“The Yale Club of Boston was founded in 1867 after an unofficial launch at a dinner at the Parker House [opened in 1855] in January of 1866.”

So begins a traditional account of Boston's collegiate alumni aggregations.  However, recent research in the Yale archives and from newspapers of the day reveal that the Yale Club of Boston actually was founded after the first organizing dinner in January of 1866.

 

“The roots of the [Yale Club of New York] reach back to 1868 and the foundation of the Old Yale Alumni Association of New York.” At the same time, Harvardians in New York banded together at Delmonico’s Restaurant. “Membership grew to 16 by the end of 1865, which was considered large enough to incorporate.” It was an era of young men working in America’s rapidly-expanding cities, living away from their families and seeking both camaraderie and food. Such ventures were perhaps unnecessary for Boston’s Harvard alumni, who waited until 1908 to incorporate their formal organization.

 

Many groups moved from meeting in restaurants to buying and building their own facilities in the early 20th century, often to provide housing and meals for their youthful members; Boston’s Yalies, however, with access to hosts of private “clubhouses” from the 1880’s onward, refrained from buying their own. While the Somerset Club was founded in 1851 and the Union Club in 1863, in the 1880’s, a score of clubs debuted: The St. Botolph, Tavern, Algonquin, Puritan, University, Odd Volumes, India Wharf Rats, Boston Athletic (BAA), City Club Corporation, and Mayflower (women). Many no longer exist.  (Boston’s social history was also affected by one incontrovertible reality: until the mid-1970’s, the city offered very few upscale, fancy restaurants beyond the Ritz-Carlton and Locke-Ober. Most of the city's clubs offered superior dining facilities; indeed, in the years prior to WWII several prospered as luncheon destinations.)

Most of the clubs wrote and updated elaborate descriptions of their missions. Early on, New York’s Harvard Club said that “the particular business and object of such society or club shall be to promote social intercourse among ourselves and others, our associates and successors, who are to be persons who have been connected with Harvard University....”

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By the late 20th century the Boston Club had expanded its mission from what Harvard’s New Yorkers originally called “social intercourse” considerably. In the 1990’s it saw its purposes to be “to foster a continuing educational and philanthropic relationship between Yale alumni in eastern Massachusetts and the University, its students, and faculty; to assist students from eastern Massachusetts to attend Yale University through guidance and financial assistance; to provide programs for the continuing education of Yale alumni; to facilitate the meeting of Yale alumni with one another; to encourage Yale alumni to make contributions to public service; and generally to enhance the reputation of Yale University in eastern Massachusetts.”



At the end of the 21st century’s first decade, what is the role of such a regional collegiate alumni aggregation? What once was thought of as social “exclusivity” has been translated back into its original form, the accidental connection fostered by one’s having been involved with the university. If the 1880’s alumni needed housing and food, today’s alums still enjoy food and drink and still demand opportunities to share social and intellectual experiences—camaraderie—with their colleagues. Just as those Bostonians and New Yorkers in the 1860’s recognized the value of pooling resources to fulfill their goals, so club members have paid dues and supported their organizations knowing the value of basic economies of scale.



What has changed? Certainly the explicit need for alumni to be of service to their larger communities is new, or at least newly articulated. Perhaps the role of the university has changed, in that more and more it becomes a life-long resource for its alumni and friends. Clearly, the incredible variety and diversity inherent in the university experience carries forward in time. The dazzling array of screens and links available on this site make that point unarguably.

YALEBoston serves as a resource, an opportunity, a link, in the very best sense of that word.

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Ultimately, the old song “‘Neath the Elms” says it simply: “Friendship lasts though youth must fail.”