Boston Elis Seek Refuge In Harvard Club; Lack Formal Meeting Place of Their Own

Boston's Harvard Club is among the nation's most renowned college clubs, but the city's older Yale Club is deeply entrenched in Harvard territory. In fact, the one big Yale Club event of the year is held at the Harvard headquarters.

Because the Elis have no club building of their own, Crimson facilities are made available for their January Football Dinners. Speakers at this event usually include Yale's president and head football coach, with the coach giving a running commentary on movies of the Harvard-Yale bame.

A traditionally important ceremony at this banquet in the exchange of flowers between the two Club presidents; sweetheart roses, gift of the Yale Club president and blue violets from the Harvard Club president.

Harvard Club Advantages

The Harvard Club of Boston has perhaps the best clubhouse facilities of any alumni organization in America. Squash courts, game rooms, lounges, restaurants, ladies' lounges and meeting room, and hotel facilities, lavishly staffed, provide a meeting place in gracious surroundings.

Membership in either the Harvard or Yale Club depends upon sponsorships by two members of the club and proof that the applicant has been in attendance at the respective university for at least one academic year. There is no initiation fee for either club, and dues are sealed to the number of years that one has been out of colleges.

The Yale Club of Boston, founded in 1867, did have a clubhouse of its own at 10 Derne Street from 1922 to 1932. But financial difficulties arose with the depression and the not too well founded adventure had to be abandoned. "However," secretary of the Club Alexander M. Hammer, Yale '40, points out, "with the cooperation of the Harvard Club, formal affairs can still be carried out, and informality has not effected our simple operation of unusual vitality."

The Harvard Club of Boston was founded in 1908, and its clubhouse built in 1913. Beebe Room, or the ladies' section of the club, is now being renovated as the last in a series of post-war improvements.

"Yales-in-Harvard"

At present Boston's Yale Club counts among its members about 150 Yale College men who are attending various Harvard graduate schools. Special membership arrangements allow these men to be members of the Club as long as they remain in the Boston area.

Both of the clubs offer scholarships to deserving boys from the Boston area who wish to go on the respective colleges. And the Yale Club has a committee that assumes the added duty of interviewing prospective freshmen, passing their findings on to the Dean of Admissions at Yale.