washington has been the assembly hall of the Cosmos Club, now called the John Wesley Powell auditorium. The National Geographic Society was founded in the Cosmos Club in 1888, and The Wilderness Society was founded there in 1935.
For its first 110 years, the Cosmos Club did not permit women members, and forbade female guests to enter by the front door or to enter rooms reserved for members. In 1988, the Washington, D.C., Human Rights Office ruled that there was probable cause to believe that the club's men-only policy violated the city's anti-discrimination law. The Office was ready to order public hearings on the case, which could have resulted in the loss of all city licenses and permits if the all-male policy had continued.
In 1990, the Cosmos Club began publication of Cosmos: A Journal of Emerging Issues as an annual publication of original essays by its members.[3][4]
Facade of the Townsend house (later home of the Cosmos Club), 1915. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston.Awards
The Cosmos Club offers two major awards:
- The Cosmos Club Award has been presented annually since 1964 to persons of national or international standing in a field of science, literature, the fine arts, the learned professions, or the public service. Notable recipients have included Edwin Land, Paul Volcker, C. Everett Koop, James Van Allen, Arthur Kornberg, Sandra Day O'Connor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Elie Wiesel[5]
- The John P. McGovern Award which supports an annual series of lectures in science, literature, arts, and humanities (given by the award recipients). Notable recipients have included: J. Craig Venter, Mstislav Rostropovich, Stephen J. Gould, Edward O. Wilson, Saul Bellow, Derek Jacobi and Leonard Slatkin[6]
Membership
Election to membership in the Cosmos Club honors persons deemed to have "done meritorious original work in science, literature, or the arts, or... recognized as distinguished in a learned profession or in public service".[7]
Its members have included:
- Thomas J. Abercrombie
- Dr. Samuel S. Adams
- Cyrus Adler
- Akbar S. Ahmed
- Lila Oliver Asher
- John Vincent Atanasoff
- Aram Bakshian, Jr.
- John Barnard
- John F. Barnard
- Kevin Gordon Barrow
- Dr. B. B. Beach
- Alexander Graham Bell
- Filmore Bender
- Dr. J. C. Bernabo
- John Shaw Billings
- Harry Blackmun
- Herbert Block
- Alfred Blumstein
- Dr. Joseph M. Bobbitt
- Robert D. Briskman
- Thomas E. Bryant
- Roy J. Bullock
- Vannevar Bush
- Robert Butler
- William P. Butz
- Daniel J. Callahan III
- David Carliner
- Samuel Clemens
- Stanwood Cobb
- Henry B. Collins
- Karl Compton
- Milton Cummings
- Nathaniel Curtis, Jr.
- Louis W. Currier
- Frank Cyr
- Donald W. Delaney
- Clarence Edward Dutton
- Lawrence K. Edwards
- Kenneth M. Ford
- John Hope Franklin
- Billie Frazier
- Daniel Friedman
- Hayner Haskell Gordon
- William R. Green
- Louis A. Gottschalk
- David W. Hardee
- William Harkness
- Florence P. Haseltine
- Helen Hayes
- Warren Henry
- Elizabeth Hoffman
- Richard Holbrooke
- Calvin Bryce Hoover
- Herbert Hoover
- Abraham Horwitz
- M. Thomas Inge
- Howard Jenkins, Jr.
- Harold R. Johnson
- Marvin Kalb
- James Katzer
- Henry "Hank" Klibanoff
- James Kilpatrick
- John F. Kincaid
- Rudyard Kipling
- Henry Kissinger
- George Lang[disambiguation needed
] - Harvey J. Levin
- Charles H. Levine
- David Linowes
- Sol Linowitz
- Andrew Lipman
- Arthur H. Livermore
- Robert Lowell
- Vladimir Lumelsky
- Gerald S. McGowan
- Robert McNamara
- Warren L. Miller
- John Strong Newberry
- Albert H. Marckwardt
- John S. Monagan
- Herbert R. Moody
- Nathaniel B. Nichols
- Sandra Day O'Connor
- Douglas Lane Patey
- Stanton J. Peelle
- Forrest Pogue
- Alfred M. Pollard
- George B. Post
- John Wesley Powell
- Larry Pressler
- Henry Smith Pritchett
- Mila Rechcigl
- Alan Reich
- S. Dillon Ripley
- Hood Roberts
- William Rodney
- Nelson Rockefeller
- Sievert Allen Rohwer
- Theodore Roosevelt
- Alvin Rosenbaum
- Carl Sagan
- Antonin Scalia
- Denis Sinor
- Adi Shmueli
- Roger Shuy
- Jeffrey Soule
- Ronald Spooner
- Julian Steward
- Robert P. Strauss
- Dexter C. Straker
- William Howard Taft
- Conrad Tauber
- Everett Warner
- Joseph Weber
- Gilbert F. White
- Woodrow Wilson
- Alma S. Woolley
- Willis Conover
- Robert Kapsch
- Steve Charnovitz
- Fred Singer
- Peggy Gordon Miller
- Ronald A. Marks
- Susan M. Phillips
- Dean C. Allard
- William Eimbeck
- Henry Armand Millon
- Vinod Thomas
See also
- List of American gentlemen's clubs
- National Register of Historic Places listings in the District of Columbia
References
- ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2008-04-15. http://nrhp.focus.nps.gov/natreg/docs/All_Data.html.
- ^ Cosmos Club: "The Townsend Mansion"
- ^ Schudel, Matt (Sunday, December 12, 2004). "Lester Tanzer; Editor at U.S. News & World Report". Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58291-2004Dec11.html. Retrieved 04-03-2009.
- ^ "COSMOS Journal". https://www.cosmosclub.org/Default.aspx?pageindex=1&pageid=40. Retrieved 04-03-2009.
- ^ Cosmos Club Awards and Recipients
- ^ Cosmos Club McGovern Awards
- ^ Cosmos Club: Membership
Further reading
- Spaulding, Thomas M. (1949). The Cosmos Club on Lafayette Square. Washington, D.C.: The Cosmos Club.
- Crossette, George (1966). Founders of The Cosmos Club of Washington, 1878. Washington, D.C.: The Cosmos Club.
- Washburn, Wilcomb E. (1978). The Cosmos Club of Washington : a centennial history, 1878–1978. Washington, D.C.: The Cosmos Club.
External links
- Official site
- General Services Administration page on the Cosmos Club, including photo gallery
U.S. National Register of Historic Places Topics Lists by states Alabama • Alaska • Arizona • Arkansas • California • Colorado • Connecticut • Delaware • Florida • Georgia • Hawaii • Idaho • Illinois • Indiana • Iowa • Kansas • Kentucky • Louisiana • Maine • Maryland • Massachusetts • Michigan • Minnesota • Mississippi • Missouri • Montana • Nebraska • Nevada • New Hampshire • New Jersey • New Mexico • New York • North Carolina • North Dakota • Ohio • Oklahoma • Oregon • Pennsylvania • Rhode Island • South Carolina • South Dakota • Tennessee • Texas • Utah • Vermont • Virginia • Washington • West Virginia • Wisconsin • WyomingLists by territories Lists by associated states Other 
Category:National Register of Historic Places • 
Portal:National Register of Historic PlacesCategories:- Historic district contributing properties
- 1878 establishments
- Buildings and structures completed in 1901
- Beaux-Arts architecture in Washington, D.C.
- Clubhouses in Washington, D.C.
- Clubs and societies in the United States
- Dupont Circle
- Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Washington, D.C.
- Private clubs
- Traditional gentlemen's clubs in the United States
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