Lakewood Country Club History Course--Lakewood, NJ

History of the Lakewood Country Club

There is an indescribable charm about a place that has a history. Underneath the live-for-the-minute exterior of modern America there is a vital reverence for the things of days done by. We are fond of old friends and old associations, especially are we fond of old homes.

From Down Through the Years, Laurel House, Lakewood NJ, ca. 1910.

The above passage was written nearly a century ago, yet it remains even more meaningful today than when it was first penned. It is something that we are deeply aware of here at the Lakewood Country Club. Our history as a golf club goes back to the beginning of golf in America, and our history as a company starts with the first settlement of this area. It encompasses the "glory" days of Lakewood when the elite of New York society would come to Lakewood, make it their winter home, and socialize at our Club. By being our guest here today you join the likes of the Rockefellers, the Goulds, President Theodore Roosevelt, Frederick Kimball and many others. We are proud of our long history and hope you find the following summary informative and entertaining.

Golf at Lakewood

Lakewood, New Jersey was golf's first popular "off season" gathering place. Before the turn of the century, visitors to Lakewood had their choice of two outstanding "resort" courses whose season lasted from October 1 through the following June 1. The semi-annual meetings held there were the oldest on the M.G.A. calendar, and the quality of the fields they attracted was second only to the National Amateur.

Golf Club of Lakewood

The first of the area's courses belonged to the Golf Club of Lakewood, which was organized in October 1894, and incorporated in 1898. Prominent among the founders were Jasper Lynch and Robert Bage Kerr. The golf course actually preceded the club, coming into existence in the fall of 1893 on a site about one mile from the railroad station. Champion Willie Dunn designed the nine-hole course, and his first visit to the site is part of the legend. For it was on that occasion that Dunn and his scarlet golfing jacket had their famous encounter with a bull in the fields, from which only Dunn escaped unscathed. Nonetheless, Dunn's course was built, and served the club for nearly five years, although it was never considered a first-class layout. The third hole doubtlessly was the most severely criticized. It was a 200-yard "par 3", with a nasty cop bunker dead center at the 170-yard mark, a difficult carry for most players in the era of the guttie ball. In 1896 the course was lengthened eastward into a large field and became an eighteen-hole course.

Lakewood's biannual tournaments began in 1895 at the Golf Club, with Jasper Lynch himself among the winners that first season. The Golf Club was among the first ten clubs to join the U.S.G.A. as associate members (in the spring of 1895), and later became a charter member of the M.G.A., W.M.G.A., and the New Jersey State Golf Association. The first hole-in-one in the United States was shot at Lakewood in this year. The following year the first P.G.A.-style tournament was held there.

In the spring of 1898 the Golf Club move to a new site, about a ten-minute drive from the railroad station, to the west of the village down Lake Drive, just beyond the Laurel-in-the-Pines Hotel. The club's new home was a converted farmhouse that featured a magnificent cafe with a large fireplace and floor-to-ceiling windows that extended in a broad curve around the north end of the building, overlooking the golf course.

The club's new golf links, 18 holes designed by Tom Bendelow playing at 5695 yards, was surrounded by forest, although there were a few isolated trees in the course itself. Laid out over terrain of unvarying flatness, many of the holes ran parallel one to the other. There were no water hazards, and little chance for a lost ball. Nevertheless, the course was considered a good test of golf, due primarily to the clever arrangement of the bunkers. Willie Anderson was the professional, although he left in mid-1898 for Baltrustol, and was succeeded that fall by Willie Norton. Harry Vardon visited the club on his 1900 tour of this country.

Ocean County Hunt and Country Club

The year after the Golf Club was organized, the Ocean County Hunt and Country Club was established two miles from the railroad depot. Among the organizers were George Jay Gould and William A. Hamilton. The club was organized in December 1895 and incorporated on January 4, 1896. The club bought a sixty-acre tract about a mile and a half east of the village, north of the road to Point Pleasant, and by the following season it sported a 9-hole course designed by Horace Rawlins, winner of the first U.S. Open in 1895. Rawlin's course measured 2532 yards, with no hole shorter than 200 yards in length, and none longer than 375. Montrose W. Morris designed the clubhouse in Dutch Colonial style, and measured forty feet by a hundred feet. It was supplemented by stables, kennels, and a pigeon house: in addition to golf and the hunt, trap shooting was a popular sport at the club.

The club's name was changed in 1899 to the Country Club of Lakewood. Under its original name, though, it became one of the first 40 allied members of the U.S.G.A. R. B. Wilson, former pro at Shinnecock Hills, remodeled the golf course during the summer of 1900. The original names of the holes were retained, although the yardage was increased to 2758 yards.

