| Shenecossett
Country Club, a former integral component of an exclusive turn-of-the-century
seaside resort, is today an important element of both local history and
Americana. In addition, having been transformed from playground for millionaires
to public facility, the history of Shenecossett is also representative
of the social evolution of the game of golf in America during the twentieth
century.
When Thomas W. Avery first developed Shenecossett in 1898, the country
club consisted of four holes and clubhouse. Sixteen years later Morton
F. Plant opened eighteen holes of championship caliber at Shenecossett
that had been laid out by Donald J. Ross, one of America’s most respected,
if not revered, golf course architects. The golf course, a part of the
prominent summer resort at Eastern Point in Groton, Connecticut, then gained
national recognition as site of the Griswold Cup, a women’s invitational
tournament played from 1919 to 1940.
History and transformation of this
golf course is inextricably linked to and is a reflection of national
and local events that fostered, shaped and ultimately brought about the
demise
of Eastern Point as a stylish summer colony. Unlike hundreds of other
private clubs that closed their doors during the depression of the 1930s,
Shenecossett
survived because of combined influences of public support, local political
and fiscal interests, religious overtones, and the movement to conserve
natural resources that took root during the 1960s. Although a writer
for the New York Times suggested during The Great Depression in 1933
that golf
is an economic barometer, the record of Shenecossett’s development,
on the contrary, suggests that Shenecossett is the product of events
rather than predictors of them. In the case of Shenecossett, its present
disposition
as a municipal golf course is fitting, in that its architect wrote, “The
development of the municipal golf course is the outstanding feature of
the game in America today. It is the greatest step ever taken to make
it the game of the people, as it should be.”
The story of Eastern Point and Shenecossett
Country Club begins when Albert Avery, set out in mid 19th century to
produce “a watering-place and summer resort of the pleasant point” on
the eastern shore of the mouth of the Thames River. An early map of Groton
(Fig. 1) suggests a sparsely populated area of the town called Shenecossett,
including Eastern Point and Avery Point in 1868. A photograph printed
in a 1983 issue of The New London Day reveals the undeveloped
and rock-strewn character of that formerly glaciated area.
Eastern Point, by end of the
19th century, was a popular and vibrant seaside colony of a sort where
wealthy Americans of that era enjoyed healthy and refreshing air, as
a respite from the exigencies of city life. Avery’s creation offered
the “refined and cultured” crowd a lavish life style and
a secure stage typical of the era on which to display its financial success
and elevated social status, a place where it could enjoy newly discovered
leisure time and recreational activities adopted from the British tradition,
such as croquet and lawn tennis.
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| To insure
privacy, a constable restricted access to the colony to residents, guests
and hired help.
Summer residents, representing some of America’s most elite social
families, including the Belding, Cushman, Fleischmann and Hueblein Families,
arrived from cities such as Baltimore, Hartford, New York, and Philadelphia
by motor vehicle, passenger steamship, and via power launch from the
railroad station across the Thames River in New London.
They stayed in
their shingle style cottages ranging from quaint vernacular structures
to imposing mansions in the Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles
built primarily at the turn of the century. Alternatively, visitors stayed
at Ocean House, the first hotel at Eastern Point. Later they stayed
at
Edgecomb House, built at a second site, which served guests from 1871
until 1875, when it renovated, enlarged and renamed the Fort Griswold
House.
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In 1905 the latter hotel,
in turn, was torn down and replaced by The Griswold, which opened in
1906 (Fig. 2). Dress at Eastern Point was formal, of chiffon and lace,
starch collars and pinstripe suits, and Mildred Lehman remembers it contributed
to an atmosphere of gentility and sophistication. An available postcard
showing a waterside streetscape reinforces that perception (Fig. 3).
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It was thus in an opulent and
exclusive setting that Thomas W. Avery, son of Albert, founded Shenecossett
Country Club in 1898 on his property adjacent to the Avery homestead along
Eastern Point Road and across from the summer colony (see Fig. 6 for location
of Avery homestead). An early, undated scorecard notes that beginning date
and New London, Connecticut as the recognizable location (Fig. 4).
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