The Three Arts Club--New York 1905

The Fudge Party by Harrison Fisher (1908)

The Three Arts Club was established in the early 20th Century in New York City. It provided a safe, clean, inexpensive place for young women to live while they furthered their education and pursued careers in the arts. Living at the club gave women opportunities to study and practice their art in a supportive environment, while networking and making friends in what could often be an overwhelming and dangerous city. The "Three Arts" stood for painting, music and drama. According to an article in the New York Times archives, The Three Arts Club built an eight story and penthouse building in 1927 at 340 West Eighty-fifth Street, which was sold in 1952. Link

No further information is readily available about the fate of the organization. It is unclear whether it continued after 1952 in another location in New York, or if it closed at that time. It is unknown how many women passed through The Three Arts Club's doors as residents or visitors, but it undoubtedly served and benefited many women in the more than 40 years of its existence.

The Three Arts Club was inspired by a women's club which already existed in Paris, called the American Girls' Club. Similar clubs which supported young female artists sprang up in other cities as well. The Chicago Three Arts Club was established in 1912, and occupied the same building at 1300 N. Dearborn St. from 1914 until it closed in 2003. Link

The Three Arts Club Booth, Actors Fund Fair (The Bain News Service, Library of Congress) (Between 1915 and 1920)

The following article which profiles life in the early days of the New York Three Arts Club is taken from The Designer, March 1905. This article focuses on middle to upper class American women who were pursuing higher education and artistic careers by choice. Numerous other single women, from lower socioeconomic classes, were also coming to the cities to find work out of necessity. Their realities were much more harsh and their choices for career and housing more limited. However this article sheds light on what life was like for many women in the early 20th century who were striking out on their own and the challenges they faced. I have included original photos from the article, as well as other images from the era that portray women in the arts.

Woman Painter from The Iris (1906)

"How and where shall I live in New York while preparing for self-support?" This is an old riddle, anxiously propounded by every young woman who hesitates on the outer edge of the whirling currents of Manhattan life. She may feel a preparatory shiver of excitement, tinged with unconfessed dread, though not unmixed with the fearful joy of a venture; but when she finally holds her breath and takes the plunge, she is apt to find herself landed in the narrow confines of the proverbial fourth-floor back in the dreary barracks known as a middle-class boarding house.

Recently, however, a far more agreeable solution to the vexatious problem has been evolved by the establishment of the Three Arts Club for students, modeled after the American Girls' Club in Paris. Here the diver, to resume the metaphor, must entertain sensations similar to the dreamer who jumps over a precipice and falls through space--to wake in the soft, warm embrace of a comfortable bed, with the morning sunlight slanting across the coverlet.

And sunshine, both literal and figurative, permeates the whole atmosphere of this unique home for young women students of the three arts--music, painting and the drama. Under its friendly roof may be had, for the nearly nominal sum of from three to five dollars a week, all the advantages of the usual club life, together with the important addition of the comforts and privileges of home; for the new club house, on the sunniest corner of Sixty-second street and Lexington Avenue, combines both club and living-rooms within its four-story brownstone walls.

Revery from The World's Best Composers (1900)

This combination is furnished by no other woman's organization in America. It accommodates at present about sixteen resident members, though the full membership of the club has almost reached the hundred mark....

The need for such a student center was first recognized by its founder, Miss Jane Harriss Hall, specially detailed as diocesan deaconess for this work by Bishop Coadjutor Greer, who had lent his hearty interest, encouragement and support to the undertaking. Miss Hall has been greatly encouraged by the auspicious beginning and rapid growth of her pet project, the idea for which grew out of her connection with a club for students in the rear of old St.Mark's Church, away downtown in the old-fashioned section of New York, where young people of both sexes met for social evenings.

She saw then the urgent demand for some such club as her present institution. Many young women came to her to ask where they could find comfortable rooms, within the limited means of the student, in respectable, well-kept, well-lighted houses, and where they might receive their friends. So few lodging houses even have a public parlor where the young woman borders may receive callers. Even in the places provided by societies there are so many rules and regulations and restrictions that the spirit of real home-life and freedom which the average girl needs, as a flower needs the sun, is utterly destroyed. Out of this need has arisen the Three Arts Club, which is in every sense a home.

And the Club is not lacking in that most vital of all home influences, the mother element. Deaconess Hall is one of those universal mothers whose capacity for homemaking--that most rare and wonderful of the sciences--amounts to positive genius. She presides over the dainty tea-table in the big club room every afternoon from four to six, where her sunny face, under the nun-like white cap in the soft light of the candles, makes a picture which is carried in the hearts of her girls long after they have passed from student life into the wider currents of the world.

