THE HISTORY OF GARDEN CITY


The Carteret Gun Club with its nine-foot fence and installations for live-pigeon shooting; and (foreground) the Island Golf Links with sheds at left for the 200 sheep used to keep it in condition. Gas and Water Works, upper right.

The Carteret Gun Club with its nine-foot fence and installations for live-pigeon shooting; and (foreground) the Island Golf Links with sheds at left for the 200 sheep used to keep it in condition. Gas and Water Works, upper right.

In honor of the Village of Garden City’s 150th Anniversary, the Garden City News and the Garden City Historical Society are pleased to present a serialization of Mrs. Mildred H. Smith’s iconic “History of Garden City,” which was originally published in 1963. For the next half year we will publish excerpts from the book each week.

Chapter 6 The Gay and Good Nineties

(Continued from last week)

With such a send-off, the popularity of the Hotel was assured, especially as the manager, Mr. M.F. Meehan, trained in the New York Park Avenue Hotel, ran the establishment in a style to satisfy the most exacting guests. He soon followed the opening events with special luncheons, recitals, lectures, balls, sleigh-rides and dances, and saw to it that such tempting dishes as Sweetbreads-Toulouse, Stuffed Lobster-Cardinal, Roast Gosling, Compote of Squab, Almond Soufflé, and Charlotte Russe-Clamart, were on the menu. Whiskeys, liqueurs, and vintage wines of all sorts were also available to diners, as were Mineral Waters or Punch Lalla Rookh for the more abstemious.

Guest lists of the next few years reflect the quality of the clientele which the new hotel was attracting. These lists are studded with such distinguished and glamorous names as the Bordman Harrimans, the Pierpont Morgans, the Astors, the Cushings, William K. Vanderbilt, Jr., Mrs. Peter Cooper Hewitt, Charles F. Havemeyer, the Belmonts, the Ladenburgs, the Jays, Lillian Russell, and Mrs. Burke- Roche. This lady seems to have been one of the reigning beauties of the day, according to the many social clippings which refer to her comings and goings, and which describe her personal appearance. The socially-minded Sentinel enthusiastically reported in the spring of 1896 that “while driving the other day, Mrs. Burke-Roche wore a remarkable gown of navy blue which fitted her as if she had been melted and poured into it. The high bodice opened over a vest of chiffon, which greeted, with a graceful caress, a striking collar of lace over pale green silk. … The hat to this costume was made of white braided straw covered with a mass of corn flowers, and two large American Beauty roses nestled affectionately just over the coil of her luxuriant hair.”

Costumes such as these, perhaps with a light veil and duster added, were worn by popular and wealthy hotel guests as they drove about Garden City in handsome carriages, runabouts, phaetons, or even Tally-ho and “fourin hand” coaches. The Tally-ho and four-in-hand were undoubtedly “the proper thing.” Nearly every pleasant afternoon at five these handsome turnouts could be seen on the Garden City roads, and several times a week coaching parties from Edgemere, Flushing and Far Rockaway made runs to have lunch at the Garden City Hotel. In fact, the Edgemere coach, Good Times, with Auriel Batonyi as whip, broke the record run between the two villages in the spring of ’96, covering the fifteen miles in 59 minutes. Those who were not driving about had fallen under the spell of the bicycle craze, which was then at its height. Men, women and children, fashionable or unfashionable, individually or in bicycle clubs, rode wheels, tandems, or imported tricycles. Saturdays and Sundays saw Garden City invaded by hundreds of bicycle enthusiasts from out of town. Clutching “Cyclist’s Paradise” maps, they arrived from New York and Brooklyn by the Long Island Rail Road, which provided specially-designed cars “for carrying the bicycles safely.” Garden City was their natural rallying-point, objective, or point of departure, with lunch or dinner at the new Hotel as part of the expedition. According to The Inquirer, a group of seventy men from the Knickerbocker Athletic Club of Brooklyn made the run one Sunday to work up an appetite, and the next week seventy-five members of the 23rd Regiment of the National Guard rode out for dinner. In fact, the general exodus on Sundays, according to The Sun of May 14, 1896, caused the Church Club of Brooklyn to consider the feasibility of a portable “bicycle church, which was to be used solely as a worshipping place for wheelmen.” And since “the true wheelman is always seeking new fields and might not like to ride over the same roads every Sunday,” it was to be a light frame structure that could be moved from place to place during the summer, at convenient distances from Brooklyn. There were of course to be “suitable sheds constructed in which the bicycles could be left during the service,” and no effort was to be spared to make the church accessible by means of good roads and bicycle paths. As the clergy so wisely put it, ”If the church wants the bicycle riders it must meet them halfway.”

