Cliff Dwellers Club

From HistoryWiki

Cliff Dwellers Club Soundex Code C410

200 S. Michigan Avenue

Chicago, IL 60604-2487

In 1907, Chicago author Hamlin Garland and friends founded the Attic Club, which two years later was re-named The Cliff Dwellers Club. Now, as then, it is a private club and functions as a non-profit organization for men and women either professionally engaged in, or who support, the fine arts and the performing arts.

Since its 1996 move from atop Symphony Center (formerly Orchestra Hall) next door, all the facilities of The Cliff Dwellers Club are located in the 22nd floor penthouse of the office building at the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue at Adams Street. Its lakefront facilities overlook Millennium Park and the Art Institute of Chicago.

The club's interior, the "kiva", was designed by Chicago architect Howard Van Doren Shaw, and featured the mural Navaho by John Warner Norton. Charter members of the club included Garland's brother-in-law Lorado Taft, educator and author William Morton Payne, Architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Architects Allen B. Pond and Irving K. Pond, the landscape architect Jens Jensen, and many other civic and cultural figures. According to the club's own history, decorated with Meso-American cartoon spot illustrations, "The opening ceremonies were exceedingly elaborate."