Educational & Community Activities

Sponsored Lectures:

  • Alice Ross Carey (late preservation architect) Topic: The Queen of Clubs – the history of the Woman’s Athletic Club (now Metropolitan Club) (This lecture was also given at the Haas-Lilienthal House as part of its lecture series)
  • Anthea Hartig (then Director of the National Trust for Historic Preservation Western Region) Topic: History and Importance of the Women’s Club Movement
  • G. Bland (Gee Gee) Platt (Preservation Consultant and Member of SF Historic Preservation Fund Committee) Topic: Formation and Purpose of the SF Historic Preservation Fund Committee
  • Anthony Veerkamp (Staff, National Trust for Historic Preservation) Topic: Preservation and Climate Change.
  • Anthea Hartig (Executive Director, California Historical Society) Co-sponsored with SF Heritage. Topic: The life and work of the late Alice Ross Carey, preservation architect
  • Erin Garcia, Curator, California Historical Society. Topic: The Women of the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915
  • Michael R. Corbett. Topic: Architecture and the Profession in Early 20th Century San Francisco
  • Planning Commission President Rich Hillis and a panel including Charles Chase, Shayne Watson, Randy Shaw, Barbara Ockel, and Woody LaBounty examined the origins, legacy, and future of the Historic Preservation Fund Committee. Co-sponsored with SF Heritage. Topic:  At Ruins to Redemption: Historic Preservation Committee Fund.
  • Author Denise Clifton. Topic: Tables from the Rubble: How the Restaurants That Arose After the Great Quake of 1906 Still Feed San Francisco Today
  • Architect Paul Fisher. Topic: South Park & Rincon Hill.
  • 2020 Alice Ross Carey Memorial Lecture: Preservationists on Preservationists
  • Ongoing: Wine, Women & Financial Wisdom programs covering critical financial, legal and medical planning issues

Tours offered to non-Metropolitan Club members:

  • November 30, 2004 – Reception to celebrate the National Register Listing of the Woman’s Athletic Club. Invitation list included: SF Landmark Commissioners, SF Heritage staff and Board Members, Director, Office of National Trust, State Historic Resources Commissioners, historians, members of SF Planning Department. Tours offered as part of the program.
  • SF Heritage Annual Meeting – meeting room and tours of the building.
  • April 22, 2010 – Reception to celebrate the completion of the renovation project. Speakers: Anthea Hartig, National Trust for Historic Preservation and Charles Chase, preservation architect and (then) Executive Director of SF Heritage. SF Landmark Commissioners, SF Heritage staff and Board Members, Director, Office of National Trust, State Historic Resources Commissioners, historians, members of SF Planning Department. Tours offered as part of the program.
  • 2012 – Women’s Auxiliary of the Society of California Pioneers. Lecture and tours of the building.
  • October 2013 – National Docent Symposium, annual convention. (see attached notes of program remarks by Carol Ann Rogers and explanation of tours.
  • Ongoing: Through San Francisco City Guides (a non-profit sponsored by the SF Public Library) tours offered to the public. The Metropolitan Club is the only Club included in the tour that allows public entry. Title of the tour: Club Land – Architecture and Culture of San Francisco’s Grand Old Clubs.

Research and Archival Preservation

  • 2004 – Engaged historian Michael Corbett to research the architectural and social history of the Woman’s Athletic Club of San Francisco and to prepare nomination to the National Register of Historic Places.
  • Bound copies of National Register Nomination donated to California Historical Society, SF Heritage, San Francisco Public Library, Bancroft Library (University of California at Berkeley.)
  • Paid to rebind the original copy of the Woman’s Athletic Club Member Registry dating from 1917 (stored in Archives of Metropolitan Club.)
  • 2014 and ongoing – Engaged historian Michael Corbett to research and write the lives and work of architects Walter D. Bliss and William B. Faville (architects of 640 Sutter Street and other important landmark buildings in California); possible end products to include a manuscript for publication and/or a public lecture.
  • The 640 Heritage Preservation Foundation to acquired 30 historic images of the original Woman’s Athletic Club building at 640 Sutter Street, taken by famed photographer Gabriel Moulin.