According to the same article, “the Garden City Cathedral would have many cyclists within its doors on Sunday were it not for the wretched roads from Brooklyn.” These sandy and dusty roads, however, did not keep local enthusiasts from riding all over Garden City, both Sundays and weekdays, or from investing in the latest models, at $35 to $150 or more, which Mr. Porrier of the Casino, and his rival Thomas Allen, had in stock. In fact, The Sentinel reported that nearly all the prominent society ladies who lived or summered in Garden City were riding about in “pretty and bewitching costumes,” especially Mrs. Burke- Roche, whose grey and white costume blended well with her silver-mounted wheel. A few local cycle clubs were soon formed in the Village; and the Casino, which complained that wheeling had prevented tennis matches from being arranged, organized a May bicycle parade instead, consisting of a tour through the town and a short run to Lynbrook and back again. By 1897 the craze had reached conservative St. Paul’s School. It was announced that the School would build a quarter-mile bicycle track at the cost of $1,000.

Two other sports, meanwhile, were quietly gaining in popularity both in Garden City and all over the Island. Gun clubs, popular for many years, were now demanding more elaborate equipment; and golf clubs, dedicated to that fascinating and irritating game recently introduced from Scotland, were springing up in all sports-minded communities.

Garden City had organized a small gun club in 1894 under the leadership of Mr. Nicoll Floyd, Jr. and Mr. Dudley B. Fuller. Its charter members soon built a small wooden clubhouse east of the Great Well, and had the building, grounds and traps wired with electricity for clay-bird shooting. The Brooklyn Eagle of June 1895 reports that the interior of the little club was nicely arranged “and the walls hung with suitable portraits and paintings, each of which is framed with spent cartridges, fired by various members of the club on these grounds.” Practice shoots were held on holidays; but all the members looked forward especially to the serious inter-club Saturday matches which were run off for prizes and sweepstakes.

But by 1897 this modest setup was out of date. When the Carteret Gun Club of New Jersey offered to combine with the Garden City Club “for the purpose of laying out a pigeon-shooting plant that would eclipse in extent and perfection of arrangement anything hithertofore attempted,” the offer was accepted. In April of that year, after a gay dinner at Delmonico’s in New York, members of both clubs worked out a merger. A ten-year lease for the property in Garden City was soon obtained from the Garden City Company; and the new building and installations, designed by Richard Howland Hunt, were begun soon after. The site chosen was approximately where Carteret Place is today.

The building was a one-story octagonal affair with a “snug lounge for ladies” in one wing and a gun room in the other. The main lounge, with a small bar attached, had huge double plate-glass windows, through which the observers could see both shooters and traps. Kennels, coops, and keepers’ sheds were provided also, and a ninefoot fence, painted an “atmospheric color,” surrounded the grounds. Even before the opening in October 1897, shoots were started, to compete for the $1,000 collection of cups which had been donated, and for the prizes, amounting to $3,000, which the club had appropriated for the season’s shooting. Regular shoots, necessitating shipments of 1,300 birds for each day’s sport, were soon taking place on Wednesdays and Saturdays; the grounds proved to be among the fastest in America; special trains were run to bring enthusiastic members and guests from New York and Brooklyn, and the Garden City Hotel was busier than ever.

Unfortunately, the fence proved too low to keep wounded birds within the grounds. By 1898 the residents of Garden City were up in arms against the new Carteret Gun Club. “They claim,” said The New York Times, “that the firing of the guns and the slaughter of birds is a public nuisance and should be abolished. Several home owners report that after every shoot dead or wounded pigeons are found on their grounds or porches.” The clergy were slow to take up the cause, and before long it was rumored that “the club which had moved to its present headquarters during the previous spring and prepared the grounds at great expense, would very likely have to seek new quarters once more.” Within a few years these rumors became fact, the club being moved to open country east of the Village.

