By Gabriela Resto-Montero
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
UPPER EAST SIDE — A $50 contribution won't get you a membership into the Explorers Club, but it will get you a brick in their wall.
To raise money to help pay for an estimated $1.5 million restoration of the club's 46 E. 70th Street townhouse, the club launched a preserve-a-brick fundraiser "selling" individual bricks.
"I thought that a brick was something that people could easily visualize and, at $50 per brick, everyone who wanted to help could at least contribute," said Lorie Karnath, the club's president.
Donors don't actually get a brick from the walls, and they don't get their name on individual bricks. People who want their name on something might consider the club's adopt-a-window fundraiser, where the person who donates $50,000 to repair one of the club's 114 stained-glass windows gets a plaque under it.
The club has been in existence since 1904, and in its Upper East Side location, a townhouse built in 1904, since 1965.
Over the years, members have included Rockefellers, Roosevelts and Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek.
Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzig Norgay, the first people to reach the top of Mt. Everest, were members, and notes and correspondence from Hillary are at the club. The first men to the moon, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, were also members.
Donations from foundations and individuals have raised $900,000 so far, said Karnath.
