Howard, now 60, has vivid memories of his boyhood years, when, instead of housing college students, the three-story building at 1517 W. Girard Ave. was home to the Pyramid Club, a social and cultural haven for African-American professionals in a segregated rowhouse city.
"All I saw was the beauty," Howard recalled of the clubhouse, where his father, the prominent artist Humbert L. Howard, served as head of the committee of fine arts and his mother, Beatrice, was the club's secretary.
During the Pyramid Club's heyday, its membership rolls were a Who's Who of Philadelphia, and its guests included scores of nationally known names like Duke Ellington, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb.
The all-male club was founded in 1937, in the ashes of the Great Depression, by Walter F. Jerrick, a physician who practiced at his South Philadelphia home. He and a handful of African-American doctors, lawyers and businessmen met for two years in the basement of the Christian Street YMCA.
Their mission, according to one newspaper, was to foster the "cultural, civic, and social advancement of Negroes in Philadelphia." The membership fee was $120, and monthly dues were $2.40.
In 1940, membership having swelled to 200, the club moved to 1517 Girard Ave. and soon thereafter bought the gracious building outright.
Its interior was lavish: pale walls, white molding, gilt trim. A handsome hostess greeted members at the door, and an attendant checked their coats and hats.
The elegant dining room (better than any four-star restaurant, David Howard swears) was illuminated by a chandelier, and featured white tablecloths, fine china and a decorative fireplace.
In the basement, men crowded around the radio, cocktails in hand, to catch a Joe Louis fight or Phillies game. On the fourth floor, around the pool table, they socialized, networked and brokered deals.
