Brad Duffy
Politics Editor
THE UNIVERSITY CLUB, a private not-for-profit organization whose membership includes faculty, staff, alumni, and friends of the University, will no longer be a part of the Notre Dame community—at least not at its current location.
Executive Vice President John Affleck-Graves announced in 2004 that the Club would be demolished, and those plans are now coming to fruition. Although the club has been closed for a couple of months, the wrecking ball will not hit the building until November. The University plans to replace the Club with a nanotechnology research facility.
The Club was founded in 1958 and has been at its current location, on Notre Dame Avenue across from the Eck Notre Dame Visitors’ Center, since 1968.
The Club has approximately 12,000 members, though that number must be qualified—all members of the Sorin Society, Thomas More Society, and Cardinal O’Hara societies automatically gain membership to the Club. Those groups account for over 8,000 of the members.
Paul Conway, a professor in the Department of Finance at Notre Dame for 50 years, has been chairman of the Club’s board of directors for 26 years. He has a unique historical perspective of the Club.
“The building was built in 1968. The significance was the Vietnam War. Many thought that it was Notre Dame’s response to give the faculty a place to get together and keep them under control,” Conway reminisced.
According to Conway, the Club’s motto, “A Very Special Place,” identified the Club perfectly.
“It was indeed a very special place. All sorts of people went there. It was great conversation and great meals at a reasonable price.” The dues for faculty and staff were only $50 per year, while non-faculty and staff members paid $120. The dues were in place to help keep the meal prices low, and they have not changed in 20 years.
Although the Club’s current building is going to be torn down later this year, the Club still exists and is looking towards the future. After the Club heard of the University’s plans, it formed the Committee on the Future of the University Club, which had meetings and put together a petition trying to persuade the University to allow the Club to stay in the building it has been in for almost 40 years.
Kent Emery, professor in the Program of Liberal Studies and of the Medieval Institute, was selected as Chairman of the Committee.
“We had a petition of 400 signatures and the first one who signed it was Fr. Hesburgh,” Emery recalls. “He used to hang out there a lot. We submitted this to Fr. Jenkins.”
“We didn’t say not to build the engineering building. We wanted to know why we couldn’t preserve both goods instead of destroying one. We weren’t asking for all that much.”
Apparently Fr. Hesburgh’s influence was minimal at best. “One thing is clear, the fact that his signature was number one on the list did not cause Fr. Jenkins and John Affleck-Graves to tremble and lose sleep at night,” Emery continued. “Affleck-Graves said that the building was coming down and that’s all there is to it.”
The Club’s building was a gift of the Robert Gore family, who had six of his nine children attend the University, and 43 members of the Gore family attended Notre Dame over three generations. The University’s plans to tear down the building came as news to the family.
“The Gore family gave the building and wasn’t even notified by the University when plans were made to tear it down,” said Conway. “They were first notified by the Committee for the Future of the University Club.”
Several members of the Notre Dame faculty and staff were regular diners at the Club, including the legendary Lefty Smith, who started the Varsity Hockey program at Notre Dame in 1968, and coached at the University for 19 years.
“We’ve been eating there for 40 years,” Smith recalls. “When I came to Notre Dame in 1968, Fr. Joyce (Executive Vice President, 1952-1987) and Moose Krause (Director of Athletics, 1949-1981) encouraged all the coaches to join the University Club in order to enhance what was known as the “Notre Dame family.”
“It became a place for us to unwind and cut each other up. One day it might be Digger Phelps, another day it was someone else,” Smith said.
“It was a great place. Notre Dame has always talked about town and gown relationships. There were businessmen, doctors, a great variety of people there. I’m very, very sad to see it go. It is leaving a serious void that I don’t think can be replaced.”
Notre Dame Law Professor Charles Rice, another member of the Club, sees this as a sad reflection of the changes taking place at Notre Dame.
“The Club was one of the quintessentially humane elements of Notre Dame,” Rice said. “It apparently no longer fits in the corporate world. It’s a reflection on the fact that this place has become a megalopolis.”
Emery shared his thoughts on the evolution occurring at Notre Dame. “I came to Notre Dame in 1985 and it was already clear from talking with other faculty members that the old Notre Dame culture was extinct,” he recalls. “I haven’t heard talk of the ‘Notre Dame family’ in at least 15 years. This [tearing down the Clubhouse] signifies the conclusive end to an era.”
Another unique thing about the Club’s building is its impressive architecture. Don Sporleder, Professor Emeritus of the School of Architecture, commented on the building.
“It’s a significant building,” Sporleder said. “The architecture was Montana and Schultz. Of course, Frank Montana was the former chair of the Architecture School.”
“They worked closely with Fr. Joyce back in the late 1960s to develop a place where the entire Notre Dame community could come together.”
“The design speaks for itself. The masonry craftwork is unique and it received a chapter design award in the 70s. And in 2005 it received a Golden Trowel award from the International Masonry Institute.”
“It’s a pity in my view to relegate the place to a landfill. So hopefully we can save at least some elements of it.”
So, what does the future hold for the University Club?
“We are still hoping to come to some agreement with the University—we want to stay on campus,” Conway said. “The University offered us space at Greenfield’s, but it’s much too small, and we couldn’t start charging people who had eaten at the place [Greenfield’s] for free all the time.”
“The current place represents the essence of what Notre Dame was all about. It was blue-collar and it had a special ambience about it. Princeton and Harvard have their clubs representing their culture, and now it seems as though Notre Dame would rather have a club representing Princeton and Harvard.”
Conway also said that this speaks to the changes at the University. “Notre Dame used to be family-oriented, but now it is all about the bottom line. The corporate organizational structure has taken over.”
The office of Executive Vice President John Affleck-Graves had very little to say about the future of the Club. “The University is currently in discussion with the University Club’s Board of Directors regarding the possible future home for the Club,” Affleck- Graves wrote in an email to The Rover. “Due to the confidential nature of the discussions, we want to wait until the conversations are complete before doing any interviews with interested parties, including The Irish Rover.”
Although Emery does not know for sure what will happen to the Club, he has a prediction.
“Just as the bookstore and the coffee shops on campus have changed, this will probably change too,” Emery predicted. “And look what happened—now you see more faculty hanging out at Barnes and Noble than our own bookstore.”
“You have to understand what an outrageous anomaly the Club was at Notre Dame because it was the only place left on campus that wasn’t profit-driven. All the money went back into the Club.”
“My prediction is that you will see a University Club in the future, but most likely it will be totally controlled by the University,” Emery said. “One thing is certain—it won’t be the old Club.”
Contact Brad at bduffy1@nd.edu.
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