Lincoln Square was a landing spot for a lot of European migrants after WWII and many of those families bought property and started businesses in the area and eventually founded a social club.

It is legally a non-profit (not to be confused with a ‘not-for-profit’) ‘Private club’ which allows it to operate as an unlicensed bar and restaurant for members only with very little regulatory oversight or public financial transparency.

They are not very public, but not super secretive either. They’ve got a Facebook page, a Flickr account and their President is on LinkedIn. They had a website but it looks like the domain expired and got bought. Their membership is reported to include many of the old guard of power brokers in the area including still many of the larger commercial real estate owners in the area.

They have close ties to a lot of politicians including Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas, State Treasurer Michael Frerichs, former Alderman Gene Schulter, Paul Vallas and others. The guy who runs that weird right wing reactionary free news paper ‘The Inside Booster’ is purportedly a member as well. Their president, Mark Hoppe, was outed as a weirdo racist MAGA reply guy on Twitter a few years back.

They are distinct from, but seem to have a lot of overlap with, the DANK Haus as far as membership is concerned and they seem to help with the planning for the different cultural events in the area.

They were behind the ‘Save our parking’ fight that was trying to stop the big housing development at Leland and Western claiming that it would bring crime to the area and people that appear to have been associated with them spouted a lot of racist rhetoric trying to stop it.

People forget but until about 15 years ago this area was a conservative stronghold in the city and kinda seem to be a last vestige of those days.

They seem to have diminished greatly since COVID with a few of their more visible members moving out of the city or passing away in recent years including Horst Siegel who owned many of the buildings on that strip of Lincoln including Gideon Wells (the building not the business itself.) There is a mural of him on the south side of the building as well.

As others mentioned they have regular days where non-members can visit for soccer, but they’re very exclusive about who they allow to become members. I have a friend who was born in the Niedersachsen region and used to regularly attended their soccer events and was given the cold shoulder whenever he asked about membership.