thank you very much for joining is what i'm delighted to say today we're going to be talking about the present day club here in princeton and i have two wonderful guests and susan kapoor is president of the of the club and our editor head of the newspaper is now waiting so we're pretty lucky i think and it hit the pretty day clubs just have a huge brain invasion and everybody is you're excited about it and so we thought we should tell more people and therefore here we are and i'd love to begin this by asking about the name and tell us a little bit about the history with it how old it is and how many members you have and  women at that point did not have the opportunities of education adult education these were educated women but once they were past their schooling they really were expected same time and they thought about what they wanted to do and they decided that indeed a club for women was needed in princeton and it would be they wanted to create the intellectual and social center of thought and action for women in princeton and so they created the present day club because they wanted to keep up with the events of the present day and  i mean unbelievable that's just great so now we have this beautiful person take up right on the corner of library place and to fix that's right and they've just had this wonderful renovation and we have a couple of photographs to show which would be great what you mean about the membership now how many people would you say think we have three hundred ten men active members right now both they come from varied backgrounds most unlike the original ladies of the club who were mistresses of their home and did not work most of our members who work more have had a careers we tend to attract women who are true either who are at a different point in their life their children now have left home and the last child is on their way to college and all that woman social network had been around the school the soccer club and the travel and then suddenly her social network is gone and present day club offers a ready made social network of women who are i was invited to the present day club and i have met the most marvelous women it's a place where yours you can your is your social women women are self or relationship driven and women like relationships and menu this is what we offer relationships and we also offer education so that we can examine the the new ideas and concepts of the time and we do it in a social setting and so that  describes our membership i think wonderful i would agree i had always heard about the present day club when i first moved to princeton about twenty years ago but only recently was at the point where it made sense that i wanted to expand my local relationships with connections and through a couple of conversations with people who knew people who were members  i got invited to and attend a luncheon and i was absolutely flabbergasted at the a level of intellectual curiosity and sophistication which sort of sounds like i was expecting just ladies who lunch but i knew i wasn't prepared for the the high degree of shark question and probing questions to the speakers then when i joined my first thought was oh i'll go now have a lunch when i think i might enjoy it and then i realized that i was missing out on so many events that even though i might not have initially thought that they would be of interest actually knocked my socks off and now i just simply have a blanket reservation there for just about anything and everything unless i know i'm not going to be in  town and i have never been disappointed when it's wonderful to see the nice thing about faith is that it it shows things that you wouldn't think you'd ever be interested in exactly i'll give you an example seeds in the colonial era when i saw that already i was like oh nothing so interesting about how they brought seeds from england and how they're the horticulture developed in the colonies and who would have and the other thing that is so impressive is that you never know who you're going to be seated next to and just in the course of conversation you all will suddenly have the woman next to you say well when i was in istanbul ataturk said to me and you say you sort of take a breath and you do the mental calculation of how old is this lady who certainly doesn't look at it and what on earth she doing at a party talking to this in and see what's going on is always very rewarding and different artists now this or they are just have heard of or new so that's been a reward and then and your is over you're looking at but i think it's important to and he's deadly attractive and he has a more workable wonderful things to say it tell me how you have lunch and when every wednesday every wind shades lunch is served at twelve thirty seven this people get their twelve between twelve and twelve thirty and every wednesday we have lunch and after every lunch we have a speaker but otherwise it's an open seating and you may sit next to a lawyer one week a physician the next week an artist the next week and they're wonderful interesting women and that's that's the core of of course you know is interest in women i think it's wonderful and it's absolutely wonderful what's great one hundred nineteen years going strong six generations going on a seventh i'll come to the president club because one you will be absolutely riveted by the conversation and there are trips to the theater  great so the depression day club does have trips into new york philadelphia where he was originally member has an internet connection with the places that we go right so you might get a chance to see things that other people american revolution lower new york and it with places that you've walked past a million times and he was