Lakewood Country Club

The Ocean County Hunt and Country Club sold its Ocean Avenue property to John D. Rockefeller on June 6, 1902. At this time it merged with the Lakewood Golf Club to form the Country Club of Lakewood, which bought land west of Hope Road. This land was part of the Hyer Farm, where Gilbert Hyer had settled in 1804, and which had grown by 1818 to about 270 acres, acquired at a total cost of $645. The youngest of Gilbert's eleven children, Isaac Hyer, inherited the farm in 1868. In 1901, Isaac Hyer sold the estate to Arthur B. Claflin for $40,000, and died less than a year later. Arthur B. Claflin, one of the incorporators of the Country Club, in turn sold about one hundred acres of the land to the Country Club of Lakewood, for $23,000, and built his own mansion to the west. A new Country Club clubhouse was built near where the fourth tee is now.

George Jay Gould was elected the first president of the new organization, and Jasper Lynch was honored as its first captain. Willie Norton came along as professional. Among the club's more prominent players, in addition to Lynch, were A. S. Carpenter, semifinalist in the 1901 Met Amateur, and John Moller, finalist in 1903. Both met the same fate - a sound thrashing at the hands of Findlay Douglas, the champion both years.

The new links were laid out over 100 gently rolling acres, and were ready for play by the spring of 1903. The Golf Club's old course was used in the interim, after which the Laurel-in-the-Pines Hotel ran it as the Pine Forest Country Club. Isaac Mackie of Fox Hills served the club as "winter pro".Lakewood Country Club's new course measured 5810 yards, and did not have a single cop bunker, which was unusual for those days. The second and third holes were side-by-side par 3's that played back and forth across the creek. The former was to become the club's postcard hole, the tenth on the card, although the exact date when the holes were rerouted is unknown. The course was overhauled in 1910, although the change may have taken place before then.The semi-annual Lakewood Tournaments shifted to the Lakewood Country Club's new course following the merger. The dominant figures in these competitions, which attracted a national field, were Walter Travis and Findlay Douglas, both of whom won on several occasions. Travis included four Lakewood holes - the par 3 tenth, par 4 seventh and fifteenth, and par 5 fifth - on his list of the country's finest golf holes, as published in late 1902 in Golf magazine.

Despite the club's generosity in giving up its course twice each year, and the high esteem in which the course was held, Lakewood's bid for a major M.G.A. event fell on deaf ears. Until 1922, that is, by which time the golf course had been completely revamped by Walter Travis. That work took place during the summer of 1920. Although occupying the same site as its predecessor, not a single hole from the original design remained untouched. Several holes on the back nine (#12, 13 and 14) were cut from a dense forest. Travis was joined by the likes of Gardiner White and William Reekie in his belief that Lakewood's new fourteenth hole was the equal of any two-shooter in the country. Travis' course remains basically unchanged to this day, with two exceptions: about 80 to 100 yards have been added to both the thirteenth and fifteenth holes, and the fifth hole has recently been redesigned.The 1922 Met Amateur at Lakewood resolved into a contest between the 20-year-old medallist Jess Sweester of Siwanoy and two leading players from the Upper Montclair Country Club. In the semifinals Sweetser eliminated New Jersey State Amateur champion Frank Dyer, then whipped J. Edward Hale 10 to 8 for the title. The final match actually was much closer than the final result suggests - Sweetser led by just 1-up after 19 holes. Perhaps the most memorable shot of the tournament was a 25-yard pitch that Sweetser "bumped" through the rough and into the cup for a birdie deuce on the tenth hole during the morning round with Hale. Sweetser was more than lucky, though, as a course record of 71 in the second round attests. Among the defeated in the tournament were Tommy Armour and defending champion Gardiner White.

Lakewood Country Club and Lakewood, NJ

The history of the Lakewood Country Club not only goes back to the early years of golf in the United States, but, indeed, it is deeply intertwined with the history of Lakewood itself. Lakewood Country Club is the direct descendant of the people and companies that were among the very first to settle in the area and which played a prominent role in its development over the years.

The first European settlers in the Lakewood area were probably the operators of sawmills. Two of the earliest sawmills were located where Lakes Carasaljo and Manetta come together today and where the Lake Shenandoah fish ladder is now. In 1750, Samuel Dove acquired land at both of these places. The first of these mills became, or was replaced by, the Three Partners Mill.

