William Tucker - Hudson River, Century, Wykagyl and Teugega

[Sven Nilsen]

A May 1919 article in Golfers Magazine notes William Tucker building the Hudson River CC course, as well as remodeling Century, Wykagyl and Teugega.  This was all news to me, especially the Hudson River work.  The Ross Society has Hudson River as a 1916 DR design, but there are no corroborating documents I could find in the Tufts Archive.

An ad from the December 1919 edition of the same Magazine notes Tucker's work at a number of clubs, including Hudson River and Wykagyl (as well as two Tennis Clubs and the Princeton University Football Field).

[Ronald Montesano]

Watch your words, laddie! He only made "some changes" at Teugega. No remodel on that hallowed grounds.

[Sven Nilsen]

Ron:

If you note the dates, Tucker's work would have just preceded Ross doing his design (his plan is dated 1920) for the new course at Teugega.  Your "hallowed grounds" came about later.

Sven

[Sven Nilsen]

An earlier reporting of some of the same work from the April 21, 1919 edition of The Sun:

[Ronald Montesano]

Ron:

If you note the dates, Tucker's work would have just preceded Ross doing his design (his plan is dated 1920) for the new course at Teugega.  Your "hallowed grounds" came about later.

Sven

Praise the lord. That would have been the old site of Teugega, the one Ross called one of the two worst sites he had ever seen for golf.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Saegkill was the original name of HRCC.

An article from 1919 attributing the 'new' course to Ross.
http://tinyurl.com/lagcw92

[Sven Nilsen]

Here's the article mentioned by Jim.  Interesting to note the work Ross was doing was "changes in the greens" and that there is no mention of Tucker.

[Jim_Kennedy]

There's an article saying that the work was also going to lengthen holes as the club had 8 that were under 300 yards. I'll send it when I retrieve it.

[Craig Disher]

This is interesting. Many years ago while looking for a 1930's aerial of a course in NJ, I came across a course that I couldn't identify. Based on where the flight track occurred, there were no extant golf courses in the vicinity. I showed the aerial to several people but no one could identify it. Ron Forse looked at it and said he was certain that it was a Ross design. A couple years later I found a mention of Hudson River CC which led to determining the location. I trust Ron so I'm certain there must have been significant Ross input into the design.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Craig,
A 1947 aerial. The location is Odell Terrace in Yonkers (the road cutting through the course), on and around the present day Lenoir Preserve and other various buildings. The large building on the left, just above the road, was the Boyce Thompson Institute

 

[Sven Nilsen]

Here's the other article that Jim mentioned, from the May 12, 1918 edition of The Sun.

The fact that Tucker included HRCC in his Dec. 1919 Ad as a reference suggests he did actually do some kind of work at the club.  Perhaps he and Ross worked alongside each other, perhaps he was more involved with the actual construction.  It should be noted that Tucker was considered an expert in Turf Management and Development, so there is the chance his work solely related to that field.

Right now, I think there's more than enough evidence to put an asterisk on the Ross List.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Sven,
Here's another mention of Ross at HRCC:



 

[Craig Disher]

When I finally connected my aerial to Hudson Valley CC I contacted the Westchester Historical Society to see if they had any information on the club. They sent me this excerpt from a history of golf in Westchester written by Wm Quirin of the MGA.

"The St. Andrews story has a footnote.  During the 1890s the unwritten policy at St. Andrews regarding lady golfers was simple: To the ladies, God bless them, always welcome but never invited.  So in 1895 a group of St. Andrews women, led by Mrs. John Reid, Janet Waring and Frances Gilman, organized the Saegkill Country Club.  They leased land and a cottage from John Waring off North Broadway, about one mile north of Yonkers and the Westchester County line.  By April 1896 the club numbered approximately 100 members, the majority women (although the first president was J. Harvey Bell), and a six-hole golf course was built for them by Henry Tallmadge and John Upham.  In 1900 the club bought some property off Odell Avenue in Greystone, and moved, building a new clubhouse and golf course there.

The Saegkill experiment--a majority of the membership and executive committee being women--ended in 1915 when the men took over.  They changed the club's name to the Hudson River Country Club, and engaged Donald Ross to modernize the golf facilities.

In its later years, Hudson River was owned by Dr. and Mrs. [first name unknown] Whiteman, she being a tobacco heiress.  They controlled the club's membership, admitting only people they personally liked.  Annual fees were relatively inexpensive, but the head count dwindled over the years.  When the Whitemans died (both in their nineties), the club had to be sold to pay the estate taxes.  The remaining members could not match a $3,000,000 offer made by Boyce Thompson, a horticultural research center.  The club closed its doors after the 1968 season, and today the property is part of the Lower Westchester Industrial Complex."

I visited the site several years ago and took photos of what remained of the Boyce Thompson center (it may be gone now), the site of the clubhouse and the still-standing gates, and a few other photos of the surroundings. I can't locate them but if I do, I'll post some.

[Kevin_D]

Sven,

Very interesting, thanks for sharing.

I was not aware that Tucker did work at Wykagyl.

Ross redesigned some holes at around the same time, so I wonder if they could have worked together at WCC as well? 

I will see if I can investigate. It's been on my "to do" list to find out what exactly Ross and Tillinghast each did to the course anyway.

Kevin

[Jim_Kennedy]

Craig,
The BTI building still stands. Several urban photographers have done essays on it if you can't locate your own photos. I hope you do as it would be nice to see what the entry gates looked like.

