The posh Yale Club in Midtown is fast becoming a cheesy wedding hall, with old-money members complaining of steady invasions of crowds from such lowbrow places as The Bronx.
“It’s crappy,” said a woman who insisted The Post identify her only as “Mrs. Harrison DeSilver.”
“I just want to put my feet up here, but instead, weddings are being shipped down from The Bronx,” groused DeSilver, a member for 50 years.
“On the weekends, it just gets ridiculous.”
DeSilver said the majority of the weddings at the club seem to involve people from The Bronx.
Another member complained that so many guests are using the club lately that dues payers sometimes can’t get overnight rooms, which the club offers at $215 a night, as opposed to $325 for nonmembers.
And those who do manage to land a room then find that the crowds are too large for them to comfortably use the gym, swimming pools or other amenities, the member said.
The club’s Web site boasts that it has provided “an intimate oasis in the heart of Manhattan since 1897.” But that glory is in the past now, members gripe.
“In recent years, the club has become more like a hotel than the private club it is chartered to be,” sniffed one.
The flood of weddings and the practice of renting out rooms to the public have become so prevalent that the situation has sparked an investigation of the club by the Internal Revenue Service, one member said.
At the heart of the probe is an IRS requirement that the club reserve 70 percent of its 138 guest rooms for members in order to maintain its tax-exempt status, said the member. He says it is not doing so.
An IRS spokesman yesterday refused to say whether the agency was investigating.
According to the club’s most recent tax filings, gross revenues for “public use of the club facilities” skyrocketed from $4.2 million in 2004 to almost $5.4 million two years later.
The manager of the Yale Club declined to comment.
Additional reporting by Richard Johnson