The Reading Country Club

Reading Country Club's golf course was constructed in 1923, with the first holes being created on former agricultural fields. This club soon expanded and built an ornate clubhouse in 1931. The club and golf course were designed by Alexander Findlay, a Scottish immigrant who designed other courses and lived in Omaha.

Alexander Findlay was born in Scotland in 1865 and immigrated to the United States in the mid-1880s. Findlay lived in Nebraska and was known as an accomplished golfer being the first player to score a 72 in a competition. This moment occurred in 1886 at the Royal Montrose Golf Club in his home country. The following year, he constructed a 6-hole golf course to the west of his home city, Omaha, and it was considered the first golf club to the west of the Mississippi River. Findlay would become one of America’s pioneers for the sport.

Findlay would be tasked by the Florida East Coast Railway to build a line of golf courses in the late 1890s. By the year 1897, he was hired by the Wright and Ditson Company of Boston to start designing a line of golf clubs. The company itself was founded in 1871 and was purchased by a man named A. G. Spaulding in 1892. In 1900, Findlay brought over a man named Harry Vardon, who is a British professional golfer, from England in order to play a few rounds of golf with him. These matches helped popularize golf in the eyes of the American people and the news media gave them good coverage helping expand the sport in the 20th century.

in the early 1920s, Findlay started constructing a nine-hole golf course and expanded into constructing a country clubhouse that would be known today as the Reading Country Club in Pennsylvania. The clubhouse was fully constructed in 1931 and the landscape of the property all came together in the finished product. When he was building the club, Findlay was associated with the Wanamakers department store where he would officially retire from in 1936. Findlay was also writing a column in the defunct Pennsylvania newspaper The Evening Telegraph known as “Breezy News About Golf And Golfers: Tales of the Links as Told by an Expert Whose Fame Spreads Over Two Continents.” He would later pass away in the year of 1942 at the age of 77.

“About Us,” Reading Country Club Public Golf Course. Accessed June 1st 2021. http://readingccgolf.com/about/.

“Reading Country Club,” National Park Service. Accessed June 1st 2021. https://www.nps.gov/places/reading-country-club.htm.