Second Oakland social club building for sale

Faced with dwindling membership, The Twentieth Century Club has placed its four-story building up for sale, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Located at 4201 Bigelow Blvd., diagonally across Parkman Avenue from the Chevron Science Center, the Oakland social club was originally founded as a private women’s club in 1894.

Club President Joan Nilson told the Post-Gazette that members voted to close the building Dec. 31, but did not go into great detail about the reasons for the closure.

“I think we’ll get all of that information out,” Nilson said. “It’s premature for me to go into details.”

The club features numerous rooms for meetings, weddings and other events, as well as a weekly lecture series on Mondays. According to its website, the club’s Art Deco Ballroom is “one of the finest examples of the style” in the country.

The Twentieth Century Club is not the only Oakland social club to close in recent years — the Pittsburgh Athletic Association entered bankruptcy in 2017 before Shadyside developer Walnut Capital stepped in with a 2018 reorganization plan for the club’s building.

Pitt agreed in June to lease 30,000 square feet of the PAA building, at an annual cost of about $1.2 million. The 15-year agreement provides space for the Learning Research and Development Center, which is moving from its current location on O’Hara Street due to the construction of a new recreation center.