Founded on a site where Washington supposedly camped (the accuracy of this has since been refuted,) the Colonial Club was nominally aimed at preserving artifacts and apocrypha from the Colonial and Revolutionary periods. It had also had a secondary purpose: to fill a club sized void. Most of the men's clubs in Manhattan were much further downtown. The Colonial Club (originally chartered as the Occidental Club) was founded by the wealthy businessmen who had moved up to the Upper West Side and found themselves far from their favorite haunts. Fittingly designed by Henry F. Kilburn in the colonial style, the Club provided its members with plenty of amenities. The club had a cafe, a bowling alley, billiard rooms, a restaurant, ample wine cellars, reception rooms, and ballrooms. Unlike its many contemporaries, it allowed women entry, and their entrance was a graceful as that of the men's.

Opening in 1892, the club did not last long. Though it held many a lavish party and seemed to be used thoroughly by its members, its distance from the heart of the city sunk its hopes. Floundering financially and unable to afford its clubhouse, the Colonial Club folded, and, in 1902, it was sold at auction. The interior was broken up and converted into office spaces. Some of the ornament from the outside was stripped as its street-facing facade was turned into storefronts. However, much of the old Colonial Club remained for the next century. In 2006, it was stripped of all of its surviving detail and its facade was replaced by aluminum and glass.