The Ivy Club, often simply Ivy, is the oldest eating club at Princeton University. It was founded in 1879 with Arthur Hawley Scribner as its first head.
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Club culture
The club is described by F. Scott Fitzgerald in This Side of Paradise (1920) as "detached and breathlessly aristocratic". A more recent account from 1999 described Ivy as the "most patrician eating club at Princeton University" where members "eat at long tables covered with crisp white linens and set with 19th-century Sheffield silver candelabra, which are lighted even when daylight streams into the windows."
Membership
The club was one of the last to admit women, resisting the change until spring 1991 after a lawsuit had been brought against the Ivy Club, Tiger Inn, and Cottage Club by the Princeton student Sally Frank and her lawyer Nadine Taub. The members of each class are selected through the bicker process, a series of ten screening interviews, which are followed by discussions amongst the members as to whom of the remaining to admit. Current undergraduate members host regular "Roundtable Dinners" featuring talks by faculty and alumni.
Clubhouse
The first clubhouse was Ivy Hall, a brownstone building on Mercer Street in Princeton that still stands. It had been constructed by Richard Stockton Field in 1847 as the home for the Princeton Law School, a short-lived venture that lasted from 1847 to 1852. From the time of its founding until its incorporation in 1883, the club was generally known as the "Ivy Hall Eating Club."
In 1883, the club purchased an empty lot on Prospect Avenue, which was a country dirt road at the time. Ivy erected a shingle-style clubhouse in 1884 on what is today the site of Colonial Club. The clubhouse was remodeled and extended in 1887–88. Following Ivy's move to new quarters across Prospect Avenue some ten years later, its second clubhouse was used by Colonial before being sold and moved to Plainsboro Township, New Jersey.
Ivy's third and current clubhouse was designed in 1897 by the Philadelphia firm of Cope & Stewardson. In 2009, the club completed its most significant renovation to date. The expansion added a second wing to the facility, changing the club's original L-shaped layout to a U. Designed by Demetri Porphyrios, the new wing includes a two-story Great Hall and a crypt to provide additional study space.
Notable alumni
The following is a list of some notable members of the Ivy Club:
Hobey Baker (1914) – World War I fighter pilot, member of the Hockey Hall of Fame and U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame
James A. Baker III (1952) – Chief of Staff for Ronald Reagan; Secretary of Treasury and Secretary of State for George H. W. Bush
Lem Billings (1939) – confidante and "first friend" of President John F. Kennedy who was Kennedy's freshman-year roommate at Princeton
Joshua B. Bolten (1976) – White House Chief of Staff and Office of Management and Budget director under George W. Bush
Philip Bobbitt (1971) – constitutional law scholar and author of The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History
Lauren Bush-Lauren (2006) – fashion model and niece of George W. Bush
Joey Cheek (2011) – speed skater who won gold and silver medals in the 2006 Winter Olympics and co-founder and president of Team Darfur
Leonard S. Coleman, Jr. (1971) – president of the National League
Frank Deford (1962) – author and sports commentator
Richard B. Fisher – philanthropist and chairman of Morgan Stanley
Moira Forbes—president and publisher, ForbesWoman
Bill Ford (1979) – Ford Motor Company