San Jose Woman’s Club celebrating 130th anniversary in style – The Mercury News

When you get to be a certain age, every birthday is cause for a celebration, right? Well, the same holds true for organizations like the San Jose Woman’s Club, which will hold a free community celebration Thursday for its 130th anniversary at its historic downtown clubhouse. As the tale goes, the club was born in December 1894 when nine women — described as “public spirited” in a 1929 newspaper article — gathered at the downtown studio of Fannie Estabrook. San Jose historian April Halberstadt, who has been a member of the club since 1995, says women’s clubs proliferated in the era, when two of the big topics of discussion were women’s suffrage and Prohibition. And there were definitely points of disagreement. “There was a misconception that all women wanted the vote and would hold hands and sing songs. Those women were considered too radical at the time,” said Halberstadt, who served as the club’s president in 2009-11. “How do you get people with divergent ideas together? Where is neutral territory?” An exterior view of the historic clubhouse of the San Jose Woman’s Club is seen on Friday, May 16, 2025, in San Jose, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group) 1
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