There must have been something about it that went far to make up for mere material deficiencies, if we are to credit the verdicts of those who were in a position to compare American club life with club life in England and on the Continent.

Thackeray was as fine a judge of the matter as any man who ever strutted through St.James's Park and scowled back at the Barnes Newcomeses and Captain Heavysideses in the club windows along Pall Mall, and there was what he said and wrote about the Century.
It was in the middle of the sixth decade of the last century that the clubs began to find their way into Fifth Avenue.

One of the first was the Union Club.

Writing of that organization in 1906, M.Charles Huard, in "New York comme je l'ai vu," volunteered the puzzling information that it was "_fonde en 1836 par les descendants de Knickerbocker, le plus vieux donc des grand clubs de New York_." If the Frenchman was to be taken literally he apparently regarded the offspring of Washington Irving's creation as an exceedingly prolific race.

The Union, in 1855, moved from Broadway near Fourth Street into a house on the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-first Street.