Club 65

In its dossier of "evidence" against John Henry Faulk, AWARE characterized Club 65 as a favorite spot for pro-Communist affairs. It was a party hall owned and operated by the Communist-dominated Local 65, Wholesale and Warehouse Workers Union. It hosted a "working man's nightclub" and was also rented out for events to various left wing and union groups, not all of which were Communist. Many members of the People's Songs crowd performed there, lank- haired Vassar girls and Harvard dropouts singing about working on the railroad. The hall had a bar and food counter. It was the site of Saturday night dances,

The club was located on the tenth floor of 13 Astor Place, a building that had housed the Mercantile Library until 1932. The building had its own entrance to the Astor Place subway station until the early 1940s when Local 65 acquired ithe building, which also housed other unions. Club 65 began operation in 1943.

You weren't going to find the performers at Club 65 listed in the New Yorker nightclub listings, although some names were among them. A search of The Times for 1946 turned up only one mention of Club 65, actually of its bookstore. It was noted in an ad as one the venues where tickets could be purchased for the Russian Stars of Opera concert Sunday, March 31 at Hunter College Assembly Hall. The concert was sponsored by the American-Russian Fraternal Society of the International Workers Order to benefit Soviet war orphans. The IWO was an alliance of ethnic organizations spun-off from the Workmen's Circle, founded by the Socialists earlier in the century. The IWO provided, among other things, low cost insurance and medical and dental clinics to members. After a bitter power struggle in the twenties, the Communists took it over. By the early postwar years it reached a peak membership of 200,000. Under the Communists, the IWO became a Stalinist propaganda tool and activist organization that regularly turned out large numbers for Party rallies and protests. This proved to be its undoing. Although the IWO was fiscally sound, the New York State Insurance Department closed down its insurance operations in 1954, ruling that IWO's political activities violated state insurance regulations and put its policy holders at risk. Interesting how radical groups drum up membership by providing much needed social services. Interesting how conservatives react not by the free market practice of offering similar alternatives but by using big government to shut down the operations.