Their club home on Broadway

A Valentine box, red crepe paper, and the club's address given in passing.

The party is charming and the address is the point. Until the mid-century arc, every description of the clubhouse in this archive placed it only by the water: “on the banks of the Deschutes”, “facing Mirror Pond”, “the club house on the Deschutes”. The street came from a 1956 demolition report, thirty-four years later, saying the house “faces the Deschutes river from 584 Broadway”.

Here is the club itself, in its own time, at “their club home on Broadway”. Three notices that winter say the same — a card party on January 28 at “their club home on Broadway avenue”, a Valentine party announced for February 14 at “their club rooms on Broadway”, and this report of the party itself. The 1956 street number and the 1922 street name agree, and the agreement is made by the club's own social column rather than by a retrospective.

It still is not a survey. A street name in a society note does not fix a lot, and no city directory, plat or assessment record has been consulted. But the building the Masons bought in 1924 and knocked down in 1956 is the building the Emblem Club was dancing in on Valentine's night 1922, and the paper puts it on the same street both times.