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Printed and handwritten Card Signed by W.L.Brown, August 25, 1892. “The Manhattan Club tender to Judge Samuel F. Hunt of Cinn [Cincinnati] the privileges of their Club House for two weeks.”

Colonel William L. Brown, publisher of the New York Daily News and a powerful New York politician, was a leading light of the club, the most elite social group in America for rich Democrats (until the 1896 nomination of William Jennings Bryan, when many members turned Republican). Holding court in a palatial mansion on Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, the Club had a reputation for gastronomic excess. One $100 a plate luncheon hosted by Colonel Brown for his friend Grover Cleveland included caviar, turtle soup, boiled codfish, cold quail in jelly and aspic de pate de foie gras, washed down with champagne, an 1870 Montrachet, an 1877 Chambertin Magnum, and an 1875 Mouton Rothschild, followed by liqueurs and cigars. The Club history claimed that at least a dozen new cocktails were born at its bar, most long forgotten, except for the most famous - which was, of course, the Manhattan.