"It's emotional after all these years," said Rudy Galvan, 55, who tended bar at the club for 33 years. "The members, I've known some of these people since I (came) here."

Members and staff offer a handful of reasons for the club's closing — the bad economy, nonexistent financing for a needed remodel and disruptive construction on Wacker Drive.

But the Tower Club's future was likely determined by changing times, shifting social norms and the diminished role alcohol plays in the workday.

"It used to be different. People used to drink a lot. They didn't care if their boss was at the next table," Galvan said, pouring a Wild Turkey on the rocks. "It made a client feel better and at home, get them to open up and talk about their business."

Now business people are more likely to order iced tea with lunch and go out for drinks after work, he said. A few of the club's younger members wondered why there wasn't a more lively after-work cocktail hour.

"They say, 'Rudy, where's the action?' and I say it's a business club where people come to do business."

Last February a membership drive boosted the dues-paying rolls from 170 to 240, but that was a far cry from the 300 to 350 people the club served daily when Galvan started as a busboy in 1974. It was determined the club wasn't sustainable, said general manager Rick Kroner, who also runs the Metropolitan Club.

"The culture has changed. The younger generation is more casual," Kroner said. "Nowadays, if all you do is provide a place to get lunch, there's too many great restaurants in Chicago. Why would you pay (membership) dues?"

It didn't used to be that way.

The Tower Club was initially known as the Electric Club, founded in 1916 by opera enthusiast Samuel Insull, who established Commonwealth Edison and, according to legend, was the inspiration for Monopoly character Rich Uncle Pennybags. The club, located at North Dearborn Street and West Calhoun Place, was originally an elite fellowship for titans of the electrical industry.

After Insull commissioned the building of the Civic Opera House, the club moved there in 1929. But the Electric Club nearly closed during the Great Depression, which put the organization deeply in debt and bankrupted Insull. It rebounded in the late 1930s and '40s, diversified its membership and rose to wider prominence. In 1952 the name was changed to the Tower Club.

The club was ranked an exclusive organization "for the young man on his way up," as a 1962 Tribune story put it. And cocktail parties at the club have feted well-to-do locals, Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, and ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov. Women were allowed to join in the 1970s, said Mynor Ochoa, the service director.

Friday, longtime member Peter Barrett said he joined Tower Club in the '70s but quit in the mid-'80s to join the Metropolitan Club, in the current-day Willis Tower. There he earned a bronze plaque as a charter member, but he never felt completely at home, so he left.

"It didn't have the ambience, the style or the staff," Barrett, a portfolio manager, said of his decision to rejoin the Tower Club.

Regulars came to the bar to say goodbye to Galvan, who does not have another job lined up.

"It's so sad. Rudy (Galvan) is the only one who knows how long we've been coming here," said Norma Rowland, a member since the 1980s, along with her husband, Brad, who was a member of the 1951Chicago Bears. "He knows what everybody drinks," she said. "He knows what everybody likes. He knows all of us — and he actually likes us."

Her husband growled: "You realize this damn building is as old as me?"