When William Butler decided to create a lunch club, he sought a place where the men who worked in and around the multiple financial institutions and law firms that clustered on and near Wall Street could mix business with expensive dining. He soon found several other attorneys who supported the idea of establishing a gathering place for their profession, and reached agreement with the Equitable Life Assurance Society to house the club on the fifth floor of its headquarters at 120 Broadway. In 1887, the club formally opened with 346 members and quickly attracted not only lawyers but also stockbrokers like Edward Shearson, accountants like A.L. Dickinson of Price, Waterhouse & Co., and other professionals in the financial district’s new skyscrapers. ... The new lunch clubs drew the interest of contemporary journalists, who described them to readers in magazine articles with titles like “Deals Across the Table,” chronicling the activities of the professionals who consolidated large industries and channeled millions in bonds towards such things as railroad construction. The “depressing spectacle of a prosperous man… at some rushing lunch-counter, gulping down a sandwich and a piece of pie” was a thing of the past, one article declared.