library. The University Club quickly outgrew the Caswell house and began planning improvements in 1881. The club's council first proposed extending the lease and building an annex on an adjacent vacant plot, but this failed. The council then proposed buying the house for $500,000 in May 1883, also unsuccessfully. Ultimately, the club signed a lease for Leonard Jerome's residence at 26th Street and Madison Avenue, the Jerome Mansion, in November 1883. The club was thus allowed to pay $22,500 a year for five years with the option for a five-year extension at $24,000 a year. The University Club bought some of the furniture from the house's previous occupant. The annual meeting of May 17, 1884, was held in the new clubhouse. The club built a kitchen on the roof, above the theater attached to the house. The house's ground floor had a cafe, billiard room, and bowling alleys, while the second floor had a lounge. There was a library on the mezzanine and, for the first time, bedrooms for members to sleep overnight. Some improvements to the house were postponed until 1886, when the theater was converted into a dining room and an elevator was installed to designs by C. C. Haight. Anderson retired as president of the club in 1888, and George Absalom Peters was elected as the club's new president. In the same year, the club leased the Jerome Mansion for another five years. At the annual meeting in 1889, the club's council established a fund for a permanent clubhouse building. James W. Alexander was elected as club president in 1891. The club had 1,884 members by 1893, and the Jerome Mansion was not large enough to fit all the members. The president was authorized to lease an adjacent house on Madison Avenue, owned by the Stokes family, but this never happened. In October 1893, the Jerome Mansion lease was extended five years, and around the same time, membership was increased to 2,100. Permanent clubhouse building By the mid-1890s, the University Club had no vacancies in its membership and hundreds of people on a waiting list to join. However, the Jerome Mansion was becoming too small to meet the club's needs. At the meeting of February 1896, a five-person committee was created to identify sites for a new clubhouse. The club had a dedicated clubhouse fund of $300,000. Planning and construction On May 4, 1896, the committee announced