The 100 YEAR CLUB OF THE WESTERN RESERVE (formerly 100 Year Club of Cleveland), which held its first meeting in 1953, is a voluntary organization that honors businesses and organizations in Northeastern Ohio that have existed for a century or more.
WILLIAM GANSON ROSE, author of Cleveland: The Making of a City (see Histories of Cleveland) and Curtis Lee Smith (1901-1996), president of the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce (now the Greater Cleveland Partnership) were the co-founders of the organization.
The Club began by using Rose's book to identify "...commerce and industrial concerns which had been in business for 100 or more years" as well as various charitable, cultural, and educational institutions in Greater Cleveland that had also existed for over a century. These agencies formed the initial membership of the club. Each year businesses and organizations which reached their centenary also became eligible for membership.
Initially the Club had several meetings a year, one of which served as the induction ceremony for new members. Throughout the 1970s and until 1988, the WESTERN RESERVE HISTORICAL SOCIETY hosted the annual induction meeting of the Club. The organization ceased holding regular annual meetings afterwards, but was reorganized and restarted in 1999 under the sponsorship of the Muldoon Center for Entrepreneurship of JOHN CARROLL UNIVERSITY. In 2011 the Muldoon Center began working cooperatively with the Western Reserve Historical Society on matters relating to the annual induction ceremony, which from 1999 through 2010 had been held at John Carroll. In 2012 the Club moved its induction ceremony to the Western Reserve Historical Society as the Society assumed responsibility for its operations. As of 2010, the Club had honored 213 companies and organizations which had reached their centenaries.
See also: One Hundred Year Club of the Western Reserve Inductees
View finding aid for the 100 Year Club of Cleveland Records, WRHS.