It is her exceptionally artistic taste, too, which is evidenced in the furnishings and hangings of the rooms. There are Liberty Prints and draperies which she brought from her trip abroad a year or so ago for the purpose of studying the club's famous prototype in Paris. There are well-bound books and pictures, cozy corners and fern-filled window spaces, sofa-cushions and soft-shaded lights, arranged to delight the feminine eye which takes comfort and encouragement from such subtle softnesses as these, as a general becomes more nearly invincible from a survey of his armies.

The house itself has been a roomy old mansion, and contains all the appointments that wealth commanded; high-arched, solid walnut doorways and cornices, great pier-glasses built above handsome marble mantels, wide windows on three sides of the house, and the many-branched candle-chandeliers that were all the delight of the builders of the generous yesterday when space was not at the premium it is nowadays.

Lady With Guitar by John Eyre From Old Ballads (1906)

Through the glass doors of the high-stooped entrance one enters a reception hall which is tiled in blue and white and spaciously mirrored on the left. To the right is the long drawing-room, done in terra-cotta, and also finding its own double repeated in the great glass on the south wall. There are always bowls of flowers about, showing personal pride and interest the girls feel in this congregating place where they foregather daily to recount in cheerful chat many adventures, merry and otherwise, which they encounter in the highways and byways of their respective artistic pursuits.

In passing, it is a noticeable fact that there is in these gatherings of the clans a conspicuous lack of the petty gossip which too often prevails among the chattering groups in feminine gatherings, and which leaves its unpleasant stigma in the average person's idea of woman's social life. These Club girls are one and all far too busy and too sanely wholesome in their aims and ambitions to bother their level heads with each other's trivial failings.

When the great folding-doors in the rear of the long club-room are thrown open, another pleasing and home-like picture greets the eye. A spacious, high-ceiled, bay-windowed room, done in rich green, with a cozy open fire and a handsome piano, is disclosed.  This apartment serves two purposes, that of music-room and accommodations for transient visitors. The bagdad-covered couches can be utilized as the most comfortable of beds, and behind one of the huge polished walnut doors is a many-shelved lavatory with running water. This is specially set apart for those whose stay is short, particularly those of the dramatic students who are waiting for professional engagements. So it happens that the old room dispenses the dual hospitality of welcoming the coming and speeding the parting guest--who are glad of so pleasant a refuge in times of stress between seasons, but who are glad to go forth to new engagements.

A Musical Comedy by William Glackens from Scribner's Magazine (1905)

This phase of the Three Arts Club is likewise peculiar to itself, in offering shelter to the members of that increasing army of climbers, known for some mysterious reason as "the profession". Young women who are studying for the stage, attending some one of the several excellent dramatic schools established in New York City, find it a most difficult matter to obtain decent quarters in the city, owing to the narrow-minded old prejudice which exists against all things and people Thespian. Many societies, including the Women's Christian Union, refuse to take them, in spite of the important new fact that the elevation of the stage is a steady process, and that the actress may be a refined, cultured, respectable member of the community. The presence together under one roof of a deaconess with actresses affords much amusing curiosity among the residents of the neighborhood, to most of whom, by the way, the club is the object of lively interest.

In one respect only does the Three Arts Club differ from its Paris model--it has no restaurant. The resident members have the privileges afforded by the big kitchen and dining-room in the basement where they get their own cozy breakfasts and luncheons, all dinners being taken outside. Each girl has her own particular cooking utensils and her special shelf for keeping them in the wide cupboards. The light housekeeping done here by prospective authors, artists and actresses, clad in huge gingham aprons, amid much merry-making, plays no small part in creating the delightful home atmosphere which is the dominant and unique element of the club.

The front basement room, of generous size, used as a dining-room, serves also as a sewing-room and is supplied with an easy-running machine and cutting-table. Here is the "den," as they term it, the girls who make their own dresses--and there are several gifted in that line--may be free from interruptions when in the throes of "fitting on" a half-finished garment.

There is the trimmest of little maids in snow-white cap and apron to "tend door" and help with the afternoon tea-things. The resident members make their own beds and keep their rooms in order, though a woman comes each Saturday to give the rooms a thorough cleaning and dusting. Several of the large, square rooms on the upper stories have been partitioned off into two rooms, each one of a fair size and a pleasant outlook. A few of the bedrooms are large enough to accommodate two, though the single bedrooms are in far greater demand, the average girl much preferring to have a nook all her own, where she may be alone to rest when tired, and so be more ready for social cheer when she comes forth again.