On June 16, 1814 Jesse Richards bought the Three Partners Mill and seventy acres for $850. In addition to acquiring land, Richards leased ore-digging rights from various landholders. He began construction of the Washington furnace in July 1814. This furnace, which produced iron, was first put to blast on May 10, 1815. Although the amount of iron was poor compared to the amount of iron produced at other furnaces owned by the Richards family, the furnace was operated until 1818. In April of 1830, Richards sold the Washington Furnace lands, 112 acres including the sawmill, to William Remsen of Dover Township for $13,500. Remsen in turn sold the Three Partners Mill and Washington Furnace in September 1833 and March 1834 to Joseph W. Brick.

Brick entered into a partnership with Riley Allen, whose daughter Margaret married Brick on November 5, 1834. The furnace had lain idle for fifteen years when Brick acquired it. He opened an office in New York City, where he negotiated contracts for the furnace's products, chiefly water and gas pipes. In March 1836, Riley Allen sold his half-share in the Furnace lands back to Brick, at a considerable profit, but continued to support the ironworks. The firm was in continual financial difficulty during these early years.

Joseph W. Brick died on February 1, 1847. His will provided that the business should be carried on for twelve years or until his elder son Riley A. Brick reached the age of twenty-one. The property was then to be sold and the proceeds divided equally among the heirs, unless the executors judged it better not to sell, but to divide the estate among the heirs. By 1864, all three of Riley Brick's sisters were married and two of them had sold their interest in the Brick estate, one to Riley and one to Robert Campbell, an executor.

On the Fourth of July, 1965, Josephine E. Brick, the youngest child of Joseph W. Brick, turned twenty-one, and the town of Bergen Iron Works was renamed Bricksburg. The executors of the Brick estate, no longer using their extensive land holdings to supply iron ore and charcoal, had decided to promote settlement by farmers, and Bricksburg must have seemed a more appropriate name. That same year, Riley A. Brick had a two-and-a-half story hotel, thirty-eight feet by thirty-eight feet square, built on the north side of Main Street, west of Lexington Avenue, which he called the Bricksburg House.

The Bricksburg Land and Improvement Company was incorporated on February 21, 1866. The incorporators were Robert Campbell, Riley A. Brick, Charles A. Stetson, Jr., Joseph H. VanHise, and William J. Parmentier. The company was capitalized at $250,000, with power to increase to $500,000. On April 5, 1866, the Company paid the remaining Brick heirs $112,000 for all their lands in Ocean and Monmouth Counties, except for the six-acre plot on which the Mansion House stood. These lands totaled about thirty-five square miles. Civil engineer Samuel Shreve laid out the basic pattern of avenues and streets, and village lots measuring 50 feet by 150 feet were sold for $4,100 each.

In the winter of 1879, a fifty-year-old New York banker named Charles Henry Kimball, on his way south to try to cure a weakness of his lungs, stopped in Bricksburg to visit his old school friend, Sarah A. Bradshaw, wife of Captain Albert Bradshaw. His stay in Bricksburg benefited him so much that he not only decided to move there, but also conceived of the idea of making the place a fashionable winter resort, and sold that idea to several of his fellow businessmen. On December 15, 1879, the stock of the Bricksburg Land and Improvement Company was sold to Charles H. Kimball, Albert M. Bradshaw, Samuel D. Davis, C.B. Soutter, J. M. Leavitt, and G. B. Kenyon. Kimball had already had two men and a span of mules at work since March of 1879, building roads, at his own personal expense. On January 1, 1880, ground was broken for an enlargement of the Bricksburg House.On April 6, 1880, the Bricksburg House, much enlarged but still a small hotel, reopened as the Laurel House. By 1882, the Laurel House was popular enough that its owners decided to build a larger addition to it. A new company, the Lakewood Hotel Association, was formed on May 30, 1882, to buy the Laurel House, because the charter of the Bricksburg Land and Improvement Company did not empower it to conduct a hotel business. The twenty-four stockholders of the company were nearly all members of the New York Stock Exchange. When the hotel re-opened in October of 1882, it occupied almost the entire block. There were 186 sleeping-rooms, each with its own fireplace. The rooms on all three floors were identical - none were second-class. Underneath the dining room was a large playroom, and a smoking and billiards room. Glass-enclosed piazzas ran along most of the length of the building.

Among the visitors to Lakewood in its first decade were authors Henry Cuyler Bunner (in 1884), William Cullen Byant, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Albion W. Tourgee, and publishers Henry Oscar Houhton and George H. Mifflin.In 1889, the Lakewood Hotel Association was dissolved and a new company formed called the Lakewood Hotel & Land Association. The Bricksburg Land and Improvement Company was kept in existence to avoid land-transfer costs, but its capital was reduced and its stock was wholly owned by the new Association.

Lakewood's real heyday began in 1890. More guests were coming than could be accommodated in the Laurel House. The number of sales of land by the Bricksburg Land and Improvement Company, which had averaged eight per year in the 1880's, jumped to thirty-six.

