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Merion East and West Golf Courses

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1911, Hugh Wilson. 450 Ardmore Ave., 1.5 miles southwest of Haverford

The Merion Cricket Club ( MO6) stimulated interest in numerous outdoor sports for the Main Line's growing industrial elite. The club commissioned a member, Hugh Wilson, to research and design a course based on historic Scots and English clubs. The East Course with its steep-faced, Scottish-style bunkers and its wicker baskets on poles in lieu of flags is distinctive among American clubs. More championships have been contested on the East Course than any other in the United States—a legacy now endangered by its miniature size of 126 acres, which makes it difficult to accommodate the parking and crowds of modern mass events. The West Course, also by Wilson in 1911, is more open and considered less demanding. The golf clubhouse was designed in 1911 by Furness, Evans and Co., continuing a relationship between the Merion Cricket Club and the architects that reached back to the first cricket club in Ardmore (demolished), designed in 1880 by club founder Allen Evans.

Writing Credits

Author: 
George E. Thomas
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Data

What's Nearby

Old Haverford Meetinghouse
Founders’ Hall
College Green
Suntop Houses
Haverford College

Citation

George E. Thomas, "Merion East and West Golf Courses", [Ardmore, Pennsylvania], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/PA-02-DE37.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of PA vol 2

Buildings of Pennsylvania: Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania, George E. Thomas, with Patricia Likos Ricci, Richard J. Webster, Lawrence M. Newman, Robert Janosov, and Bruce Thomas. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012, 233-233.

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