Quaker Ridge Golf Club

The Quaker Ridge Golf Club is located on a 138 acre site in Scarsdale, New York. The eighteen hole course was created by Albert Warren Tillinghast, one of the country’s premier designers during the “Golden Age” of American golf course design in the 1920s. In 1917, Tillinghast was hired to remodel the nine existing holes and construct an additional nine. The course was completed in 1918, and in 1923 Ely Jacques Kahn designed the clubhouse the Tudor style. In 2008, Golf Digest rated Quaker Ridge the 30th best course in the United States.

Albert Warren Tillinghast (1874-1942), was an only child of a wealthy Philadelphia family. Although Tillinghast was not a successful student, he excelled at sports, including winning medals in track. After flunking out of multiple colleges he discovered the game of golf at the Philadelphia Cricket Club, which transformed his life. In 1911, an friend of Tillinghast’s father recongnized his passion for golf and invited him to lay out a course for Shawnee on the Delaware, located in Pennsylvania. At thirty five, he realized designing golf courses was his true calling. In 1913, Tilinghast designed a course at Abington Hills and a year later the Belfield Country Club and the Wanago County Club. In 1935 after the depression, he became a consultant for the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA). With the PGA, Tillinghast went to hundreds of clubs throughout the country offering his advice. Tillinghast died in 1942 at age 68 from a heart attack.

Tillinghast’s most significant contribution to golf course design was the philosophy of “The Course Beautiful.” In Tillinghast’s words, “he, who plans any hole for golf, should have two aims: first, to produce something which will provide a true test of the game, and then consider every conceivable way to make it as beautiful as possible.” In addition to the philosophy of “The Course Beautiful," he also had a major influence on the development of the “strategic course” as opposed to the “penal course."

Ely Jacques Kahn (1884-1972), the architect of the clubhouse was the only son of an educated, middle class New York City family. Kahn received his BA from Columbia College in 1903 and BArch from the Columbia School of Architecture in 1907. He was a member of Quaker Ridge Golf Club in 1919 and was the clear choice to build the clubhouse in 1922.

The original footprint of the clubhouse was comprised of six rectangles of varying sizes laid out in alternative directions. The main entrance of the clubhouse opens into a small lobby and office with a reception desk. The living room is beyond the entrance lobby and features a fireplace on the north wall. The locker room is accessible toward the north of the lounge and grill room. The clubhouse was originally built for two hundred people.

In addition to the designers, the history of the membership is of interest. Most Jewish immigrants that came to the United States before 1880 came from Germany. When antisemitism caused them to be excluded from golf clubs, the German Jewish population responded by forming their own country clubs as early as 1898 and continuing through the 1920s. When the Quaker Ridge Golf Club was formed in 1916, many of the members belonged to the Harmonie Club, a German Jewish social club on the upper east side of Manhattan. It attracted many New York elites including merchants Nathan Strauss, Franklin Simon, Samuel Bloomingdale, publisher Alfred Knopf, and composer George Gershwin.

1. Watson, Penelope S.. Quaker Ridge Golf Club. NYS Division for Historic Preservation. Published April 20th 2020.
2. Quaker Ridge Golf Club Home, Quaker Ridge gc.org . Accessed August 4th 2021. https://quakerridgegc.org/.
3. Sullivan, Paul. "Live on a Golf Course? Don’t Forget to Duck." The New York Times (New York) September 11th 2020. .