Another new hotel was started in 1890 on the north bank of Lake Carasaljo, by the Forest Hotel Company, which was very closely related to the Lakewood Hotel and Land Association. It was to have been called the Forest Hotel, to cost about $300,000, and to open in March of 1891. When it finally opened on December 21, 1891, it had cost more than $500,000 and was called the Laurel-in-the-Pines. It was designed by Carrere and Hastings of New York City, was four stories high, and had 220 rooms, a frontage of 270 feet, and a depth of 380 feet, and a twenty-five-foot-high copper rotunda over the main entrance.

One of Lakewood's most illustrious visitors was Grover Cleveland, in between his two terms as President of the United States. He and his wife Frances were guests at the Laurel House for several days in the 1889-1890. The Cleveland's baby Ruth (for whom the Baby Ruth candy bar was later named) was the admiration of Lakewood sidewalk society. Cleveland commuted from Lakewood to his business while in Lakewood and stayed there until two days before his inauguration in 1893.

Around 1889, and in the spring of 1896, Rudyard Kipling was a guest at the Laurel House. Kipling came to Lakewood once more in April of 1899, to recuperate from an illness. He was accompanied this time by his father, and was visited by publisher Frank N. Doubleday. Another famous visitor was President Woodrow Wilson, who stayed at the Laurel House on October 14, 1910.

The Great Depression of 1929 had a devastating impact on the hotels in Lakewood, and they went into drastic decline. In order to save money spent on taxes and operating costs, the Laurel House was closed in 1932 by the Lakewood Hotel & Land Association and was demolished the next year. Its laundry, however, survives, as the A. G. Rogers Storage & Moving Company, the four-and-one-half story brick building on First Street opposite the Lincoln Bus Terminal. The last of Lakewood's great hotels, the Laurel-in-the-Pines, was destroyed by fire in March 1967.

The Depression also had an adverse impact on the real estate business. The Lakewood Hotel & Land Association was in precarious financial condition, and in danger of losing much of its holdings in the 1930's due to unpaid back taxes. The finances of the Forest Holding Company and the Lakewood Country Club were in a similar state.

In 1937 Raef Haddad, a New York City real estate owner and developer, came to Lakewood and purchased a controlling interest in the three companies. During the next half century, the Lakewood Hotel & Land Association continued the sale of lands in the area, as had its predecessor the Bricksburg Land Improvement Company. Notable among these sales were transfers to Robilt, Inc., a company owned by Raef Haddad and Robert Schmertz, of land that would become the Brookwood development in Jackson and which would become the Leisure Village and Leisure Knoll developments in Lakewood. Robert Schmertz bought out has partner's interest in Robilt around 1968 and changed its name to Leisure Technology Corporation. In 1988 the Lakewood Country Club, the Lakewood Hotel & Land Association, and the Forest Holding Company merged into a new company called the Country Club of Lakewood, in recognition of its historical roots. At the same time Raef Haddad's descendants completed their purchase of the other remaining shareholders' interests in the three companies. The name of the company was changed back to Lakewood Country Club in 1994.

The Claflin House

Lakewood Country Club's clubhouse is called the Claflin House. It is named after Arthur B. Claflin, one of the incorporators of the Lakewood Country Club. Around 1901 Mr. Claflin sold the Club the property on which the bulk of the present Club is located, and built his own home - our clubhouse - west of the course. In the early 1920's the original clubhouse of the Lakewood Country Club (photos of which are hung in our dining room) burnt down. The Club then purchased Mr. Claflin's home for use as its clubhouse. (His stables became the pro shop.) Mr. Claflin built another mansion elsewhere on his estate, which, together with the DeForest estate, is now known as Pine Park.

The Claflin House was renovated in the mid 1990's. In renovating this house as our restaurant, we have tried to create an atmosphere reflecting the times when Arthur Claflin built his original mansion. One example of the attention to detail in the renovation of this home is the fireplace mantle that was reinstalled in the smaller dining room. Found in the attic, the many coats of paint that covered the mantle and the name "Claflin" written on its back indicate that it is the fireplace's original mantle.

The Future

While mindfull of our past, at the Lakewood Country Club we are not content to sit upon our "Laurels". We are committed to a program of constant improvement in the quality of our course, our restaurant and banquet facility, and the other amenities located here. In order to coordinate these improvements we have recently had a master plan prepared for the course. This plan will provide a basis for improvements to our course as we enter our second century of golfing and dining. We hope these will enhance your enjoyment as you join those who, for over a century, have been guests at the Lakewood Country Club and the Claflin House.

The Claflin House's hours vary by season.

Please call (732) 363-8125 ext. 14 for current hours of operation.