The North End Women's Club

This early women’s organization was founded in Edgewater in 1897. Its earliest members lived in Edgewater along the lake shore. The first meetings of the group were held in the Casino Club a building at Winthrop and Hollywood, which was just a two lane street in the early days. The Casino Club was changed into the Edgewater Country Club. It was not a country club in the sense of having a golf course; it was a building with wide porches and it was open for use only during the summer months, according to some neighbors recollections.

Some years later, the club met at the home at the northwest corner of Granville and Sheridan. That home now belongs to Sacred Heart Schools. The women’s club has since changed their meeting place to the Granville Avenue United Methodist Church at the corner of Granville and Lakewood. Here the ladies gather each month and socialize and play cards. After celebrating their 100th anniversary in 1997, some of the members got interested in the history of the club and its founding days. They discovered in storage a wonderful archive of minutes and photos. Now Carolyn Cordes and Mary Sand have taken up the challenge of organizing the collection and preserving it for Edgewater history.

In September, they invited the Edgewater Historical Society to receive a gift of the archives. We now have at our museum the ceremonial gavel of the organization from its one hundred year anniversary. On Saturday, December 4, 2004, we received the first boxes of the archival material.

On December 21st, we received the remainder of the collection.