University Club Of Wilmington

The University Club of Wilmington was incorporated on April 12, 1924 by a group of male college graduates who decided to join together "to promote friendship among college men, and to advance the interests of a liberal education." A clubhouse was established at 1311 Market Street, known as the Old Gibbons House, and was formally opened on July 1, 1924. At the outset, the Club comprised 250 members. When membership growth dictated larger quarters, the University Club moved to 1301 Market Street, holding an official house warming on September 13, 1927. In the mid-1930s, Francis V. du Pont, Jr. acquired the 805 North Broom Street property from the estate of J. Danforth Bush and leased it to the University Club. The Club moved into its new quarters on November 30, 1935 with a formal opening on December 11. During World War II, the clubhouse was filled to capacity with occupants - 25 to 35 residents, for the most part housed two to a room in the main building, and up to four in the carriage house.

During the 1950s, the University Club was the center of activity for young singles of Wilmington. Anne Rudquist explained why: "We had lived through the depression and through the deprivations of war when everything was rationed. When World War II ended, the men went back to college and, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, were graduating. Finally things were back to normal, people had money again, and we just had fun." Many residents of the Club were young professionals in Wilmington, men like the late William V. Roth, Jr., who became the senior United States Senator from Delaware. Another young professional at the time who frequented the Club was Charles Todderud. "One thing that impressed me was the intellectual level of the conversations at dinner," he recalled. "There would be Charles W. Todd, director of biochemical research at the du Pont Experimental Station, and Roger Horton, a patent attorney, and Joe Couglin, an engineer who had worked on the atomic bomb project when they developed the first radioactive pile. These guys had a wealth of information. They would talk about Einstein's Theory of Relativity and apparently understood what they were talking about. It probably was the high point of my life in exposure to intelligent conversation." It was a meeting place, an entertaining place, a respite after growing up in a stressed world.