IN A STRIKING BREAK from its typical Manhattan-centric provincialism (even more pronounced, in those days, than it is now), the New York Times gave over an entire two-and-a-half columns in the Style section of the March 10, 1977, edition to some very local news out of Philadelphia. Written, of all people, by Anna Quindlen—still twenty-five years before her Pulitzer—the story details the presumed final luncheon of the New Century Club, once a fixture of high society in the City of Brotherly Love and a force for women’s rights nationwide. The occasion coincided, ironically, with the hundredth