Website www.cosmosclub.org Founded 1878 | Type Gentlemen's club | |
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Services Hotel, Dining, Athletics, Meetings Headquarters Washington, D.C., United States | ||
Cosmos club 1er aniversario
The Cosmos Club is a private social club in Washington, D.C., founded by John Wesley Powell in 1878. Among its stated goals is "The advancement of its members in science, literature, and art".[1] Cosmos Club members have included three U.S. Presidents, two U.S. Vice Presidents, a dozen Supreme Court justices, 36 Nobel Prize winners, 61 Pulitzer Prize winners, and 55 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Contents
Since 1952, the Club's headquarters have been in the Townsend House on Embassy Row.
Cosmos club part 1
History
In addition to Powell, original members included Clarence Edward Dutton, Henry Smith Pritchett, William Harkness, and John Shaw Billings. The Club originally met in the Corcoran Building on the corner of 15th and F Streets, N.W., but moved to Lafayette Square in 1882. Eventually, the Club occupied the Tayloe and Dolley Madison Houses on the eastern side of the Square, and razed two rowhouses between them for additional space. Prompted to relocate by the federal government, the Club moved to the Townsend House in mid 1952.
Since 1887, the regular meeting place of the Philosophical Society of Washington has been the assembly hall of the Cosmos Club, now called the John Wesley Powell auditorium. The National Geographic Society was founded in the Cosmos Club in 1888, and The Wilderness Society was founded there in 1935.
For its first 110 years, the Cosmos Club did not permit women members, and forbade female guests to enter by the front door or to enter rooms reserved for members. In 1987, the Washington, D.C., Human Rights Office ruled that there was probable cause to believe that the club's men-only policy violated the city's anti-discrimination law. The Office was ready to order public hearings on the case, which could have resulted in the loss of all city licenses and permits if the all-male policy had continued, but the Cosmos Club then voted on June 19, 1988, to accept women as members.
In 1990, the Cosmos Club began publication of Cosmos: A Journal of Emerging Issues as an annual publication of original essays by its members.
Awards
The Cosmos Club offers two major awards:
Membership
Election to membership in the Cosmos Club honors persons deemed to have "done meritorious original work in science, literature, or the arts, or... recognized as distinguished in a learned profession or in public service".
Its members have included:
