The Porcellian Club is an all-male final club at Harvard University, colloquially known as the Porc or the P.C. Its founding is traditionally dated to either 1791, when a group began meeting under the name "the Argonauts,"[, p. 171: source for 1791 origins as the "Argonauts" later named "The Pig Club", "The Gentlemen's Club" and finally "The Porcellian". "Small as the membership has been, the roll of graduates shows many of the most famous of the Sons of Harvard, including Wendell Phillips, Channing, Joseph Story, Edward Everett, Prescott, Adams, Palfrey, Charles Sumner, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell and John Lothrop Motley". Online at the Internet Archive] or 1794, the year of a roast pig dinner that formally established the club under its initial name, the "Pig Club."[ p. 89: "...Harvard's still-extant Porcellian Club, which arose out of a legendary dinner of roast pig (hence the club's name) in 1794 at Moore's Tavern. Unlike Phi, the Porcellian's motto, Dum Vivimus Vivamus, indicates that they were not beguiled by concerns academical or even literary, but, rather by pure conviviality.] The club's Epicureanism motto, Dum vivimus vivamus ("While we live, let us live"), and its emblem—a pig—reflect its origins. Members often wear golden pig motifs on watch chains or neckties adorned with pig-head symbols.[Sedgwick, John, "Brotherhood of the Pig", GQ: Gentlemen's Quarterly 58 (November 1988), p. 30, as quoted by ]Richard P. Horwitz (1998). 031221443X, Palgrave MacMillan. 031221443X
pp. 27-28: "My father was generally oblivious to the animal world, but he did have an unusual affection for pigs. Around our house…he had porcelain pigs, ceramic pigs, carved pigs, embroidered pigs, painted pigs.…They overran our living-room mantelpiece, swept over the tabletops, covered his bureau, popped up on his cuff links, watch chain and ties and even appeared on our drinking glasses and saltcellar.…Why all these pigs? Because my father was a Brother Porcellian…the pig is the club's emblem".[ NYSE Richard Whitney "had attended Groton and Harvard.…his clubs were the Links, the Turf, the Field, the Racquet and the Knickerbocker; from his watch chain there dangled the gold pig of Harvard's Porcellian".]
Regarded as Harvard’s "oldest and most prestigious" social club,[ "I…pulled up in front of the Porcellian or Sphinx or Onyx or whichever hotsy-totsy final club it was"] and is frequently cited by the university as "the most final of them all."
History
The Porcellian Club traces its origins to 1791, though its formal establishment is often linked to a roast pig dinner in 1794. According to a February 23, 1887, article in
The Harvard Crimson, the club emerged from a student prank involving a pig:
An 1891 article in the Cambridge Chronicle highlights key founding figures:
Symbols
The Porcellian Club's motto,
Dum vivimus vivamus ("While we live, let us live"), reflects its
Epicureanism ethos. Its primary symbol is a golden pig, which also serves as the club's mascot. Members, colloquially referred to as "Porkies,"
often incorporate pig motifs into accessories such as neckties, watch chains, or blazers.
Clubhouse
The Porcellian Club's clubhouse is located at 1324 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts, above the former store of clothier J. August. Designed by architect and club member William York Peters,
the building's entrance faces Harvard freshman dormitories and the Porcellian Gate (also known as McKean Gate), donated by the club in 1901. The gate, marking the entrance to
Harvard Yard, features a limestone carving of a boar's head.
Notably, Theodore Roosevelt brought his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt, to dine at the club during their undergraduate years.
Architecture and layout
An 1891 article in the
Cambridge Chronicle described the newly constructed clubhouse:
The enlargement of the club's library, and the fact of its growing postgraduate or honorary membership roll, compelled it from time to time to enlarge its accommodations. Finally, in 1881, it determined to tear down the old house where it had so long met, on Harvard street and build a new structure its site. The new structure is of brick, handsomely trimmed in stone, and rises to the height of four stories, with about seventy or eighty feet of frontage on Harvard street. Two large stores claim a part of the ground floor, but they do not encroach on the broad and handsome entrance to the club's apartments.
The three upper floors are used exclusively by the club. The first of them contains a large hall which opens both into the front and rear reception rooms and parlors, which, in turn, communicate. From each of these rooms a door leads to the library, which extends through from the front to the rear. On the second floor, in addition to a room over the library, there is a billiard hall in the front and a breakfast room in the rear with the kitchen over the main hall of the floor beneath. Nearly the whole of the top floor is taken up by a large banquet hall, vaulted by handsome rafters.
Cultural perception
Despite its exclusivity, critics like
Jeffrey Hart—a
National Review columnist,
Ronald Reagan speechwriter, and Dartmouth College professor—questioned the club's mystique. Hart (who never entered the club) remarked:
Notable features
A portrait titled
The Steward (Lewis of the Porcellian) by
Joseph DeCamp hangs in the clubhouse, depicting longtime steward George Washington Lewis. A 1929 obituary in
Time noted:
George Washington Lewis, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, for over 45 years the esteemed Negro steward of the Porcellian Club at Harvard College; in Cambridge, Massachusetts Ancient and most esoteric of Harvard clubs is Porcellian, founded in 1791.* An oil portrait of Steward Lewis hangs in the clubhouse. Steward Lewis had ten Porcellian pallbearers.
Historical significance
The Porcellian Club has played a notable role in Harvard's social history, particularly through its associations with prominent figures. Theodore Roosevelt and other members of the
Roosevelt family were inducted, but his distant cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt—then a Harvard sophomore and later a U.S. President—was not invited to join. Franklin instead joined the rival
Fly Club alongside his roommate; three of his sons later followed. According to relative Sheffield Cowles, Franklin reportedly described the rejection as "the greatest disappointment in his life," though this claim may be hyperbolic.
Similarly, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., excluded from the club due to his Catholic background, reportedly held lingering resentment. Biographer David Nasaw noted Kennedy's fixation on the snub: "For years later, Joe Kennedy remembered the day he didn't make the Porcellian Club…realizing that none of the Catholics he knew at Harvard had been selected."
Cultural Influence
A British 1870 travel book highlighted the club's prestige:
A notice of Harvard would be as incomplete without a reference to the Porcellian Club as a notice of Oxford or Cambridge would be in which the Union Debating Society held no place. This and the Hasty Pudding Club… are the two lions of Harvard. The Porcellian Club is hardly a place of resort for those who cultivate the intellect at the expense of the body. The list of active members is small, owing in part to the largeness of the annual subscription. The great desire of every student is to become a member of it…the doings of the club are shrouded in secrecy…All that can be said by a stranger who has been privileged to step behind the scenes is that the mysteries are rites which can be practised without much labor and yield a pleasure which is fraught with no unpleasant consequences.
The club's influence extended into Boston's elite institutions. Historians note that architect H. H. Richardson's selection to design Trinity Church—a landmark of American architecture—was bolstered by his Porcellian membership. As one historian observed:
The thirty-four-year-old possessed one great advantage over the other candidates: as a popular Harvard undergraduate he had been a member of several clubs, including the prestigious Porcellian; thus he needed no introduction to the rector, Phillips Brooks, or five of the eleven-man building committee—they were all fellow Porcellian members.
Membership
The Porcellian Club historically maintained exclusionary membership practices. A biography of
Norman Mailer notes that during his time at Harvard, "It would have been unthinkable... for a Jew to be invited to join one of the so-called final clubs like Porcellian, A.D. Club, Fly, or
Spee Club".
[ p. 23]
Demographic shifts
By the late 20th century, the influence of
at Harvard had waned. A 1986 survey noted that while other final clubs diversified—electing Jewish and Black presidents—the Porcellian admitted only occasional Jewish members and, in 1983, its first African American member, who had attended St. Paul's. This decision reportedly alarmed some alumni.
A 1994 Harvard Crimson article by Joseph Mathews observed evolving trends:
Prep school background, region, and legacy status do not appear to be the sole determinants of membership they may once have been, but... they remain factors.
As of 2016, the club remained all-male, defending "the value of single-gender institutions for men and women as a supplement and option to coeducational institutions."
Joseph McKean Gate
In 1901, the Joseph McKean Gate—a portal to
Harvard Yard—was erected directly opposite the Porcellian Clubhouse. A March 20, 1909, notice in
The Harvard Crimson announced:
A gate is to be erected at the entrance to the Yard between Wadsworth House and Boylston Hall. It is to be erected by members of the Porcellian Club in memory of Joseph McKean 1794, S.T.D., LL.D. Boylston Professor of Rhetoric, Oratory and Elocution, and also the founder of the Porcellian Club.
