Golf Course Information

Description

In the 1870s, a group of Pittsburgh gentlemen, mostly of British heritage, laid the foundation for what has endured to be the oldest sports club in Western Pennsylvania. At the time, cricket was a significant aspect of British culture in this country and increased in popularity in the post-Civil War period, while the sport of golf had yet to experience its boom. Therefore, the men formed the Pittsburgh Cricket Club, which was the early predecessor of what we now know at the Pittsburgh Field Club. The Cricket Club was chartered on April 1, 1882, and the date has long been considered the Field Club's birthday.

The cricket grounds were established in the borough of Brushton, adjacent to the eastern border of the city of Pittsburgh, at a location known as Park Place in the region of Forbes Street and Braddock Avenue. Brushton was later annexed by Pittsburgh, and this area became known as the Homewood-Brushton section of the city.

In addition to cricket, sporting activities at the club included archery, croquet, tennis, track and field and bicycling. By 1895, however, interest in cricket was fading, and three rudimentary golf holes were constructed on the cricket grounds, making it second only to Allegheny Country Club in the establishment of a golf course in Western Pennsylvania. In 1886, the Cricket Club was reorganized, and the name changed to the Pittsburgh Field Club. Additional holes were created in ensuing years so that by the turn of the century, the club featured a nine-hole course. As the new century began, the popularity of golf exploded nationally and locally, while interest in cricket continued to decline.

Expansion was inevitable, and in 1915, the club moved to its new home in the Fox Chapel area of O'Hara Township, where it purchased a 171-acre tract of land in what was then a sparsely populated rural location. Alexander H. Findlay, known as the father of American golf, voluntarily designed the new 18-hole golf course. Soon after, five holes underwent Donald Ross revisions. The renovations continued through time, with a parade of course architects -- Albert (A.W.) Tillinghast, Willie Park Jr., Emil Loeffler and John McGlynn, Bill Irvin, Robert Trent Jones, Arthur Hills, Craig Schreiner and Tripp Davis -- playing a major role in the course's evolution.

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