Club Times: November/December 2022

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 social activities. This article is the eleventh 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. A V I S I O N A R Y M O V E

The 1950s and 1960s were marked by a period of renovation and change for East Lake as well. In 1950, the porch at East Lake was enlarged to provide a terrace for dancing, and, in 1957, a 164- foot swimming pool, one of the largest in the South, was completed. Reuben M. Berry remembered, “We’d dance on the patio and out on the deck. In the springtime, the weather was perfect, and the moon would be shining as big as a pumpkin. You’d walk down hand in hand with your date. It was so romantic, and you’d steal a kiss or two. Nobody ever became tired in those days; we just danced, danced, and danced.” The AAC also built a new bathhouse and remodeled and expanded the clubhouse and tennis courts. In advance of the 1963 Ryder Cup Matches, the club added new bunkers and rebuilt many of the tees on the No. 1 course. But problems with parking and other logistics during the event revealed that in order to become a championship venue, the club would have to follow the rest of the city in moving north. Where members once brought their families to play at East Lake during the day and stay for dinner, in the early 1960s, few remained on site after a round of golf. Jean Brooks recalled, “The golfers would come out, and in the summer the swimmers would come out. But they weren’t supporting anything socially at the club. They said it was too far away.” Hugh M. Dorsey Jr. echoed the point, “As fine as East Lake was, it was clear that it was not where the future was going to be. The geographical center of the membership of the club was no longer there.” The usage of the facility began to decline, and the course became a popular target for vandals. The September 1962 issue of Club Times reported that “vandalism on our two courses cost the club approximately $1,000 [during a four-month period]. This money went to replace markers on the tees, repair broken benches, replace flags and flagpoles which were stolen or wrapped around a nearby tree, repair mutilated ball washers and drinking fountains, and in some cases replace a section of green dug up or otherwise damaged by the prowlers.” In the early 1960s, club president H. C. “Hikie” Allen began investigating the viability of purchasing

property in north Fulton County. A small committee looked at land on both sides of the Chattahoochee River and optioned a tract of land along the Norcross- Cumming Road, west of the river. The 614-acre northside property, called River Bend, was purchased in January 1963 for $420,000. The land had been a farm owned by Ben Summerhour. “It was rich bottom land,” former AAC president Charles Pittard recalled, “Mr. Summerhour grew cotton and corn, and when I was a teenager, I used to hunt over there.” A development committee, made up of Jim Shumate (who was later replaced by Oliver Saggus), Watts Gunn, and Allen Hardin, was responsible for selecting an architect and handling the contract for the golf course and new clubhouse. The club originally planned to maintain both courses at East Lake and build two new ones in Duluth. But such a strategy was not fiscally possible, and on January 19, 1965, the AAC membership voted to sell the No. 2 course at East Lake to help finance the building of the new course. The anticipated sale to an apartment building developer out of Memphis, Tennessee, was contingent upon proper zoning. The price was reportedly set at $1 million. The City of Atlanta, upon the recommendation of Alderman Ed Gilliam, considered purchasing the land to make a public park, but it was deemed too expensive. Gilliam is reported to have had “no idea where the city would get the money, but I do know we need additional parks and it is all but impossible for the city to find large areas of undeveloped land suitable for close- in parks.” The developers who bought the property converted it into FHA public housing units, and those units ultimately became part of the Atlanta Housing Authority’s East Lake Meadows project. No one ever dreamed that shortly after the purchase of the River Bend property that the AAC’s new course would host the U.S. Open. In March 1966, the board reported: “We have entered into a contract with Robert Trent Jones, the world’s most outstanding golf architect, to construct 27 holes of championship golf at River Bend for a price of $650,000. The contract is bonded and insured that regardless of happenings,