Chapter 2 Birthplace by the Genesee River
G
olf met America as the nineteenth century was transitioning into the twentieth, and Rochester was awash in a period of tremendous growth and prosperity. The continued westward settlement of the United States led to the discovery of the rich wheat fields in the Great Plains that eventually deprived Rochester of its once-lofty position as the premier flour center in the country. Yet while the number of flour mills had been dwindling since the end of the Civil War, other businesses were thriving during a time when governmental interference and heavy taxation were not a detriment to operations. By 1890, there were nine railroads passing through Rochester. Annual imports and exports through the lake port of Charlotte both topped out at about $1 million, and more than 400,000 tons of merchandise were being loaded and unloaded yearly from the canal. Horticulture was also at its peak, as nurseries along East Avenue were in perpetual bloom, filling orders domestically as well as internationally. Once known as the “Flour City,” Rochester was now being referred to as the “Flower City.” It was also during this time that John Jacob Bausch and Henry Lomb perfected the production of optical lenses. There were approximately thirty clothing factories and about sixty shoe factories employing thousands of people, while other citizens worked as foundry men, tobacco processors, bankers and accountants. But the Eastman Kodak Company, founded in 1889 by George Eastman following his invention of the Kodak camera,
Oak Hill Country Club
The members approved the building of a magnificent and expansive new clubhouse. It was completed in 1911.
had begun to set industry standards in photography and would ultimately become Rochester’s largest employer. Like most cities of that era, Rochester was hard at work and found little time to play. Culturally, citizens flocked to the Powers Gallery, which was considered the center of the city’s artistic life, and there were numerous 12
A Legacy of Golfing Excellence
The first clubhouse, circa 1905, was a converted farmhouse that was already on the grounds when the property was purchased.
music, theater and literary clubs. Outdoor recreation and athletic activity consisted mainly of hunting and fishing, rowing along the river, ice skating at the Aqueduct and baseball. But there was also this new game—this odd pursuit in which men would swing a wooden-shafted stick with a metal flange attached to the end and strike a gutta-percha ball sitting on the ground, propelling it as much as one hundred or more yards at a time. Then they would go find the ball, striking it again and again before eventually sweeping it subtly into a hole a mere four inches in circumference—the fewer strokes the better. Europeans had been playing golf for hundreds of years, but the sport had only arrived on this side of the Atlantic in the late 1880s in a few select spots, and one of those was Rochester—thanks in large part, as legend has it, to a tobacco magnate named William S. Kimball. Kimball was among Rochester’s foremost businessmen, one of the largest employers of women in the city and also the man who commissioned the statue of Mercury that was originally perched on the roof of his tobacco factory and now resides atop the Thomson West building downtown on Broad Street. In the summer of 1892, Kimball read about this game called golf and, eager to learn more, convinced four of his friends who were vacationing in Nantucket to meet him in New York City, where golf had already taken hold, so they could try their hand at it. Kimball and his friends were enthralled, and the following spring, they took it upon themselves to lay out Rochester’s first golf course in Genesee 13
Oak Hill Country Club Valley Park using flower pots as cups. Appropriately, they are believed to be the first Rochesterians to play on the city’s inaugural course. Soon, many of their colleagues and friends caught the bug, and this spike in interest led to them founding the Country Club of Rochester (CCR) in 1895. It was just the fiftieth club in the United States that included a golf course. Having watched for nearly six years the activity at CCR and realizing the exclusivity and amenities that belonging to a club provided, the original twenty-five founding members of Oak Hill brought their club to fruition, thus providing the city another option to scratch its golf itch. They spread the word about Oak Hill by explaining the benefits of joining to their friends, relatives, neighbors and business associates, and by the time the golf course was ready for play in the spring of 1902, the membership had swelled to 137. The initiation fee to join was set at $25, with an additional $5 levied for each person attached to the membership, and yearly dues were $20. You might say that was a bargain, given that today’s initiation fee ranges upward of $60,000. For their money, members were granted golfing privileges, use of the clubhouse for dinners and club functions, easy access to the river for boating and canoeing and the ever-present camaraderie and friendship of their fellow members. Though the rules of the day forbade smoking in the clubhouse and drinking or gambling anywhere on the property, the members did not seem to care, and Oak Hill quickly became a haven for social activity and recreation. The prohibition of those squalid habits encouraged a more prudent family atmosphere that would become a key ingredient in the flourishing of Oak Hill. Then, as it is now, Oak Hill was more than just a place to play golf. Finances were difficult in those first years, but in 1905, it was decided that the club should purchase the land, a combination of two farms owned by the estates of the Adlington and Wolcott families. The price was $34,000, a noteworthy amount given that Oak Hill was in debt by approximately $4,500. But the members firmly believed that what they had at Oak Hill was something special and worth the risk of incurring further financial strain. In addition to buying the land, plans went ahead to add a porch to the clubhouse. To help defray these costs, dues were raised to forty dollars per year, and a non-golfing membership was introduced at a rate of twenty dollars per month on top of a ten-dollar initiation fee, thus allowing families without an interest in golf the opportunity to enjoy Oak Hill’s societal pleasures. 14
A Legacy of Golfing Excellence Membership was growing steadily and by 1907 had reached about 250. But despite the popularity of the club, monetary difficulties persisted, and two previous club treasurers had quit, reportedly because the pressure of the job was too great as they tried to operate on an annual budget of about $21,000. In 1908, guest fees were reduced to fifty cents per round in the hope that more rounds would be played, thus increasing revenue. But that plan couldn’t raise enough money even for the club to splurge on hiring professional musicians to provide entertainment at certain functions. Through it all, one thing remained undeterred at Oak Hill: its spirit. The members reveled in the ever-growing regional significance of Oak Hill, and they were prepared to do whatever it took to ensure the viability of what they had created. This was evident in 1910 when the members approved two seismic projects that indicated there was no turning back now: the construction of a second nine holes to bring the golf course up to the traditional eighteen-hole standard, and a sparkling new clubhouse that would cost more than $70,000. Dues and initiation fees were raised to $50, and the dues quickly climbed to $75, with each member also asked to pay a $50 assessment in order to help foot the bill. The new structure opened on Memorial Day 1911 and included a wraparound porch, a social hall, a dining room that seated 450 and eighteen bedrooms for overnight guests. For much of the next decade, Oak Hill surged ahead, even as the country plunged wholly into the Great War. Golf was gaining rapid popularity in Rochester and across the country, in no small part because of the exploits of a flamboyant soul from East Rochester named Walter Hagen, who had gained international fame for winning the U.S. Open in 1914 and then again in 1919. Oak Hill’s roll call counted some of the most powerful men in the city, and they were enjoying a course that had begun to develop character and challenging maturity through careful landscaping and nurturing. So it was no surprise that as the magnificent decade of the 1920s came roaring in, Oak Hill’s membership was highly skeptical of the controversial real estate proposal that would wipe out more than twenty years of equity and force the club to start from scratch in a new location—one that at the time wasn’t nearly as desirable as the perch hard by the Genesee.
15