Founding On March 12, 1908, 32 newspapermen met at the Washington Chamber of Commerce to discuss starting a club for journalists. At the meeting they agreed to meet again on March 29 in the F Street
parlor of the
Willard Hotel to frame a
constitution for the National Press Club. The Club founders laid down a credo which promised "to promote social enjoyment among the members, to cultivate literary taste, to encourage friendly intercourse among newspapermen and those with whom they were thrown in contact in the pursuit of their
vocation, to aid members in distress and to foster the
ethical standards of the profession." With $300, the founding members moved into its first club quarters on the second floor of 1205 F Street NW. By 1909, the club had outgrown its new quarters and moved above Rhodes Tavern at the corner of 15th and F Streets. Once again the club outgrew its residence and moved to the Albee Building (formerly Riggs) at 15th and G Streets.
Membership At its founding, the club was only open to white men but it began to accept non-white men in 1955. In 1970, it was opened to women. Prior to these changes in membership, non-white men and women had their own designated press clubs.
Women's National Press Club In 1919, female journalists founded the '''Women's National Press Club''', when the
Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. In December 1970, members of the Women's National Press Club voted to allow men into their club and renamed it the
Washington Press Club. The next month, the National Press Club voted 227 to 56 to admit women. In 1972, journalist
Gloria Steinem, a
feminist leader and founder of
Ms. magazine, was the first woman to speak at the National Press Club, although first lady
Eleanor Roosevelt attended lunch at the then all-male club in 1938. In 1985, the Washington Press Club and the National Press Club merged under the banner of the National Press Club.
The Washington Press Club Foundation (WPCF) continues as a nonprofit organization to promote equality, education and excellence among journalists in print and broadcast media. It has a
Women in Journalism Oral History Project. Oral History videos (Mary Garber, Betsy Wade, Dorothy Gilliam, Eileen Shanahan, Ruth Cowan Nash) are archived by
C-SPAN.
The Washington Press Club Foundation also arranges journalism internships for women and minorities in partnership with
Washington DC–based news bureaus. Since 1945, an annual (late January - early February)
Washington Press Club Foundation Salute to Congress, now called the '
Washington Press Club Foundation Congressional Dinner, is its signature fundraising event, with its video archived by
C-SPAN since 1985.
Capital Press Club African-American journalists founded the
Capital Press Club in 1944. The first African-American male journalist (
Louis Lautier) was accepted for National Press Club membership in 1955. Reporting on that event,
TIME said: The National Press Building was renovated from 1984 to 1985, In 2011, the building was sold to Quadrangle Development Corp. and AEW Core Property Trust (U.S.) for $167.5 million. The owners placed the building, assessed at $237.5 million, up for sale in August 2014.
Continuation During the
Great Depression, the club struggled financially as it was beginning to be recognized as an influential group. It managed to find additional funding from wealthy individuals. Regular weekly
luncheons for speakers began in 1932 with an appearance by
president-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. Since then the club has hosted an average of 70 luncheons each year with prominent people. Over the years
Nikita Khrushchev,
Soong Mei-ling (Madame Chiang Kai-shek),
Golda Meir,
Indira Gandhi,
Muhammad Ali,
Charles de Gaulle,
Robert Redford,
Boris Yeltsin,
Elizabeth Taylor,
Nelson Mandela,
Yasser Arafat,
Dalai Lama,
Angelina Jolie,
George Carlin,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and
Elizabeth Warren have all spoken at the club. Speaking at the National Press Club to mark his retirement, CBS commentator
Eric Sevareid called the club the "
sanctum sanctorum of American journalists" and said "It's the
Westminster Hall, it's
Delphi, it's
Mecca, the
Wailing Wall for everybody in this country having anything to do with the news business; the only hallowed place I know of that's absolutely bursting with irreverence." The Broadcast Operations Center opened in 2006. Located on the 4th floor of the National Press Building, a full-service video production with facilities for webcast and video conference solutions, video production capabilities, global transmission portals, and web enabled multimedia. ==Professional development==