After nearly a century of serving our extended New York City community from our location on East 39th Street, the Williams Club will cease its own clubhouse and hospitality operations and move its membership program and related activities to the Princeton Club of New York on June 1, 2010.

Through a special arrangement reached with the Princeton Club, all current Williams Club members who renew their annual memberships in the coming weeks, and subsequent new enrollees, will have the full rights of regular members of the Princeton Club, located on West 43rd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues, including full access to its membership facilities and services. The Princeton Club, which already is a base for clubs of Columbia and NYU alumni, has newly remodeled hotel, dining, meeting and athletic facilities. We hope to see a bust or image of President James A. Garfield, an 1856 graduate of Williams College, join those of Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Princeton Club's members lounge.

Additional information about the Princeton Club is available for Williams Club members at www.princetonclub.com/williamsclub, to provide additional information about the Princeton Club and its facilities. In addition, the Princeton Club will hold a welcome reception/open house for members and prospective members on June 7. All Williams Club programs previously scheduled to occur after May 31 will continue at The Princeton Club, unless otherwise noted on or removed from the Club calendar. All arrangements and reservations for booked events and overnight stays scheduled for after May 31 will be addressed promptly by the Williams Club staff directly with the pertinent parties. Please direct any questions about Williams Club membership or renewals, or arrangements concerning the transition of scheduled programs, events or reservations, to the Williams Club's general manager, Gabrielle Keane, at 212-697-5300.

Established by prominent Williams alumni in 1913, the Williams Club has operated since 1924 out of two connected brownstones on East 39th Street, off Madison Avenue. But, regrettably, maintaining such an independent facility, including hotel and restaurant operations, has become financially impractical, which led the Board of Governors to make the difficult, but carefully considered, decisions described here.

The Club was formed by Williams alumni such as Herbert Lehman, the future governor of New York, with incorporation papers declaring its primary mission as "to advance the interests and influence of Williams College in New York." But like most of the university clubs in New York, it was established and maintained as a separate entity, legally independent of Williams College.

For many years Williams has been the only school of its size whose alumni maintained a separate club, but the Williams Club was too small to survive independently. There is a sense both of sadness and the end of an era, but the move to the clubhouse of the Princeton Club will allow the Williams Club to focus on the core elements of our mission and to better serve our members.

To celebrate the Club's new home, our first official event in the new location will be the ninety-seventh annual meeting of the Williams Club and the Club's Annual Dinner, both to be held on Thursday evening, June 24. The guest speaker at our annual dinner will be Bethany McLean '92, Vanity Fair Contributing Editor and author of The Smartest Guys in the Room. The evening will serve as an introduction to our new clubhouse and an opportunity to see the Williams Club flag fly alongside the orange, purple, and blue banners of Princeton, NYU and Columbia. Watch for details of this event, to will follow shortly. The Board of Governors and I hope to see you there.

Sincerely,

Jeff Urdang '89
President, Williams Club Board of Governors