There was a time, not so long ago, when a New Yorker’s social standing could be measured by the clubs that wouldn’t have him. Now the problem is the opposite. There are so many clubs that the truly exclusive gesture may soon be belonging to none of them.
“Just when you thought New York had enough members clubs, three more are on the way,” Carson Griffith wrote this week in RPS, her newsletter about the habits of the rich, which also offers its subscribers a map of nearly three dozen of the city’s biggest clubs. “At this point, it’s hard to imagine who in New York would still need one, but the people opening them seem convinced there are plenty.” It is the line of the week, and the three newcomers rather prove her point: a London institution’s New York debut, another Soho House in a building that already has a members’ club, and, as RPS puts it, a $50 million Fifth Avenue mansion with ties to the owner of the Ritz London.
Let us take them in order of absurdity, ascending.
Soho House moves in upstairs from… Soho House, sort of
On Tuesday, the New York Post reported that Soho House will open its fourth New York club in early 2028 in the Johnston Building, the 1903 Beaux-Arts tower at Broadway and West 28th Street in NoMad, once the NoMad Hotel and now The Ned NoMad. Soho House will rework the first four floors. The Ned will keep its 120 hotel rooms upstairs, its Cecconi’s and its Little Ned bar at street level, and its own Ned’s Club NoMad, per the Post.
So, two members’ clubs in one building, each with its own front door. The Post describes The Ned NoMad as a “sister brand” redesigned by Soho House’s own design team, yet Soho House insists the two are not connected, and members who want both get no bundle or discount. It is the hospitality equivalent of a couple who share a townhouse but use separate staircases.
The draw is the gym, at last. The new club will devote two floors and 20,000 square feet to what the company calls its most ambitious Soho Health Club yet, with saunas, ice baths, a hammam and instructor-led classes, per the Post. “Our New York members have long told us they would value a gym and wellness facilities,” a spokeswoman told the paper. Above that: a club bar, a drawing room with Broadway views, a hidden terrace and a stage. Access comes with the $6,000 Every House membership.
The timing is pointed. Soho House only recently returned to private hands after a $2.7 billion take-private deal that nearly fell apart, with Ashton Kutcher putting in fresh equity and taking a board seat, the Post reported. On Oct. 3, it threw its first New York festival, at Pier 17, with Alanis Morissette headlining. A company that once had to freeze new admissions because its houses were too crowded, as Hoodline recounts, has apparently decided the answer is more house.
The Wolseley comes to Times Square, by way of The Lambs
The second arrival is the most romantic. The Wolseley, the grand London café on Piccadilly, will open a members’ club in the second quarter of 2027 inside its 77-room hotel at 130 West 44th Street, Boutique Hotel News reported on Oct. 8. The building is the Stanford White-designed clubhouse of The Lambs, described as America’s first professional theatrical club, and its restored Stanford White Room will be the club’s centerpiece.
“We wanted to create an all-day social living room for people whose lives move effortlessly between Uptown and Downtown, New York and London,” said Dillip Rajakarier, group chief executive of Minor International, the Thai hospitality company that owns The Wolseley Hotels. He promised a room uniting “founders and artists, producers and investors, hoteliers and philanthropists, established voices and emerging talent.” There will be, per the announcement, wellness facilities and “longevity programming.” One notes, without comment, that there is now no members’ club in New York that does not offer longevity programming. It is the new cigar room.
Still, if you have to put a club somewhere, putting it back inside an old theatrical club is a nice touch. Stanford White, who knew a thing or two about Manhattan’s private rooms, would have approved, at least of the woodwork.
854 Fifth: the mystery mansion
The third is the most New York of all, because nobody will say who it’s for. The six-story Beaux-Arts mansion at 854 Fifth Avenue, between 66th and 67th streets, designed by Warren and Wetmore and one of the city’s first individually designated landmarks, sold in 2022 for $50 million in an all-cash deal from the five successor states of the former Yugoslavia, which had used it as their U.N. mission, Crain’s New York Business reported. The buyer appears connected, Crain’s reported, to the Qatari businessman Abdulhadi Al-Hajri, who has been linked to splashy acquisitions including the Ritz in London.
According to city filings described by Crain’s, the plan is to turn the first through fourth floors into a private club, bar, lounge and dining room across roughly 11,000 square feet, with three residences above, a filled-in courtyard for another dining room and a rooftop addition. Membership would be limited, and live music kept small. A company called Celtic New York sought city approval to give the house “new life as a private members’ club,” Crain’s reported in 2024. Peter Pennoyer Architects is the architect of record. The house, Crain’s added, is said to have bulletproof windows and Cold War-era spy gear, and was once a hiding place for Tito during an assassination attempt. RPS says there have been fresh developments; the details sit behind its paywall, and we will not guess at them.
Who, exactly, is left to join?
Here is where we put down the champagne flute and ask the obvious question. Soho House is opening its fourth house. The Wolseley is crossing the Atlantic. A Gulf-linked mansion club is coming to Fifth Avenue. Somewhere, a fintech founder is being asked to choose between four sets of initiation fees and an ice bath.
The members’ club boom is really a real estate story wearing a dinner jacket. Club operators want what offices no longer need: big, beautiful, underused buildings in central neighborhoods. Landlords want tenants who pay up front and fill the room at night. And a certain kind of New Yorker, shut out of Rao’s and bored of the Polo Bar, wants a room where the person at the next table has also been vetted.
The old clubs, the Knickerbocker and the Union and the Brook, never had to advertise, because the point was that you couldn’t get in. The new ones are building waiting lists as a growth strategy. That is not exclusivity. That is marketing. But it is very good marketing, and the woodwork, we hear, is spectacular.
The City Politic has reached out to Soho House, The Ned NoMad, The Wolseley Hotels and Minor Hotels, Peter Pennoyer Architects and Celtic New York for comment and will update this story with any response.
Photo: The Johnston Building at Broadway and 28th Street. Beyond My Ken / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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