Club Times Digital - August 2021

East Lake THE CRADLE OF CHAMPIONS

Stirling, a Bobby Jones, who were to carry East Lake to the top of the world as a home of golf.” The AAC’s first golf course was built on the plot in DeKalb County, and the first tee was almost on the site of the present clubhouse. The building of the course was an ordeal, as the Club Times reported: “More than two years were needed to hack the space for fairways, tees, and greens out of the forested hillsides, to grade and shape, and grow a stand of grass on the reluctant red soil. The machinery used consisted of scoops, graders, and mowers—all powered by mules. Most of the work to bring the new golf course into existence was done by hand, with ax and saw, pick and shovel.” While the AAC’s downtown facility had already established itself as a social and athletic club, the East Lake facility emphasized golf and tennis. The AAC laid out the first seven holes, and Tom Bendelow was hired to expand it to a full eighteen, which formally opened on July 4, 1908. Bendelow designed more than one hundred courses from 1885 to 1948, including Minnetonka Country Club and the three courses at Medinah Country Club. On March 6, 1906, the AAC hired architect Edward E. Dougherty and builders P. J. Wesley and Sons to enlarge the existing facilities and build a boat and bathhouse in time for the Fourth of July. But the original structures would not suffice. On April 13, 1907, the AAC hired architect Harry Leslie Walker to build a formal clubhouse. The grand opening of the expanded course and new clubhouse, which cost forty-five thousand dollars, was held on July 4, 1908. Bobby Jones once said that the old course “was a sort of strange layout as golf courses go, because it had only two 3-par holes, the first and the third. The rest were short par 4s and 5s.”

George Adair

In 2023, Atlanta Athletic Club will celebrate its 125th anniversary. The club was founded in 1898 by a group of 65 Atlanta businessmen who enjoyed playing sports and camaraderie. This article is the fourth in a series entitled “125 Years: The Legacy of Atlanta Athletic Club.” The purpose of the series is so that members may become familiar with the history and heritage of the great club to which they belong.

With the club’s membership nearing one thousand and interest in golf increasing, in 1913, the AAC hired Donald Ross to redesign the East Lake course, which formally opened on July 4, 1915. A fire on March 22, 1914, which destroyed the clubhouse, halted work temporarily. The members hired Walter Danning to build the new structure at a cost of one hundred thousand dollars, which formally opened on May 15, 1915. In an article for the American Magazine,

George Adair, president of the Atlanta Athletic Club from 1905 to 1911, is largely credited with bringing golf to Atlanta. As a result of his efforts, in 1904, the AAC purchased property in the East Lake neighborhood and helped establish the city’s first permanent course. The site, formerly part of the G. W. Collier estate, was a rolling series of hills near East Lake, not far from the streetcar line. The 187-acre tract included a thirty-acre lake, which gave the neighborhood its name. The lake and surrounding land had been the site of an amusement park in East Atlanta at the end of the nineteenth century, complete with a

East Lake Golf Course, Circa 1920

Jerome Travers praised the new facility: “There probably is no club in the country that gives as much for the money as the Atlanta Athletic Club.” Informed observers believe that remains true today.

The Boathouse at East Lake

tightrope act across the lake. It was owned by charter AAC member Henry (often known as Harry) Morrell Atkinson and operated by Tom Poole. For a modest sum, visitors could swim in the lake, picnic at the tables, and, for a penny, view scenes from the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris, Pikes Peak, and the Eiffel Tower. A steamboat traveled up and down the lake, giving visitors a ride. In 1904, Georgia Railway and Power Company, the parent company of Georgia Power, extended the streetcar line from downtown to East Lake after being influenced by George and Forrest Adair, who by then had purchased a large portion of the land that would become the club’s course at East Lake. When the AAC approached Atkinson about purchasing the site, he reportedly replied, “You may have it at your own figure. And you may put me down for a cash subscription toward the building of the clubhouse.” Atkinson later said in the February 1939 issue of Club Times, “I could at times even visualize another St. Andrews. But I never saw, even in the rosiest moments of the vision, an Alexa

Ten years later, in 1925, a second fire destroyed the clubhouse, the result of faulty wiring in the lounge on the first floor. This time, the fire injured several of the staff members. W. C. Carpenter, the club superintendent, and his wife, were severely burned and narrowly escaped with their lives. Carpenter tried to rescue some of the club’s trophies on display, but failed. After the smoke had cleared, the Atlanta Journal reported that hundreds of silver and gold cups and medals were “melted into unsightly lumps of metal.” Bobby Jones’s silver Havemeyer trophy, which was on display in the main lobby to celebrate his victory in the 1925 U.S. Amateur, was included in the rubble. The USGA replaced the silver one with a different gold trophy that is still used today. Jones later quipped, “The fire burned up my golf clubs too, but the USGA evidently didn’t hear about that one because they failed to give me a new set of golf clubs.” The AAC hired Hentz, Reid & Adler to build a new facility, which opened in August 1926.