After a few false starts, the “gentlemen’s game” became established in a young town.
There is much debate as to exactly when and where golf began. Scotland is usually given the credit dating to the 1400’s, but other countries and cultures claim to have created similar games. The history of golf in the United States is also a mystery, with references as early as 1659 in Albany, N.Y., and in Charleston, S.C. in 1743. What is clear is that the first 18-hole gold course in the United States was established in Chicago in 1893, and that seven years later the young town on Winter Park would join the club…the golf club.
Winter Park Country Club
By 1900 golf was popular in the Midwest and New England, and settlers coming to Winter Park brought their love of the game with them. The Winter Park Golf Club, later known as the Winter Park Country Club, was formed. Charles H. Morse hired John Dunn of Scotland to design a golf course, and in 1905 members voted to build their first clubhouse.
In 1910 Morse set out the nine-hole course that started at the present site of the Women’s Club near the corner of Interlachen and Fairbanks Avenues. Golfers used tees and greens made from clay on a course that headed west to the railroad tracks, then south through part of the Rollins College campus to the shore of Lake Virginia. Dow George was the club professional presiding over the course that was later revised and expanded to 25 acres.
Tee Up!
In 1914 an 18-hole course was set up at the country club at the north end of Interlachen Avenue, and the club obtained a permit to build a $3,500 clubhouse. Two years later the course opened for its first full season, with Morse as club president. About 70 members of the club also formed a Summer County Club, which was led by Forney W. Shepard. In 1917 during World War I, in answer to the country’s meat shortage, the country club opened its course as pasture for 150 goats and 250 sheep. During the flowing year, the clay greens were replaced by grass.
The Winter Park Country Club closed in 1925, and the following year the city acquired the course property from the Morse estate. The area, known as Morse Park, saw golf again in 1932 when the Little Country Club set up a three-hole course and putting green. The Winter Park Country Club reopened on Thanksgiving Day 1937, thanks to the encouragement of the Chamber of Commerce. Golfers continue to play the course today, and the historic clubhouse is used by many organizations.
Aloma Country Club
In 1925 – the same year the Winter Park Country Club closed – 360 acres southeast of the intersection of what is now Aloma and Lakemont Avenue were bought by Winter Park Golf Estates Inc., and the Aloma Country Club opened later that year. By October, there were several homes with a total value of $300,000 under construction. Each homebuyer was promised a perpetual membership in the Aloma Country Club. The clubhouse was built in 1926, and five miles of winding boulevards were paved throughout the course, with Aloma Creek dredged through its center.
Big Dreams
Two sections of the Aloma subdivision were platted by early 1927, and in the minds of its developers, they had great potential. In February 1927, Roland Hotard announced that he expected 100 lots (at 1,000 each) to be sold within the following 90 days. His optimism was mere wishful thinking, and sales fell well below expectations.
In 1927, the 45,000 clubhouse was inaugurated with a New Year’s Eve party. The course stretched 6,180 yards over its 18-holes and included “an easy nine-hole course for the ladies,” according to press reports. The first club professional was Jock Kennedy, and he was replaced by Dow George. In 1929 a city election legalized golf, baseball, tennis and movies on Sunday. But by margin of only 3.5 of the total 643 votes cast. Golf was becoming more popular, and in 1931 it was added as an intercollegiate sport at Rollins College.
No Home for Golfers
Because of a lack of funds, the Aloma Country Club closed in 1936, which left Winter Park without even a nine-hole course for a year until the Winter Park Country Club reopened. An association was formed in 1937 to protect the city’s $250,000 investment in the Aloma subdivision. Plans were made to set up a new 18-hole golf course on the property.
In 1939, the city deeded three acres in the eastern section, which included the deteriorating clubhouse, to Rollins College with the intention that it be used to house a natural history museum. The cost to transform the clubhouse was estimated at $20,000 and the project was never undertaken. Instead, the clubhouse was allowed to crumble away. Years later, hotelier Robert e. Langford reminisced about hunting trips he took there – the location was just outside the city limits where hunting was legal. He described the clubhouse s “an old, overgrown Spanish architectural venture that failed.”
In 1941 the Orange County Parks & Recreation Association acquired the land (where Winter Park Memorial Hospital now stands), with the understanding that it would again be used as a 19-hole gold course. Its members hoped the Federal Works Progress Administration would provide resources to turn the area into a recreation center. That year, the original 1925 plat was vacated, officially eliminating grandiose plans for the Aloma Golf Club community. No help came from the WPA, and the association later sold the land to the City of Winter Park for $5,875.78. The city planned to recoup its cost by receiving 5 percent of the income earned by Megargel Golf Inc., which leased the property for a Pitch & Putt Golf Club.
That venture failed, and in 1951 the memorial Hospital Trust Association was formed to raise funds for a hospital to be built on land that included the locations of holes 1 and 18 off the Aloma course. The organization’s leaders contracted with the city to acquire 15 acres, then valued at $50,000. They hired a group of architects that included James Gamble Rogers II to design a modern hospital. Aided greatly by a $155,000 donation by Mrs. Fred Albee Sr., the project moved ahead. Work started October 15, 1953. The links were replaced with operating rooms, and Winter Park Memorial Hospital opened on January 16, 1955.
The rest of the land was redeveloped. Roads were rerouted and lakes eliminated, and today the area is occupied by business along Lakemont and Aloma Avenue, and houses, apartments and condominiums to the east. In 1965, the plat for the first portion of the large Winter Park Pines neighbor hood was recorded, and what used to be greens, fairways and water hazards are now homesites.
Written by: Tesha Daniels – [email protected]
