Call it a moveable feast: The Coffee House, a venerable Midtown Manhattan club where writers and cultural figures gather, has pulled up stakes and is in the process of settling a block south, at 20 W. 44th St., amid Club Row — across from the Harvard Club and the New York Yacht Club, and near the Penn Club.

After facing uncertainty over its lease at 70 W. 45th St., where it was located for almost 90 years, this oasis has decided to stay in the neighborhood.

Never heard of this articulate lot? Over the years, its members have included Robert Benchley, Douglas Fairbanks, Edmund Wilson, Walter Lippmann, Hart Crane, John Steinbeck, Walker Evans, and Charles Addams. Current membership, which numbers a few hundred, includes New Yorker writer Roger Angell and cartoonists James Stevenson and Frank Modell, among many others.

“This is the most attractive quarters the Coffee House has ever had. I think we can say that without hesitation,” Life magazine photographer Bill Ray, who has been a club member since 1971, said. “I think the consensus among the members is that this space is far more efficient and at the same time more gracious,” a public relations executive, Peter Cullum, who has been a member since the early 1980s, said.

Photos of deceased members adorn the walls, including some taken by Mr. Ray: theater director Garson Kanin (“Funny Girl”), director Michael Powell (“The Red Shoes”), and sportswriter Heywood Hale Broun. Mr. Ray said the idea of hanging a photo of author and raconteur Cleveland Amory (“Who Killed Society?”) was vetoed because Amory apparently hadn’t paid a bar bill.

The club’s spacious new residency comprises two large rooms atop the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, founded in 1785 to provide educational and cultural services to families of skilled craftsmen. An elevator carries members to the sixth floor of the neo-classical Midtown structure with limestone-clad, yellow roman brick and terra cotta façade.

Upon entering, one sees a book-lined wall and a Maxfield Parrish bulletin board holding club news.

Known for its collegial atmosphere and informality, the Coffee House has but six rules: “No officers, No charge accounts, No liveries, No tips, No set speeches, No Rules.” A charming custom is that members need not introduce themselves, as everyone is presumed to already know one another.

A key to the club is the lively conversation as members hold forth at a long common table. “You never know who’s going to show up,” Mr. Ray said, “and some days it’s simply magic.”

“It has a catalytic effect,” Mr. Cullum said. “At a long table, you’re encouraged by yourself to engage in conversation.”

Early last century, the club met at Café Lafayette, Oscar and Billy’s Chop House, Luchow’s, and the Knickerbocker Hotel before settling in for 67 years at the Hotel Seymour at 54 W. 45th St. When the hotel was demolished, the club moved down the street in 1983 to 70 W. 45th St. The founders, Frank Crowninshield and Rawlins Cottenet, were Knickerbocker Club members who sought in 1914 to found a dining club that “had no sympathy with business or wealth or with such things that business and wealth produced or implied.” They initially called themselves “The Foes of Finance.” The atmosphere is a modern equivalent to Dr. Johnson’s London.

The club pondered moving elsewhere, such as to Club Quarters on 45th Street, the Women’s National Republican Club on West 51st Street, and the Players on Gramercy Park. Regarding the latter, some feared a diminution of the club’s identity that could come from living within another club that had a strong personality of its own.

Down the hall from the new digs, Mr. Cullum said the restroom “is like every old high school bathroom,” adding, “I have this unstoppable urge to light a cigarette.”