- About Bookbinding -

Aims of the Grolier Club

The origin of the Grolier Club of New York is recorded in the first volume of its transactions. A little gathering of men interested in the arts "entering into the production of books" was held at the house of Mr. Robert Hoe, Jr., in January, 1884. They determined to organize a club, and to that end they appointed committees to present a name and to prepare a constitution. Early in February the members adopted a constitution which declares that the founders of the club are William L. Andrews, Theodore L. De Vinne, Alexander W. Drake, Albert Gallup, Robert Hoe, Jr., Brayton Ives, S. W. Marvin, Edward S. Mead, and Arthur B. Turnure; and then they elected Mr. Hoe, President, and Mr. Brayton Ives, Vice-President. A club device, including the arms of Grolier, was provided a fortnight later. Then the club, having a name, chose a local habitation at No. 64 Madison Avenue, where the council first met about the middle of April less than three brief months after the first conference. There, in rooms simply and most tastefully decorated and furnished, the Grolier Club made its home for a brief season; there it took root and flourished and brought forth fruit; there its members listened to a series of lectures as instructive as they were interesting; and there they held separate exhibitions of etchings, of manuscripts, of original designs for book illustration, of bindings, and of early printed books.

Then in 1886 the club moved into a house of its own, No. 29 East 32d Street, where it had more ample accommodation for its many new members. The architect, Mr. Charles W. Romeyn, carefully considered the special needs of an association of this sort: that he succeeded in giving the club house a dignified and characteristic physiognomy of its own, the accompanying sketch shows plainly enough. And in this dignified and spacious dwelling the Grolier Club has continued to prosper ever Since. Mr. Hoe was succeeded in the presidency by Mr. William Loring Andrews; and in due season Mr. Andrews was followed by Mr. Beverly Chew.

Of the founders of the club, some book lovers from taste and some were merely were book lovers by trade printers and publishers; and thus the club began with a novel and fertile alliance of the dilettante and the professional, an alliance likely to be of lasting benefit to both. The object of the club was in reality two fold to bring together those interested in the arts of book making, that there might be a stimulating interchange of suggestions and experiences; and also to further these arts in the United States.