Our History

A Century of Service and Sisterhood

Our clubhouse, dental clinic and the city library embody our legacy

For more than a century, the Coral Gables Woman’s Club and the city of Coral Gables have been inextricably linked. In 1923, as developer George E. Merrick sold lots for the City Beautiful he envisioned, 49 women from the Coral Gables Congregational Church began organizing a social and philanthropic organization dedicated to community well-being.

By the time Coral Gables incorporated on April 29, 1925, the women’s club had affiliated with Florida’s General Federation of Women’s Clubs and counted more than $300 in its treasury and 83 members. Merrick’s wife Eunice was a founding director.

In 1927, club members organized the city’s first lending library in what is now the city’s Douglas Entrance and, at George Merrick’s invitation, held their meetings at the Country Club of Coral Gables. Initially consisting of 300 books donated by their authors, the fledgling library laid the foundation for the bustling city library the club would host at their future clubhouse for decades.

In 1929, the club created a junior department, which formally become the Coral Gables Junior Woman’s Club in 1936. By then, the junior women had inaugurated Cabaret, a choreographed show in which members not only performed song and dance routines but built the sets and sewed the costumes.

The annual fundraisers, which continued for seven decades, were so successful that, in 1939, the juniors used the proceeds to establish a dental clinic for poor children in the office of the mayor of Coral Gables.

Except for a two-year hiatus during World War II, the club has operated the Coral Gables Children’s Dental Clinic ever since, providing millions of dollars’ worth of life-enhancing dental care to thousands of children who otherwise might never see a dentist.

Club members also raised $10,000 toward the cost of their now-iconic coral rock clubhouse at 1001 and 1009 E. Ponce de Leon Boulevard. Built on four city-owned lots from oolitic limestone mined from a local quarry, the building was the city’s first Depression-era Works Progress Administration project.

Officially dedicated in February 1937, the L-shaped building featured two wings, which prominent artists adorned with murals, sculptures, and friezes. Sculptor Robert Hume carved the four figures depicting the seasons of a woman’s life that grace the fountain in front of the north wing, as well as the sculptures of the robed woman and man, symbolizing learning, that flank the main entrance portal.

Although the city held the lease to the complex until 1950, the senior women occupied the north wing when the building opened. For more than three decades, the south wing housed the city’s ever-expanding library, which the clubs supervised until the city took over the library’s management in 1953.

Four years later, with $9,000 in proceeds from Cabaret, the junior club moved the dental clinic from the mayor’s office into a suite in the south wing. When the library outgrew its quarters and relocated to its own building on Segovia Street in 1969, the juniors moved into the south hall themselves, eventually building a larger annex for the dental clinic, where it remains today.

Due to soaring costs, Cabaret was discontinued in 2005. But revenue from clubhouse rentals and other fundraising galas, auctions, teas, and monthly Gringo Bingo games continue to support the dental clinic, and a myriad of other causes that promote education, health, the environment, civic welfare, and the arts and sciences.

In 2007, the junior and general women’s clubs merged, officially becoming the Coral Gables Woman’s Club. And in 2021, the club circled back to its roots, dedicating a Little Library outside the city’s original library to former member Janice Thomson, the late daughter of former club president Dorothy Thomson, who in 1985 became the city’s first female mayor.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990, the clubhouse remains one of the few examples of Great Depression-era Moderne style architecture in Florida, and the Coral Gables Woman’s Club remains the city’s most enduring civic and philanthropic organization—a legacy the club celebrated at its “Roaring ’20s” Centennial Gala on Dec. 2, 2023.