I've learned that the doctor's name was Orrin S.. Also, in the mid-seventies county planners had a land swap plan that would have given Thompson the Dunwoodie golf course for HRCC, but it fell through.

[Craig Disher]

Jim,
These photos are from 1945. The first is the green you posted. The spine isn't as obvious since the sun was in a different location. The second is the green of what I think is the first hole. The spine through that green is much more visible.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Sven,

Preakness Hills, in Wayne, NJ is a wonderful Tucker design, circa 1926/7.

There are a number of very interesting features introduced into the design, amongst them a good number of diagonal drainage creeks in the DZ, and a number of parallel creeks, with a number of crossing drainage creeks.

There's also a good number of debris mounds.

When first opened, only one bunker in the DZ and both nines ended with a par 3 (one since abandoned)

Greens emerge, seemlessly out of the fairways.

14 direction changes.
Uphill & downhill holes, doglegs left and right, and a great collection of diverse par 3's ( 140, 160, 185 and 230 from the back tees.)

Prevailing wind from the west

Small greens

About 6,600 from the back tees, maybe 6,700 at most and fun to play day in and day out.

Resist scoring in spite of the yardage

[Joe Bausch]

From Mike Cirba:

[Craig Disher]

Hudson River CC - what's left. These photos date from 2006 so even these remnants may be gone.

The entrance to the old clubhouse:


For some reason, the gazebo was still stianding:


The Boyce Thompson center for botanical research. The building was probably visible from every hole on the gc.

[V. Kmetz]

Well, there might be one more remnant of Hudson River CC left...


I recently purchased this porcelain ornament, which has re-fueled my lantern to seek out more about this club. A few of those results to come.

cheers

vk

[V. Kmetz]

RE: Hudson River Country Club

Hello,

Let me first say that Sven, Jim K and especially Craig D. have done some first rate sleuthing and discovery here. I'm sorry I missed this thread in the fall when it first bubbled, but my fire is lit now, as research I've been doing into another matter has dovetailed me right into this.

While in this realm, any new discoveries of previously un-discussed courses from the hand of a master (Ross) tend to gush, the picture is starting to form that this was quite a place. I'll do my best to back that up (in a preliminary sense) a bit later. But first, some amendments to the terrific investment people have made.

I have to start with Craig D's contributions, as they really lend a tactile basis to this discussion.

Craig,

1. I too believed that the second 1945 image you detailed for Jim K (vis a vis the "spine in the green") was Hole #1, but then I read this account from "Bob Burns" a 2012 poster on a site devoted to the Boyce Thompson Institute: "The images of the decaying Boyce Thompson Institute and abandoned Alder Manor really cranked up some old memories. I was a caddy at the now defunct but then swanky Hudson River Country Club ($2.50 for carrying two bags eighteen holes). The big red brick Institute building loomed over us as we climbed up the third fairway."

With that information, along with the understanding that the 18th was a par 3, and that the course emerged from a six and nine hole "Saegkill" version in the southern third of the Ross-designed/Tucker built 18-hole "Hudson River CC" final route, I believe I can accurately present the following map (and rough legend) of the course:



To give an added flavor to things, please refer to the 10th fairway in the middle-right of the image above, which references a water tower. This view (below) of the Executive Boulevard Water Tower is looking East (the Hudson River and magnificent Palisades on its opposite shore, are about 500 yards at your back, 300 or so feet below). I should have marked it on the map, but this modern view is taken from what would be just the other side of the road behind the 5th green, a tad to the left.


I believe I'll have somewhat more in the coming months; the plate was a rare find and I'm about to investigate accounts of a female player who played golf on the original Saegkill "ladies" club in the first two years of its existence. Whenever I next get to respond, I'll go into my growing comprehension that this Ross course was too good to be gone.

cheers

vk

[Phil Young]

Then again... Note this article which states that Tilly was to do the redesign at HRCC and that William Ticker would do the construction of it. Its from the 5.20.1918 NY Evening Sun

[V. Kmetz]

Hello,

Well, Phil's offering raises some questions, especially when compared with Jim K's post 11. One of these two articles is wrong...

1. Is it the 5.20.1918 Evening sun which details AWT as the architect to implement still-upcoming changes?

OR

2. Is it the two articles chronologically on either side of the Phil's find... (6-17-16 Evening Post) (9-24-19 The Sun) which state Ross was the supervising architect?

The 9-24-19 Sun article seems to have been reporting on a rained-out preview of the course that was to include local news/golf folk.

In either case, it seems that Tucker was the builder, and not the designer.

At this point, I'm more inclined to believe the Ross authorship, and that the AWT reference is in error in the last article (PY's) posted.

But another interim question this all raises for me is.

What was the state of the course between June 1916 - Sept 1919?...were they still using the Saegkill "bones" for 2.5 - 3 seasons while the bigger course was under renovation? Is it possible that Ross implemented changes in 1916-1917...and Tillie got involved in the middle, perhaps "tweaking" what Ross had done?

cheers

vk

[Jeff_Brauer]

Others will recall better than me, but in the post WWI period, it was said that Ross used many other architects to build his backlog of pre WWI designs. Seems like this could have been one of those, although we still have to account for Phil's article.

We have all seen articles that continue to use outdated facts from previous articles, we just have to figure out which one it is....

[Jim_Kennedy]

,