Several likely apocryphal stories survive to explain the origins of the name of the Tough Club. In one, the group—which was organized on November 10, 1865—was first called the "Topf Club" because it met in a billiard room and café run by George Topf at the corner of Hudson and West 10th Streets in Greenwich Village. ("Trow's New York City Directory . . . For the Year Ending May 1, 1865," lists a man by that name, whose business was "beer" at 145 [now 247] West 10th Street and who lived at 512 Hudson Street.) Another has it that the organization took its name from the German word for cooking pot, "topf," a nod to the giant cauldron the club owned and used to make chowder for its functions well into the twentieth century. (Pictured in the New York Times on October 15, 1960, the cauldron was variously described as holding between fifty and 120 gallons.) While one account places the switch from "Topf" to "Tough" a few months after the club's founding, another says that in 1873 a printer mistakenly produced thousands of sheets of stationery with the club name spelled "Tough" instead of "Topf." Rather than redo the order, the club simply adopted the wrong name, under which it was incorporated on June 29, 1896. (Some online sources refer to the organization as the "Tammany Tough Club," a name by which it was never known.)

The objects of the males-only Tough Club (wives were called "Toughettes"), as laid out in its by-laws, were "to inculcate loyal friendship, goodwill and social congeniality among its members; to promote their welfare, happiness and good fellowship; to provide, advance and maintain social and recreative entertainment for their welfare and enjoyment; to aid, succor and befriend the members of the Club in the time of need and distress; to maintain funds for the purpose of aiding, befriending and assisting the members of this Club in any manner deemed advisable, and to provide, keep and maintain a Benevolent or Mortuary Fund, for those who wish to participate." The club's motto—"Bend but never break"—was more in line with toughness than with chowder pots, but food and general merry-making seemed high priorities for the Brother Toughs (as they dubbed themselves), whose "outings, beefsteaks, clambakes, chowder parties, stag hunts, balls and get-togethers" filled the social calendar.

Membership was limited to 500, and over the years attracted notables from varied fields, like boxer Gene Tunney and entertainer George M. Cohan. Although its rules prohibited partisan politics, the Tough Club counted as members New York's Governor Al Smith and several New York City mayors, among them Jimmy Walker, Fiorello La Guardia, and Robert F. Wagner Jr. The New York Times reported on February 15, 1962 that Mayor Wagner was examining the policies of clubs to which he belonged, and expected to quit any that discriminated. In response, the Tough Club noted their "lack of Negro members and applicants, but said they had no restrictive policies." That statement diverged from the club's published by-laws, which offered membership to "any white male person" who was "a citizen of the United States, of good moral character and repute, whose health [was] in good condition, over the age of twenty-one (21) years." (In 1993 a proposed revision of the by-laws eliminated the phrase "white male," but it is unknown if the change was adopted. See Box 2, Folder 15.)

The Tough Club had several headquarters in its early decades before settling in its own meeting rooms at 80 Bedford Street. On February 1, 1893 it moved to 27 Grove Street, where it remained until November 8, 1912. On that date the club first occupied its final home, a four-story rowhouse at 243 West 14th Street, which it had purchased the previous year. In 1986, after more than seven decades, the club sold the building in an effort to increase capital. It retained a 99-year lease for the ground floor and basement at $1.00 per year, but a general fading of interest among its dwindling membership led the Tough Club to dissolve and distribute its assets in 1996-1997.

[This note is based largely on Tough Club histories (Box 2, Folder 4), its constitution and by-laws (Box 2, Folder 6), and other documents in the present collection.]