y-first Street home. That structure at
Broadway and Fourth Street was the property of the Stuyvesant family,
and after the departure of the men of the Union, was occupied by the
confectioner Maillard as a hotel and restaurant. In 1852 the question of
a permanent building began to be discussed, and in 1854 the land at the
Twenty-first Street corner was secured and the work of erecting the
structure that in its day was the most imposing of all that lined Fifth
Avenue between Waverly Place and the Broadway junction begun. The club
moved into the new quarters in May, 1855, at a time when its membership
numbered approximately five hundred. In writing of the Union as it was
in 1871 Mr. Fairfield made the comment that literature was hardly
represented at all, and journalism only by Manton Marble of the "World."
As had been the case of Thackeray and the Athenaeum of London, Mr.
Marble, at the time of his first candidacy, had been blackballed. The
objection, also as in the case of Thackeray, was ascribed not to the
personality of the man, but to his profession. But Mr. Marble was
eventually admitted through the efforts of a member of the Board of
Directors, who declared boldly that not a new member should be elected
until the blackballs against the journalist had been withdrawn. Robert
J. Dillon, landscape gardener, and J.H. Lazarus, portrait painter, were
almost the sole art representatives, and in 1871 J. Lester Wallack was
the only actor on the club list. Wallack's great contemporary of the
stage, Edwin Booth, was a member of the Century and of the Lotos. The
law of the day was represented by such men as Mayor Hall, until he
resigned as a result of the criticism of fellow-members growing out of
the exposures of the Tammany frauds in the summer and autumn of 1871,
W.M. Evarts, Judge Garvin, Judge Gunning S. Bedford, Eli P. Norton, and
John E. Burrill. Of men prominent in political and municipal life were
August Belmont, Samuel J. Tilden, Peter B. Sweeny, former Mayor George
Opdyke, Isaac Bell, and Andrew H. Green, later to become the "Father of
Greater New York." Among the dominant financial figures, in addition to
August Belmont, were A.T. Stewart, John J. Cisco, Henry Clews, and John
Jacob Astor. From the Army were U.S. Grant, then the nation's President,
John H. Coster, George W. Cullom, Samuel W. Crawford, Howard Stockton,
Rufus Ingalls, J.L. Rathbone, I.U.D. Reeve, and Stewart Van Vliet. From
the Navy, James B. Breese, Jame