In 1907, the University Club of Montreal was founded by a group of McGill University professors who were joined by a broad-based group of friends who wanted a place to socialize. They wanted a club with a more academic atmosphere than found in the several business-oriented clubs of Montreal. In order to join the UCM, one had to be a university graduate, although this rule was removed in 1973. The group flourished in the initial years, to the point that in December 1913, the club opened its own building on Mansfield Street, designed by founding member, Percy Nobbs, director of McGill’s School of Architecture. Nobbs integrated the coats of arms of the members’ international and Canadian Alma Maters into the stained-glass windows and plaster decoration of the building’s architecture.

Originally the club was intended only for male members, but women could accompany the men for dinner, or the wives of members could hold social events in rooms especially set aside for them. Women were finally given the right to be members in 1988.

Many men from the club served and died in both world wars, including founding member, Dr. John McCrae, a distinguished surgeon, military officer, poet, and war hero. He became internationally celebrated for his poem, In Flanders Field, composed in 1915 from the front lines of war, before he died in France in 1918. Two stained-glass windows adjacent to the former club’s interior main staircase were commissioned from Nobbs and record the names of those who served and those who fell in World War I.