The gate prominently displays the Porcellian's symbol, a boar's head, carved in limestone above the central arch. It remains a prominent Harvard landmark, marking the boundary between Harvard Yard and Massachusetts Avenue.
Notable members
The Porcellian Club’s alumni include prominent figures in politics, literature, and academia. A 1929
Time obituary noted its roster featured "Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., Poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Nicholas Longworth, Poet James Russell Lowell, Richard Henry Dana Jr. (
Two Years Before the Mast), Novelist
Owen Wister, and John Jay Chapman." A 1940
Time article added:
The Pork...is very much a family affair. Upon its roster, generation after generation, appear the same proud Boston names—Adams, Ames, Amory, Cabot, Cushing, etc.
Selected notable members include:
-
Joseph Alsop (1932) – Journalist; co-author of The 168 Days (1938)
-
August Belmont Jr. (1875) – Financier; namesake of Belmont Park and the Belmont Stakes
-
Charles E. Bohlen (1927) – Diplomat; U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union
-
William Astor Chanler (1895) – U.S. Congressman from New York
[Thomas, Lately. The Astor Orphans: A Pride of Lions, W. Morrow, 1971. ]
-
John Jay Chapman (1884; L.L.D. 1887) – Essayist; translator of Dante Alighieri and Sophocles
-
Benjamin Robbins Curtis (1829) – Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
-
Richard Henry Dana Jr. – Author of Two Years Before the Mast
-
Edward Everett – U.S. Secretary of State; President of Harvard; Governor of Massachusetts
-
Hamilton Fish III (1910) – College football All-American; U.S. Congressman from New York
-
Miles Fisher – Film and television actor
-
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. – Author, poet; Harvard Medical School professor
-
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. – Associate Justice of the Supreme Court; Harvard Law School professor
-
William Henry Fitzhugh Lee (1858) – Confederate Major General
-
Henry Cabot Lodge – U.S. Senator from Massachusetts
-
Dan Sullivan – U.S. Senator from Alaska
-
James Russell Lowell – Poet; Harvard professor
-
Theodore Lyman (1858) – Union Army officer; U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts
-
George Gordon Meade (Honorary 1866) – Union Major General; victor of the Battle of Gettysburg
-
Paul Nitze – Diplomat; U.S. Secretary of the Navy; co-founder of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies
-
Wendell Phillips – Abolitionist leader
-
William Phillips – U.S. Ambassador to Italy
-
H. H. Richardson – Architect; designer of Trinity Church, Boston
-
Theodore Roosevelt – 26th U.S. President
-
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. – Brigadier General; Medal of Honor recipient
-
Leverett Saltonstall – Governor and U.S. Senator from Massachusetts
-
Louis Agassiz Shaw II – Socialite; subject of Robert Lowell's poem Waking in the Blue
[ p. 174: "After a stint on Bowditch Hall, where Robert Lowell immortalized Louis Agassiz Shaw II as 'Bobbie…'" Beam quotes two pages of "Walking in the Blue", apparently as an introduction to the book, just before Chapter I.][ (Review of Alex Beam's book, Gracefully Insane)]
-
Robert Gould Shaw (attended 1856–1859) – Colonel of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment
-
Joseph Story (1795) – Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
-
Charles Sumner (1830; L.L.D. 1834) – U.S. Senator from Massachusetts
-
Benjamin Ogle Tayloe (1814) – Diplomat; political activist
[Harvard University. Porcellian Club, Cambridge Publishing, Millard, Metcalf & Co., 1828]
-
Edward Thornton Tayloe – Diplomat; nominated U.S. Secretary of the Treasury (1841)
[Harvard University. Porcellian Club, Cambridge Publishing, Allen and Farnham, 1857]
-
Henry Constantine Wayne (1834) – Georgia Militia Major General
-
Richard Whitney (1911) – President of the New York Stock Exchange (1930–1935)
-
Cameron Winklevoss (2004) – Olympic rower; co-founder of ConnectU
-
Tyler Winklevoss (2004) – Olympic rower; co-founder of ConnectU
-
Grenville Lindall Winthrop – Art collector; benefactor of the Fogg Museum
-
Owen Wister (1882) – Author of The Virginian
-
John Bozman Kerr (1830) was a U.S. Congressman, representing the sixth district of the state of Maryland from 1849 until 1851. He also served as Chargé d'Affaires to Nicaragua.
See also
-
Harvard College social clubs
-
National Register of Historic Places listings in Cambridge, Massachusetts
External links
