On Campus
At 50, historic Rutgers Club 'jazzes' up its tradition and gourmet fare
There are decades of history packed inside the Rutgers Club, an inconspicuous house at the end of College Avenue, where faded photographs of football icons and portraits of college presidents share space on the walls with pictures of such modern-day luminaries as the Rutgers women’s basketball team.
The club was founded 50 years ago by graduates looking for a place to gather on campus for festive meals and events like game-day parties, as well as for faculty get-togethers. Today, it welcomes a broader campus constituency, providing a singular space for baseball-capped undergraduates to rub elbows with living history in the form of visiting alumni.
“The Rutgers Club was an outgrowth of the enthusiastic loyalty for the college, for the old Rutgers,” said William Bauer, Class of ’42, the oldest living past president of the club and a longtime professor in the School of Engineering. He recalls the club’s opening night in the fall of 1957, when alumni volunteered in droves, “even bartending,” to get the new facility off the ground.
Initially called the Rutgers Alumni-Faculty Club, the establishment acquired a devoted local following early on, quickly expanding its clientele. One prominent regular, Mason Gross, who was appointed president of the university two years after the club’s founding, walked there every day to enjoy a two-martini lunch. “Everyone knew his route to the Rutgers Club, and so they could always waylay him,” said Todd Hunt, a retired communication professor and the club’s program chair.
Gross was reportedly so dismayed at the disruption caused by a fire in 1970 that “we put up plastic sheeting to cover the burned sections,” to keep the place open, recalls Bauer, who seized the opportunity to reconfigure the club, creating a larger dining area.
And nonmembers were able to procure meals and conversation there on occasion. There was the time Millicent Fenwick, the colorful New Jersey congresswoman immortalized as Lacey Davenport in the comic strip Doonesbury popped in one night after realizing that she had confused the day of a planned talk on campus. She was not a member, but hoped to sup anyway.
“She was already seated – smoking her pipe,” Bauer recalled. “Of course we let her stay.”
It is this historical ambiance, as well as what is arguably gourmet fare, that draws Rutgers undergraduates today.
“The athletic clubs like to bring prospective students here. They know these kids are seeing other campuses with years and years of tradition, and this is proof of tradition at Rutgers with all of the sports memorabilia on the walls,” said Hunt.
Undergraduate foodies are delighted to partake as well. Their meal cards allow them to eat at the club on Monday and Thursday nights, and for an extra $2, they can devour dinners prepared by veteran chefs trained at such noted local spots as The Frog and Peach.
But they must do so politely. Students are expected to behave decorously while dining at the club.
“They can’t plunk a pitcher of beer down on the table,” notes manager Ray Martin. “I see it as an opportunity for students to mature at the university.”
“I went as often as I could. The food is really good,” notes an appreciative Brian Sherry, a senior majoring in exercise science and a waiter at the club, of his early days on campus. When he became a resident adviser his sophomore year, he started taking groups of his residents to sample.
“It’s a way for students to get a glimpse of the school’s history,” he said, adding that he is drawn by more than food. “So many different organizations from the school hold events there, and for me, it’s a way to meet people and to network.”
Martin, who has managed the club for the past 13 years and is responsible for expanding its offerings considerably, describes juggling the club’s many constituencies as a balancing act – but he says it’s a fun one.
He puts on jazz evenings, parties for events like Mardi Gras and St. Patrick’s Day, and Cuban and African nights with representative cuisine. Throughout the year, he makes liberal use of the talent at the nearby Mason Gross School of the Arts, procuring violinists to stroll about the dining room and opera singers to belt out arias between courses. The famous, New Jersey-based jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli appears regularly at the club.
“There are so many resources here. It’s like being a kid in a candy shop,” he said with a laugh.
He has even enticed celebrated graduates such as jazz singer Jeanie Bryson, ’81, the daughter of bebop legend Dizzy Gillespie, to perform at the club.
For Bryson, who is perhaps better known locally as the granddaughter of Vernon Bryson, a microbiologist at Rutgers for a quarter of a century, singing at the club feels in some ways “like going back to where I started.”
“The first couple of times I played there, people told me they remembered my grandfather so well. Most people talk about my father, and it was so wonderful to have people talk about my grandfather because he really raised me,” she said.
Lauren Stevenson joined the club as a hostess, and then worked in the kitchen, found a career – and, in many ways, a family – at the Rutgers Club. A recent graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, she is one of the touted chefs in the club’s kitchen.
“I had no interest in the field of hospitality as an undergraduate. I was a criminal justice major, but I just enjoyed the environment,” said Stevenson, a 2005 Douglass College graduate, who now speaks enthusiastically about preparing saffron butter sauces and pomegranate reductions.
Stevenson returned to the club after a stint at a restaurant in the city.
“I found it formulaic,” she said. “At the club, it’s more creative. And it’s close knit as well. You have students working here, and the alumni who come want to know what the students are doing. The students of course want to know what the alumni are doing, and some have even found internships this way. When people come here they usually stay until the end of college because it’s like a family.’’
The Rutgers Club is run by the university’s Dining Services, but governed by an executive committee. Its membership includes more than 2000 alumni, faculty, staff, and friends of Rutgers. Visitors are allowed to eat at the club, but only members and their guests can order alcoholic drinks or book private rooms. Members have access to more than 100 university clubs throughout the world under reciprocal agreements with the Rutgers Club.
For more information, visit the club’s website.