Victorian London - Entertainment and Recreation - Clubs - United Service Club

UNITED SERVICE CLUB, at the corner of PALL MALL and the opening into St. JAMES'S PARK, erected 1826, by John Nash, architect. This is still considered to be one of the most commodious of all the London Club Houses.

Peter Cunningham, Hand-Book of London, 1850

UNITED SERVICES CLUB, 116 Pall Mall, was first built in 1829, by Nash, and underwent extensive alterations in 1858. Its members are composed of officers of the highest rank of the army, navy, and militia services. The number of members is limited to 2000. Entrance fee,  31l. 10s.; annual subscription, 6l.

Cruchley's London in 1865 : A Handbook for Strangers, 1865

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United Service Club, Pall Mall—For officers not under the rank of commander in the navy, or major in the army, or retired officers who have held those ranks. In addition to these, “all such officers who have been or may be in charge of any of the following civil departments at home or abroad, viz. : chaplain, commissary, paymaster, directors. general of the medical department of the army and navy, as well as the retired inspectors-general (who have served in that rank), and surgeons-general of the army, and inspectors-general of hospitals and fleets of the navy, the treasurers of the club, the three surgeons-major of the Guards, and the principal veterinary surgeon, and such field-officers in the fencibles, militias, and volunteer corps in the British colonies as may have rendered services to this country,” may be invited by the committee as visitors for any period not exceeding three months at a time, Election by ballot, fifty members at least to vote. Each candidate must have at least fifty votes to constitute his election, and one black ball in ten excludes. “Admission money,” £40 ; subscription, £7, beginning with the second year.

Charles Dickens (Jr.), Dickens's Dictionary of London, 1879

Victorian London - Publications - History - The Queen's London : a Pictorial and Descriptive Record of the Streets, Buildings, Parks and Scenery of the Great Metropolis, 1896 - The United Service Club

The United Service Club - photograph

THE UNITED SERVICE CLUB.

This Club, which occupies the corner of Waterloo Place, and is also numbered 116 and 117, Pall Mall, has a limited membership of 1,600 persons, most of whom are combatant senior officers, both military and naval. To the left of our picture Regent Street begins, and just visible in the middle of that Street are the figures of guardsmen which form part of Bells striking monument to over two thousand officers and soldiers of the Guards who perished in the Crimean Campaign, Half hidden by the colonnade which formerly flanked the south side of Her Majesty's Opera house, razed to the ground in 1893, is the dome of the National Gallery, and the graceful spire to the right is that of the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.