Fig. 5. Houses of Morton Plant: (A) temporary residence at Eastern Point,
(The Day, 16 October 1982, 17) and (B) Branford House at Avery Point.

might better blend with surrounding landscape. With similar attention to detail, Plant brought Italian stonemasons to the United States to build a staircase of imported Italian marble. Though only a summer residence, a staff of fifty maintained the estate year-round. Plant had an enduring interest in farming and, as a gentleman farmer, he cultivated prize-winning flowers in his extensive greenhouses and raised prize-winning cattle and poultry in his state-of-the-art experimental Branford Farm.  4

Plant purchased Fort Griswold House at the end of the 1905 summer season and replaced it with an imposing four story, four-hundred-room wooden structure, The Griswold, designed in neo-classical style (Fig. 2D). To insure readiness of the hotel for the summer season the following year, no expense was spared, and construction was completed in a scant 225 days. Amenities including barbershop, beauty salon, drug store and ice cream parlor were available for convenience of guests. Rooms in The Griswold were furnished in mahogany, lighted with electricity, and provided with long distance telephone service. Highly successful the first season, a new wing was added at the end of the season; annexes were built in 1909 and in 1916, making it one of the largest summer resort hotels on the East Coast of the United States. Plant set out “to cater to class that demands the best.” To this end, he supplied guests with fresh vegetables, dairy products and poultry from his own Branford Farm “to assure patrons of the best markets afford.” Under Plant’s guidance, The Griswold

became social center of the summer colony and attraction for some of America’s wealthiest families such as Astor, Vanderbilt and Rockefellew Families. The Griswold shared managers, staff, and orchestra, in addition to golf professionals, with Plant’s Hotel Belleview on the west coast of Florida in Belleair.  5

Between 1903 and 1912, Plant bought parcels of land adjacent to Shenecossett Country Club, and in 1913, he purchased golf course and clubhouse from Thomas W. Avery. These acquisitions signaled Plant’s intention to elevate the game of golf at Eastern Point much in the way he had previously re-energized the colony by rebuilding and enhancing hotel facilities. By replacing the existing golf course with a championship layout, Plant provided a more complete facility more in keeping with the high society life style of the colony. Timing of his land purchases coincides with the American public’s growing interest in golf prior to WWI. Though the game in this country at that time was essentially a sporting hobby of the wealthy, the play of President William Howard Taft (1908-1912) had captured the imagination of Americans. Francis Ouimet, a twenty-year-old son of a French-Canadian immigrant, reinforced that interest by winning the national championship in 1913 at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, where he had formerly caddied. Moreover, his near mythical defeat of Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, two of Britain’s finest players, fostered a new identity for the game in the United States, one separate from the British tradition and one that more Americans could relate to. This new enthusiasm for the game, without doubt, contributed to the nearly six-fold increase in number of golfers in the United States over the next ten years and, by extension, growth of the game at Shenecossett.  6

In building his golf course, Plant hired Donald J. Ross to layout eighteen-holes on one hundred twenty nine acres (Fig. 6). Ross, an immigrant from Scotland, had earned a national reputation for his earlier architectural work at the Pinehurst golf facility in North Carolina; and from about 1912 onward, many viewed him as America’s most recognized and active course architect. His design at Shenecossett yielded a golf course 6,029 yards in length that played to a par of 71. Plant, in his characteristic pursuit of excellence, had soil shipped from Virginia and New Jersey for use in forming bunkers, as well as fairways that were remembered by Durham M. Burt, a former professional at Shenecossett (1926-1938), as being the best between Boston and New York.  7

In addition, Plant built a new clubhouse at the site of the original (Fig. 7). With The Griswold being the social center at The Point, the new facility, designed in simple and straight lines of the mission style, was functional and tasteful, not ostentatious; it did not upstage the golf course. The new clubhouse measured two hundred feet in length, and included shower facilities and lockers for three hundred golfers.   8

Opened under the The Griswold umbrella in 1914, management of the hotel advertised Shenecossett Country Club as “the finest in New England.” It encouraged the patronage of golfers and set golf rates for the season that ranged upward from one dollar per day to twenty dollars for the July-August season (by way of perspective, that same year workers in the manufacturing sector earned about forty-eight dollars per month). Men’s and women’s club championships, ringer tournaments and mixed foursome matches, begun in previous years, continued to be a part of the club’s tournament schedule. In addition, management arranged exhibition matches, featuring leading professionals of the day as a means of attracting and entertaining guests.