telling us stories of at this place this is where so in so resign from washington's cabinet and this is where the immigrants came in and tassel garden not so much we islands but ellis island but castle garden is where most of them came in and he created this whole thing and those are things that you wouldn't do by yourself for and i think the ingenuity of the committee that have the contacts to get these trips planned get the tickets for at any rate does little bit about the renovation i think people would find that interesting because it's been going on now for a little while and so here you go and borrow it for our house w home in nineteen thirty the ladies were getting quite independent at that point decided they would buy by their own club house they looked at thirty properties in the dead of winter as we know in the history with very cold and they came upon this house and its virtue was that it had a very big backyard and so they purchased the house in one nine hundred thirty and then when about house has been added to and modified over the years there was a kitchen at it and there are many modifications but the house itself the off the whole house and never really been looked at and over the the house obviously needed huge amount of work but the most most urgent was on the outside the outside and the lobe of the building the steadman portion of the ballroom portion which is one hundred thirty but it marvelous craftsman and we made a decision early on that we would restore the house we wouldn't replace things if they could possibly be restored and these marvelous workman went to work on on her and they took it down to the natural wood and in that charles stedman had and company had hammered there and the wood was pristine when that layers and layers of paint were gone  the wood was magnificent nothing wrong with it there were problems in where there were gutters and where there had been leaks but the basic structure of the house was terrific and they say they took it tragedy hit somebody had been hurt so luckily it was just done at the same time the restoration of the windows very interesting those windows are as tight as any stor window you can buy really we don't it's they are amazing they game the sound is it is really suppressed they're tight the original window panes are still there all  wavy but they are absolutely the original windows and what couldn't be salvaged was absolutely we produced it to be to look like it's original but it was a big project window wells had to be dug out the grading had to be changed because of flooding in the basement the old charles steadman basement and we had to add insulation and it but finally it was a better than a year to do the outside envelope of the house and then we decided to do the windows which were in terrible shape of the ball over so we added that on last may with the debut of the house and all of the balloon force taken away that they voted that this was something as you know massive an undertaking as it was it meant we're here to stay we're we're going to be here for the next generations if we're six and seven generations and you know ten or eleven can you know that they've got a house that it's going to be there for certainly the forseeable future as far as we can tell and and it's very far the university who was generous to us the ladies initially met in university meeting rooms which they were very generous about and we're part of the history and but we speak with a feminine voice  does is she'll she'll analyze whether something can be salvaged because why not and i had the opportunity to talk with heard at length about  just restoration architecture and when you realize that the old cut of boards is more substantial the all ceiling mechanisms for windows is tighter when the weaves mean your factory has gotten slightly sloppy the tolerances are ever so much looser than they did back when when craftsman or hand crafting things actually so pretty and the inside we had grapes covering things and when they were taken down it was beautiful would work there so we have put any window treatments up we just look at the beautiful wood and look at it and those  put up in the stump and yeah the little children in it and i don't know i think it's all of this helps to preserve prints and make it a little more stable in the sense rather me just pull down and build something brand new that's not necessarily the case there are tear down and we know that and sometimes for good reason but then take take care of this in this town that was introduced to dancing at the present a club for years the present day club was the on saturdays they were dance lessons for young gentlemen and ladies  and we just recently replaced our sound system this week as a matter of fact and we really needed assistance because we didn't know what to look for and one of the members  much but he walked and he said you know my mom was a fifty year member of this club and all sound i when i was ten eleven and twelve we're here every saturday learning today library place i read that that and he did i just do the architect who worked on that in the past couple of years and he was saying that he had read all the instructions that would ruin had given to you the architect all and the size of the writings you said was really very interesting and there was and now it's just catty corner from your building and i spewed a sleeve restored i think stedman but i could be mistaken but i think he built in princeton from way eight hundred thirty huge huge well this is just been wonderful i can't thank you all enough for coming and hearing this because it is our history and we are a connect and we're trying to connect everything together and you're next week and we will term you ok thank you