The individual touches to the room furnishings bespeak the abode of art-lovers. The simple good taste which teaches that a few really good things are more to be desired than a large collection of inferior ones, is everywhere in strong evidence. Mrs. George C. Thomas gave a generous check toward the furniture, and Miss Hall has contributed many treasures of her own, which she has collected in her foreign travels.

The Sunday evening supper is the only meal served and it is usually a very jolly affair. All the girls, those living outside as well as the resident guests, have the right to come to it and to bring their friends for the simple cost of five cents each. Miss Hall, in her genial, delightful way, makes the scores who attend the pleasant function feel as though each has an equal right to the rooms and all that in them is, including herself, the best gift of all, as any of them would tell you.

Goodnight Beloved by F. Earl Christy (Circa 1912)

The girls are all invited, nay, more than that, are expected, to receive and entertain their friends here whenever they wish, thus affording a pleasant opportunity to those unfortunates who belong to the "fourth-floor back" contingent. Needless to say, the Sunday suppers are the most popular features of the Club.

Thursday evening has been appointed as the special club evening for the receiving of outside friends, although these are welcome at all times. On these weekly occasions it is intended that something unusual in the way of amusement and recreation be provided, such as musical recitals, dramatic readings, palm-reading and kindred features, giving the affair a little gala touch, which makes it something to be looked forward to with interested expectation.

Autumn's Beauty by Harrison Fisher (1916)

During the last week of November a sale of art work was held for the benefit of the Club, which was largely patronized and served in lieu of the opening reception which heralded the advent of the Three Arts into clubdom only a little more than a year ago. The annual dues are only a dollar a year, so other methods of adding (money) to the treasury are necessarily resorted to. The club has been the recipient of generous gifts of money and furniture from various wealthy persons interested in its welfare. Among those is Mrs. C. P. Hemenway, of Boston, who provided its first quarters in West Fifty-sixth Street, from which it removed to the new house at 803 Lexington Avenue last September. In its new quarters the greater part of the expense is met by the rental from the living-rooms and studios, so it has become to a great degree a self-supporting organization.

The Violinist by Harrison Fisher (1911)

"I hope," says Miss Hall, "to see the Three Arts Club the center of all the student-life in New York. So far most of our members are art students and we have a good many from the dramatic schools. The students of music, both vocal and instrumental, are harder to reach. They are the most numerous of all, too. Not long ago, I procured a registry of all the students in New York, and discovered that the women who were devoting their time to music were nearly double in number to those studying the other two arts. The trouble is that in the music the pupils study under many different teachers, and do not hear of the Club as do members of large art and dramatic classes.

"The Club spent last June at the Holiday House, Lake George (New York), a beautiful place given by Spencer Trask and Foster P. Peabody, of this city, to Miss M.W. Fuller of Troy, for a Girls' Friendly House and which she was good enough to loan us for that month. There were thirty girls and they formed a sketch class with Jerome Meyers as instructor. Perhaps we may be equally fortunate next summer.

I have received many letters from all over the country from mothers whose girls are coming to this big, roaring city to study music, art or dramatics, and who are anxious to place them under the protection of the Three Arts Club. Its permanent success seems assured. In time, it is my dream to have a house all our own, where, with no rent to pay, and a club restaurant convenient--next door--we may provide a club-home for fifty or a hundred girls. I am sure I could fill such a house--so rapid and spreading has been the growth of this newest of girls' clubs."

In the wonderful increase in the army of brave women who are self-supporting, there is a corresponding branching out to independence of the right kind, which the average boarding house or the old-fashioned home for women does not supply. This the club quarters, if its hopes of augmentation in the future are realized, will give, and the girl who resides under its roof will be as free to go and come as would her brother in his masculine club, for it will be understood, when she is admitted as a member, that she has self-poise, and understands the laws of the polite world too well to willfully break them. 

It is plainly evident in our great cities there are not enough men escorts to go around, and it is not fair on that account that the single woman be debarred from enjoyment of good dramatic entertainments, lectures, concerts, and the like, to attend which she must necessarily be out frequently until after ten o'clock at night, the hour when the old fashioned home for women and the average boarding-house bar their doors. The latter may supply a latch key, but the former never does. This in itself is a restriction unpleasant to an independent, honest, busy woman, who after a day of hard work deserves her evening of harmless amusement. Again, there are little rasping rules where women have heretofore made their homes regarding the burning of gas, inviting friends to dinner without permission, etc., etc., of all which the club girl of the future will be blissfully free.

Artist Lady by Howard Chandler Christy (1909)