That first year, M. J. Brady and Thomas McNamara defeated Carl Anderson and Alex Smith in a four-ball match that effectively ushered in a new golfing era at Shenecossett, leading to national recognition of the golf course. A year, later Carl Anderson established a scoring record of 71 for the new course. The Shenecossett Open, played in 1915 and 1916, drew former United States national champions including Alex Smith, J. J. McDermott, George Sargent and Walter Hagen, as well as the golfing veteran M. J. Brady. In addition to the 36-hole stroke-play tournament, contests for approaching, putting and long driving were also conducted as part of the event. In the inaugural competition, J. M. Barnes, a future national champion, posted the winning score of 148 and Nelson Whitney, a prominent player from New Orleans, was low amateur with a score of 162. The following year Barnes retained his title, despite MacDonald Smith’s new course record score of 69.  9

Local newspapers responded to the added emphasis on the game at Eastern Point by moving their coverage of golf from neighborhood column to sports page in 1915. American Golfer and the New York Times, also began to report events at Shenecossett that same year, suggesting a growing nation-wide interest in the golf played at Eastern Point. Moreover, as an indication of the social status of Eastern Point, the Times continued to report results of golf played there through 1939. In 1916, the club became the one hundred twenty-eighth active member in the United States Golf Association (USGA).  10

Tournament play by professionals at Shenecossett was suspended during WWI. However, in that Eastern Point was a favored summer place of the wealthy, the golf course was an excellent site for holding exhibitions in support of various war-related funds. Money was raised at these events through subscriptions, collection of gallery fees, and by auctioning caddying privileges, as well as balls and clubs used by players that included Bob Jones, Francis Ouimet, Elaine Rosenthal, Alex Smith, Alexa Stirling and Jerome Travers.  11

Between 1916 and 1918, architect Donald Ross returned to Shenecossett and, within existing golf course boundaries, changed holes eleven, twelve and thirteen to fine-tune the golf course (Figs. 8 and 6). A new par three eleventh hole was inserted in the routing of holes through construction of a new tee and green. A second new tee was built and integrated with the original eleventh fairway and green to produce a par five twelfth hole. Holes twelve (par four) and thirteen (par three) of Ross’ initial layout were combined to create a new par five thirteenth. In doing so, Ross retained the existing twelfth tee and built a new thirteenth green. These changes effectively lengthened the course ninety-five yards to 6,125 yards and increased par to 72.  12

Following the war, an upswing in the nation’s business cycle, and an increase in both leisure time and buying power of the dollar permitted more Americans to actively participate in sports. The value of sporting goods produced increased commensurately from 23.8 million dollars in 1919 to 58.3 million dollars in 1929. To be sure, golf became the “sport of sports” nationwide during the “Roaring twenties”, particularly among aspiring young executives, financiers, and lawyers, who perceived golf as being of social importance and as a means of advancing careers. It has been estimated that expenditures by Americans playing the game rose from 217 million dollars in 1923 to 468 million dollars in 1926. By 1929, manufactured golf equipment accounted for thirty-six percent of the value of all sporting goods produced, signifying the growing popularity of the game and its increasing importance to the recreation industry. Despite an increase in public facilities during the 1920s, golf continued to be an expensive pastime, as noted by Travers and Crowell. Moreover, the traditional country club, hub of social elitism during the decade, continued as the center of golf, with ninety percent of the 5,856 golf courses in the United States still private in 1930.  13

At Eastern Point after the war, interest and participation in the game kept pace with growth of golf nation-wide. John McEntee Bowman, who had acquired The Griswold and Shenecossett Country Club in 1919 from the estate of Morton Plant, continued the previously successful practice of conducting exhibition matches involving professionals (Fig. 9). British golfers, including Harry Vardon, George Duncan, Ted Ray and Abe Mitchell, enjoyed playing the “classy and very sporty” Shenecossett layout while touring in the United States. Jack Hutchinson, William MacFarlane, Alex Smith and Johnny Farrell of this country also played in those exhibitions. In a 1922 match, Gil Nichols and Alex Smith defeated J. H. Taylor and Alex Herd of the British Isles 5 and 4.

In a round of golf played the day before that match, Nichols set a new course record of 67, bettering Smith’s previous record by two strokes. In another match, Walter Hagen and Joe Kirkwood introduced the wooden Reddy tee. Once scorned by golfers, the new tee soon became a popular item in Alex Smith’s shop at Shenecossett, and its use replaced the practice of teeing balls on hand formed mounds of moistened dirt. Now, increasingly more widely recognized as a solid test of golf, Shenecossett was chosen as site of the Connecticut State Golf Association’s Amateur Championship in 1923.  14

More significantly, invitational tournaments for men and women were introduced following the war. Although Tommy Armour and Max Marston won the Shenecossett Cup, it was the Griswold Cup that became a nationally recognized event, attracting all of the leading women players of the day beginning in 1919. The latter competition was a weeklong occasion and one of the most pleasant events of the summer season at The Point. Festivities began with a women’s only get-together dinner held in the banquet hall of The Griswold.

Lawn parties, afternoon teas and movies were among some other social activities held throughout tournament week. Historically, women have contributed significantly to growth of golf in the United States, and it is thus not surprising that entries in the Griswold Cup increased in concert with the rising popularity of the game during the decade of the 1920s. Whereas only twenty-four women competed in 1920, one hundred, eighty-six did so in 1929. In 1925 two hundred, forty-two women played, a record number of entries in a tournament of its kind, in both this country and in Europe.  15

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