TheGrolier Club is a museum, library,private club andsociety of bibliophiles inNew York City. Founded in January 1884, it is the oldest existing bibliophilic club in North America. It is named afterJean Grolier de Servières, Viscount d'Aguisy, Treasurer General of France, whose library was famous; his motto, "Io. Grolierii et amicorum" [of or belonging to Jean Grolier and his friends], suggested his generosity in sharing books.[1]
The Club's stated objective is "the literary study of the arts pertaining to the production of books, including the occasional publication of books designed to illustrate, promote and encourage these arts; and the acquisition, furnishing and maintenance of a suitable club building for the safekeeping of its property, wherein meetings, lectures and exhibitions shall take place from time to time..."[2]
The Grolier Club maintains a research library specializing in books, bibliography and bibliophily, printing (especially the history of printing and examples of fine printing), binding, illustration and bookselling. The Grolier Club has one of the more extensive collections of book auction and bookseller catalogs in North America.[3][4][5] The Library also has the archives of prominent bibliophiles, such asSir Thomas Phillipps,[6] and of bibliophile and print collecting groups, such as theHroswitha Club of women book collectors (1944–c. 1999)[7][a] and the Society of Iconophiles.[8]
The Grolier Club's public exhibitions "treat books and prints as objects worthy of display, on a par with painting and sculpture."[9] The exhibitions on two gallery floors draw on various sources including holdings of the Club, its members, and of institutional libraries. Subjects of its recent shows includewomen in science (2013),[10] blooks (2016), Walt Whitman (2019), American menus (2023),Zoe Anderson Norris (2023), Abraham Lincoln (2024, fromDavid Rubenstein's collection), andimaginary books (2024-2025).
In 2022 theRare Book School was featured in the exhibit,Building the Book from the Ancient World to the Present Day: Five Decades of Rare Book School & the Book Arts Press.[11] The exhibit covered two millennia of the changing form of the book.
From April 20 to June 5, 1971, a newly-discovered pre-ColumbianMaya codex was displayed in the club, giving the codex the name theGrolier Codex. In 1973 the club published a facsimile of the codex in a book byMichael D. Coe.[19]
The Grolier Club has had three locations since its founding. Its first home was rented space at 64 Madison Avenue,[13] which it quickly outgrew.[14] It moved in 1890 to aRomanesque Revival building at29 East 32nd Street (now a designated city landmark).[13]
The third and current clubhouse at 47 East 60th Street, on theUpper East Side, was designed byBertram Grosvenor Goodhue.[5] The cornerstone was laid in December 1916,[20] and the clubhouse opened almost exactly a year later.[21] Its members-only upper-floor spaces include a simulation of a 17th-century New York Dutch taproom. A 51-story apartment tower beside the Grolier Club was built withair rights purchased from the club and the adjoiningChrist Church.[22]
Ames, Alexander Lawrence, and Mark Samuels Lasner.Grolier Club Bookplates: Past & Present. New York: The Grolier Club, 2023.
Fletcher, H. George.Judging a Book by Its Cover: Bookbindings from the Collections of the Grolier Club, 1470s-2020. New York: The Grolier Club, 2023.[24]
Hispanic Museum & Library, Mitchell Codding, John O’Neill, Patrick Lenaghan, Szilvia E. Szmuk, Grolier Club, and Pine Tree Foundation of New York (2021).Treasures from the Hispanic Society Library. New York: The Grolier Club.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)[25]
^"Cornerstone of Grolier Club's New Home Laid: Commodious Quarters in East Sixtieth Street Soon to Be Ready".New-York Tribune. December 15, 1916. p. 13.ISSN1941-0646.ProQuest575664498.
^A list of club presidents, complete to 2009, appeared inMembers of the Grolier Club, 1884–2009 (New York: Grolier Club, 2009), pp. 158–159. A previous list, complete to 1982, appeared inMembers of the Grolier Club, 1884–1984 (New York: Grolier Club, 1986), pp. 149–150.
^Foot, Mirjam. (review).The Book Collector 75 (no4) Winter, 2024:755-758.
^Brocato, Linda M. (December 2025). "Review ofTreasures from the Hispanic Society Library".Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America.119:516–519.
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