When a major clubhouse renovation at the 106-year-old Scarsdale, N.Y. club is completed in the coming months, the finishing touches will include plaques near the main entrance commemorating the club’s recent addition to both the New York State and National Register of Historic Places. “Our membership is extraordinarily proud,” said club President Jeff Shapiro. “We are honored to join the ranks of great golf clubs in the country that have achieved this honor, including Winged Foot, Baltustrol, Shinnecock, Merion, Oakmont and Augusta National.”
When a major clubhouse renovation is completed in the coming months, plaques on either side of the main entrance will celebrate the recent addition of Quaker Ridge Golf Club in Scarsdale, N.Y. to the New York State and National Register of Historic Places, the Rockland/Westchester Journal News reported.
“Our membership is extraordinarily proud,” club President Jeff Shapiro said. “We are honored to join the ranks of great golf clubs in the country that have achieved this honor, including Winged Foot, Baltustrol, Shinnecock, Merion, Oakmont and Augusta National.”
Added Jeff Golenbock, a Quaker Ridge member since 1978 and the club’s Vice President: “I’m not sure any of us knew you could apply to be on this list. In order to be considered for this, you have to have a great golf course, but they were equally interested in how the club was formed, the clubhouse and what is now the caddie house, which at one point was an school attended by African-American kids in Scarsdale. I didn’t even know that history until we started this process.”
Inclusion on the National Register often comes with tax benefits or preservation assistance, but not in this case, the Journal News reported. Instead, the goal was earning a place alongside the clubs that have been longstanding stewards of golf.
“We couldn’t be happier,” said Martin Davis, a noted golf historian and member at Quaker Ridge for 38 years. “It’s really just nice to get the recognition we believe the club deserves. You mention Winged Foot to a golfer and they go, ‘Wow.’ ”
Quaker Ridge and Winged Foot are situated across the street from each other, and Davis, who was involved from Day 1 of the project along with General Manager Bob Musich and former club President Marc Friedman, feels Quaker Ridge is “in that same category,” the Journal News reported.
“We’ve always been very proud of the club and what we have, and this kind of makes it official,” Davis said.
The designation also provides a speed bump if New York state proposes a widening of the Hutchinson River Parkway, which shares a boundary with the club, the Journal News reported.
“It does give some protection against any federally funded projects,” said Penny Watson, a principal at Watson & Henry, which helped Quaker Ridge navigate the application and review process, as it has done for Winged Foot in New York and Baltusrol and Ridgewood Country Club in New Jersey.
“It doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen, but there would have to be an impact statement and possibly mitigation if it did happen,” Watson added.
The historic-place designation adds to the prestige gained from the A.W. Tillinghast-designed golf course that long ago put Quaker Ridge on the map, the Journal News reported.
It’s an early work of Tillinghast, who also designed courses at Winged Foot, Baltusrol and Ridgewood.
Tillinghast was originally commissioned to redesign seven existing holes and build 11 new holes at Quaker Ridge that opened for play in 1918, the Journal News reported. He was back a decade later, after Quaker Ridge acquired more land and wanted to redesign the opening holes.
“Quaker Ridge was Tillinghast’s first great golf course,” Davis said. “The first important decision for our first President, William Rice Hochster, and the Board was hiring this up-and-coming architect from Philadelphia. The course you see today is exactly what Tillinghast left, except for a little bit of length.”
Robert Trent Jones and Rees Jones were brought in over the years to make some modifications, but a sympathetic restoration by Gil Hanse that was completed in 2008 brought most of the original design elements back into play, the Journal News reported.
“From 80 yards in, the course is exactly how Tillinghast left it,” Davis said.
Quaker Ridge resisted changes a decade ago when a litigious neighbor along the second hole sued, complaining of constant golf ball incursions, the Journal News reported. A number of expensive modifications were made to a shared tree line before the club prevailed in a lengthy court battle (https://clubandresortbusiness.com/quaker-ridge-cc-ordered-pay-7k-errant-ball-lawsuit/).
Quaker Ridge’s course is currently No. 39 on Golf Magazine’s latest ranking of top 100 courses in the U.S., and it is listed as No. 7 of Golfweek’s Best Private Courses in New York.
But unlike many of the other courses on the National Register that have hosted major golf championships, Quaker Ridge is rarely in the national spotlight, the Journal News reported. “I’m not sure there was a lot of interest early on,” Davis said. “We don’t have the property needed to host these events. We’ve always had local tournaments.
“In 1936 we hosted the Met Open and that was Byron Nelson’s very first tournament victory,” Davis added. “In those days, the Met Open was without question the fourth most important tournament in the country, along with the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and the Western Open.”
Quaker Ridge did host the Walker Cup in 1997 and the Curtis Cup in 2018, the Journal News reported.
The club’s founding members were wealthy Jewish men of German descent whose applications for membership at other golf clubs were rejected, the Journal News reported. Their efforts to push back against patterns of anti-Semitism by matching elite Gentiles’ clubs in terms of excellence and status are recognized in the National Register application.
Ely Jacques Kahn, the architect behind several Manhattan landmark buildings, was hired to design the club’s simple Tudor clubhouse, which is currently under renovation, the Journal News reported.
“We took great pains to ensure it will look exactly like the old clubhouse [through the renovation],” Golenbock said. “It mimics the original design. Everything will look like it did in the 1920s in terms of the architecture, which kind of brings everything together.”
The caddie house, which sits near the main gate, also has a local history, the Journal News reported. According to the National Register application, it was built in 1901 and known as the Scarsdale Free School District No. 2. The building was later expanded to include four classrooms. It operated as an integrated school through World War II and became property of the club after it was no longer needed.
Several members, past and present, began their educations in that space, the Journal News reported. When the local population grew, Quaker Ridge sold the school back to Scarsdale in 1952 for $25,000, with the provision that ownership revert to the club when it was no longer needed. That happened in 1959 after the Quaker Ridge School was built.
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