~Riverton's original clubhouse~
built in 1900 |
History
The
first New Jersey club to join the Golf Association
of Philadelphia was Riverton, which was founded in
1900 and became a GAP member two years later. The
new century had barely dawned when several of the
leading citizens of Riverton, a Quaker village on
the Delaware established in 1851 as a summer retreat
for Philadelphia businessmen and their families, decided
that the community ought to have a golf club. After
all, though its population was a mere 1,300, Riverton
already had four churches (Episcopal, Presbyterian,
Baptist, Roman Catholic),a Quaker meeting house, a
newspaper, grade school, post office, public library,
fire company, concert hall, women's club, bicycle
track where professionals raced, athletic fields for
baseball and football, and, dating back to 1865, the
Riverton Yacht Club.
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The
country club's first president was Edward H. Ogden,
a Civil War veteran who, in 1894, had been elected the
town's first mayor. But the inspiriting force behind
golf in Riverton was the club's first secretary, James
S. Coale (the Coale Memorial Tournament is named for
him), a convivial bear of a man who loved all sports,
who had first played golf at the age of 18, and who
was also a member of the Moorestown Field Club. He built
his own house directly across Thomas Avenue from the
Riverton clubhouse, and though he broke 80 only a couple
of times in his life, his passion for the game was such
that he played often at the better courses on both sides
of the river.
For
less than $8,000 the new club bought 62 acres of gently
sloping land with tall hardwoods and beautiful wildflowers.
A graceful wood-shingle clubhouse was erected on the
brow of a hill about an eight-minute walk from the Riverton
train station. It afforded a pretty view of the distant
Delaware.
Coale
and John Reid, the professional at Atlantic City, laid
out the nine-hole course within days of the incorporation
of the club, which took place on March 21, 1900. Reid
believed that the property, with its rolling ground,
its streams, and its woods, had as many natural advantages
as any in the Philadelphia area. The local newspaper
reported that the course opening, scheduled for late
April, had to be delayed till June 30 because the turf
was stolen from one of the greens.
Riverton
was a very short course, just 2,360 yards. It began
with its longest and hardest hole, a 414-yarder that
followed roughly the same route as the present 13th
hole. The tee perched on the knob of a gravel pit, and
the drive had to carry a brook. Beyond that water hazard
came another stream, this one running on the diagonal.
It emptied into another large gravel pit. The green
was sited just beyond this excavation. If you managed
to negotiate these obstacles successfully and were able
to write down, say, a 6, you were off to a good start
and could look forward to some 5s and 4s, perhaps even
a 3, by the time you got back to the clubhouse. For
though water popped up on several other holes, distance
was not much of a problem. The yardages from the 2nd
through the 9th: 166, 212, 205, 211, 385, 191, 257,
315.
Annual
dues were $15 for men and women with full privileges,
$10 for women who were only house members. The visitor's
fee was 75¢ a day, $5 a month. The clubhouse was
open from 7 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. Servants' meals cost
50¢. Caddies were not to be paid more than 10¢
an hour. The "upper hall" (second floor) of
the clubhouse was the ladies' domain—reception
room, locker room, bathroom, etc. Smoking was prohibited
on this level.
House
rules forbade alcoholic beverages, gratuities to employees,
card games on Sundays, and card games for money at any
time. Decades later, Riverton would find itself operating
slot machines.
By
the time the course opened for play that summer of 1900,
the club could already boast more than a hundred members.
From the outset its success seemed assured, and over
the years to come the construction of a very good Donald
Ross course and the emergence of such outstanding players
as Dorothy and Nancy Porter, Ann Laughlin, and Robert
"Beetle" Beirne served only to confirm the
club's early promise.
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