NEVER BUILT: Parkway Country Club, Searingtown NY (Emmet, Emmet & Tull)

[Phil Carlucci]

Special thanks to fellow GCA poster Richard Demenna, who forwarded a post from the great Vanderbilt Motor Parkway website.  A historian on that site recently posted a couple of maps, one of which is this highly detailed Emmet, Emmet & Tull drawing of a proposed golf course called Parkway Country Club (as seen in the link below).  It would have been located immediately east of CB Mac's Links Club and southwest of Emmet's little-known Shelter Rock GC, with entrances directly along the Motor Parkway.  It's a 6,500 yard par-71 according to the map.

Other than this map, I can't find any other record, article or document.  Has anyone ever heard of this?

My guess is it was an early-1930s design that was scrapped due to the market crash and Depression.  Emmet, Emmet & Tull wasn't a formal entity until 1929, as far as I can tell.

The historian who posted it has no record of the source or from where he received it.  You can see the map in his post linked here (scroll down in the post for a clickable higher-res image):

https://www.vanderbiltcupraces.com/blog/article/do_not_post_kleiners_korner_miscellaneous_maps_of_the_motor_parkway

[Paul Rudovsky]

Interesting...but have never heard of it (I am old but not THAT old).  The "Motor Parkway" that is referred to is now the "Northern State Parkway" in Nassau Counties (Searington is in Nassau) and Grand Central Parkway in Queens County (which is part of NYC).  The Northern State Parkway was planned in the 1920's and construction started in the early 1930's.  Construction  of the Long Island Expressway did not commence until the 1950's.

[Doug Braunsdorf]

Very interesting find!


If you want to find the location today on a map of your choice, it's the location of Herricks High School and the surrounding houses. 


The "Links at North Hills" development just to the east is the land which was The Links. 


@Paul, respectfully, the "Motor Parkway" referenced in the course map is Vanderbilt's Long Island Motor Parkway.  The Northern State Parkway is a different roadway. 


The LIMP ran on the south edge of The Links, and curved up and around this property.  You can see it on a map today; the right of way is not continuous today.  It headed east and cut south right in the middle of Wheatley Hills Golf Club. 

[Paul Rudovsky]

interesting and thanks...i stand corrected

[Josh Bills]

Here is the location from a 1947 aerial.




Here is an overlay of Parkway on the 1947 map.

[Phil Carlucci]

Had this course been built, it would have been conceivable, say around 1930, to drive east on the LI Motor Parkway and within about a single half-mile pass along the southern boundary of the Links Club (Macdonald) and curve around the northern boundary of Parkway CC (Emmet) while glancing northeast to the Shelter Rock GC (Emmet) on the other side of the road. 

https://www.historicmapworks.com/Map/US/2576/Plate+003/Nassau+County+1939+Long+Island/New+York/

Not far ahead you'd turn due south on the Parkway and cut right through the center of Wheatley Hills (Emmet).

The LIMP was abandoned only a few years later.

[Doug Braunsdorf]

Had this course been built, it would have been conceivable, say around 1930, to drive east on the LI Motor Parkway and within about a single half-mile pass along the southern boundary of the Links Club (Macdonald) and curve around the northern boundary of Parkway CC (Emmet) while glancing northeast to the Shelter Rock GC (Emmet) on the other side of the road. 

https://www.historicmapworks.com/Map/US/2576/Plate+003/Nassau+County+1939+Long+Island/New+York/

Not far ahead you'd turn due south on the Parkway and cut right through the center of Wheatley Hills (Emmet).

The LIMP was abandoned only a few years later.

@Phil, was Shelter Rock ever built?  This thread is the first I'd heard of it. 

[Phil Carlucci]

Had this course been built, it would have been conceivable, say around 1930, to drive east on the LI Motor Parkway and within about a single half-mile pass along the southern boundary of the Links Club (Macdonald) and curve around the northern boundary of Parkway CC (Emmet) while glancing northeast to the Shelter Rock GC (Emmet) on the other side of the road. 

https://www.historicmapworks.com/Map/US/2576/Plate+003/Nassau+County+1939+Long+Island/New+York/

Not far ahead you'd turn due south on the Parkway and cut right through the center of Wheatley Hills (Emmet).

The LIMP was abandoned only a few years later.

@Phil, was Shelter Rock ever built?  This thread is the first I'd heard of it.

Yes, it was around from 1922 to ~1945.  There are a few old articles that describe it in light detail.  One of them talks about Emmet giving a walking tour to the editor of Golf Illustrated.  You can see it in a 1926 aerial on the Nassau County website.  (The same site has an aerial from 1950 that shows the site being developed with a few hole corridors still intact.)

https://lrv.nassaucountyny.gov/map/

[Craig Disher]

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[Richard DeMenna]

Very interesting find!


If you want to find the location today on a map of your choice, it's the location of Herricks High School and the surrounding houses. 


The "Links at North Hills" development just to the east is the land which was The Links. 


@Paul, respectfully, the "Motor Parkway" referenced in the course map is Vanderbilt's Long Island Motor Parkway.  The Northern State Parkway is a different roadway. 


The LIMP ran on the south edge of The Links, and curved up and around this property.  You can see it on a map today; the right of way is not continuous today.  It headed east and cut south right in the middle of Wheatley Hills Golf Club.

As a former Links GC caddie and Herricks High School alumni, the area discussed is very familiar to me.  Here is detailed picture, circa 1926, that shows the main entrance of the Links GC near the Vanderbilt Motor Parkway (outlined in red) while the highway was still in operation. Continuing east on the VMP (past Shelter Rock Road), the proposed course would be south of the parkway.