Golf in the Gilded Age:
Robber Barons, Railroads, and Resort Hotels
2: The Gilded Age 1870s-1890s

1. Birth of Golf in America	2. Gilded Age	3. Robber Barons	4. Tycoons and Patronage
5. Railroads & Resorts	6. Early Grand Hotels	7. Carolinas	8. Georgia
9. Jacksonville	10. St Augustine	11. St Aug. (pt 2)	12. Ormond Beach
13. Palm Beach	14. Boca Raton	15. Miami	16. Miami Beach
17. Coral Gables	18. Tampa / St Pete	19. Later Resort Golf	20. Gilded Age Legacy

American golf had its birth in the Gilded Age (1870s-1890s), and by the close of the 19th century the United States had more golf courses than Britain. This start is inextricably intertwined with the dominant Tycoons of the day, and this in turn entangles the foundation of golf in America with the expansion of their railroads and their associated Grand Hotels in exclusive resort locations.

From 1900 to the advent of WWII, golf in America added sinew and muscle on this underlying frame to make the Resort golf experience truly spectacular and widely accessible outside the echelons of elite society. The enduring legacy has been that the popularization of golf in America is indelibly stamped with the watermark of excellence set by these fabulous early Resorts.

The Gilded Age

D. British Golf in the 1890s

1898

Country Life billed itself as 'the journal for all interested in country life and country pursuits' at a time when eighty percent of the population was urban based, this focus on the country was well timed. Housing within inner London, and the other industrialized cities, was quite bleak and the view of the tranquil countryside, offered by prominent writers and thinkers such as John Ruskin, was a positive alternative. That view followed a long literary tradition, one with which every public-school educated reader of Country Life would have been familiar. That age old image of landed gentry -- country gentleman, ancient manor houses and their gardens, tranquil views of an unspoiled landscape -- was a powerful one. But by 1897 the aristocracy and gentry were a defeated class, the Third Reform Act had given the vote to the non-propertied working classes, the agricultural depression of the late 1870's had severely eroded the profits of their great estates and the Death Duties of 1894 had negatively impacted the ease of inherited privilege, the landscape was changing both figuratively and literally. The new rich from the commercial and professional classes could now aspire to that romantic aristocratic lifestyle and Country Life took full advantage of the circumstances, the magazine'was directed at readers who might well be members of a Surrey golf club. The electric underground and more reliable motor cars provided opportunities for the prosperous to build houses in the still unspoiled rural landscape and enjoy the conventional pleasures of country life, gardening, riding and golf.'

1897

Fiery, The Famous Scots Caddy

Lead Golfers in Britain ca. 1900

A Herd 1890

Roland Taylor 1890

Sunningdale 1890

Harold Hutchinson

And of course the golfing correspondent was Bernard Darwin (1876-1961), the grandson of the naturalist Charles Darwin. Darwin was simply the greatest golf writer the game has ever produced. For nearly fifty years, beginning in 1908, he contributed to the weekly golf column ÔOn the Green', and he also authored the history of the magazine on the occasion of its fiftieth birthday in 1947. Like his architectural colleagues, he too organized a 'golfing architectural competition' in conjunction with C.B. Macdonald (judged by Darwin, Horace Hutchinson and Herbert Fowler), with Dr.MacKenzie taking home the first place prize for 'the best original two-shot hole.'

Bernard Darwin wasn't Country Life's first golf editor, that distinction goes to Horace Hutchinson (1859-1932). The very first issue of January 8, 1897 featured a serialized version of After Dinner Golf, a book written by Hutchinson the previous year. For the next two decades, Huthinson was contributing editor of the weekly golf column ÔOn the Green' -- and he was an intelligent choice for not only was he England's foremost expert on the game but he was also something of a Renaissance Man, well versed in natural history, literature, as well as fishing and shooting, and he contributed pieces on all these subjects.

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The golf design revolution did not occur in a vacuum, it did not develop out of thin air, there was a source for its inspiration. And that source can be traced back to Horace Hutchinson. As an influential author, he was responsible for popularizing the game in England and as golf editor for Country Life, he was responsible for introducing a philosophy to the task of golf-architecture. Country Life was the one source where the Arts and Crafts movement and golf-architecture could be found side by side. Country Life provided heavy doses of the A&C ideal through its vivid images of county homes and gardens, while at the same time, under the guidance of Hutchinson, celebrating golf's beautiful images exemplified by the ancient links. It was under these cultural and aesthetic circumstances that Willie Park sparked this revolution south and west of London at the turn of the century. And it was under these circumstances that the revolution spread first through out Britain, then to America and finally to the rest of the world.

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