Golf proved to be a happier choice. In the early nineties Cedarhurst, Shinnecock, Oyster Bay, St. James and Meadow Brook had already established courses; and Garden City, with a new and popular hotel, now felt the need of following the fashion. Accordingly in 1896 a small enthusiastic committee was formed, consisting of Mr. Hubbell and Devereux Emmet, representing the Garden City Company, Dr. Gamage, headmaster of St. Paul’s, and Alexander Finlay, who was called on for his professional opinion. After visiting other clubs and studying available areas in the Village, the chose the open Plains lying north of the lake and west of the new Gun Club to Old Country Road–an ideal site, suitable for an excellent allyear round course. The ground was found to be soft and friable, little affected by frost, and covered with a tough sod of red-top grass “such as is found on the links in Scotland.” There were also natural sand and water hazards, and enough variety in contour, caused by the glacial outwash channel running through the area, to make the grounds interesting.

A nine-hole course with a playing distance of about 3,000 yards was accordingly mapped out, and an appropriation of $1,500 requested for its construction, with an additional $1,000 for maintenance during the first year. In spite of some opposition on the part of certain members of the Garden City Company, the request was granted and the project begun. Fairways were roughly cleared of blackberry vines and hummocks, and vigorously rolled with a heavy horse-drawn roller. The greens, levelled off with carpenter’s adzes, were swept with stable brooms, fertilized, seeded, and watered. Two hundred or more sheep, bought and put under the charge of the greenskeeper, were herded over the fencedin course and housed in sheds attached to the pale-blue wooden fence of the Gun Club. An old farmhouse near the ninth tee was converted into a small club house, and other dressing- and locker-rooms were fitted out in the Hotel. The cost of building these first nine holes came to $1,791.82, and another $1,500 was spent on the club house and in fencing the course. In spite of running over the budget, it was with a feeling of triumph that the reception committee sent out invitations for the formal opening on May 29, 1897, of the Island Golf Links–a subscription course built and maintained by the Garden City Company, and open to all residents, their guests, and patrons of the Hotel. Season tickets were priced at $10; the charge for players who wished to experiment with the game was 50¢ a day; the same charge was made for lessons of one hour, and caddies ran to 15¢ a game. Mr. Porrier, never behind the times, promptly opened a sporting goods shop in the Village to supply golf-sticks, balls, and suitable attire; so it is not surprising that over one hundred residents, as well as a large group of students at the Cathedral School of St. Paul, had joined before the opening. A group from the Meadow Brook Club were also present for the ceremonies, which included a round of golf for thirty eight players, with luncheon for all at the Hotel.

The course lived up to all expectations. As The Commercial Advertiser of June 1, 1897, wrote: “it is one of the finest courses in the country, extending a mile and one half over rolling prairie country. … Each green is connected with water from the city water works, and two hundred and fifty sheep are herded over the course to keep the grass nibbled short and the sod in perfect condition. The links are proprietary, but it is proposed to form, among the annual subscribers, a club which will become a member of the United States Golf Association, thus securing the right to compete in all tournaments.”

Although the sheep were soon given up because of their excessive zeal in nibbling a weed called “killcalf,” the Club prospered and became so popular that by the following November plans were in hand for enlarging it to a full eighteen holes. These new plans called for an ingenious use of the grounds to provide for the unusually long playing distance if 6,245 yards, which Mr. Emmet advised. But this was satisfactorily worked out, and in due course players were struggling over “sporty and vexatious” holes with such names as The Lake, The Valley, The Prairie, and The Bottomless Pit.

A year later, due to the success of the enlarged course, The Island Gold Links was reorganized, and on May 17, 1899, incorporated as The Garden City Golf Club, absorbing those members of the earlier club who wished to be affiliated. Women members of the earlier club, however, could join only as associate members, the excuse being that the course was “too vigorous for ladies.” Very few availed themselves of this doubtful privilege, and soon these even dropped out.

The new club soon joined the Metropolitan Golf Association, which held its first Amateur Championship Tournament on the Garden City links that year. Two others were held on the course later; and three Amateur Championships of the United States Golf Association were also on the agenda. Moving in such exalted circles called for a new and adequate club house. Ground, east of the lake, had already been broken for a modest building also designed by Richard Lowland Hunt, but new plans were now drawn and the foundations enlarged for a building in scale with the larger plans of the club. The building cost $14,196, but was destined to be altered and enlarged once more into the club house still in use today.

The reorganization and high-powered plans of the Garden City Gold Club probably led to the formation in 1899 of a small informal neighborhood club in the southern part of the Village, called The Midland Golf Club. Composed of forty-five members, women as well as men, it laid out its nine-hole course on open land between Franklin and Hilton Avenues south of Fourth Street, and area which the Garden City Company allowed the club to use without rent or taxes. Posts and wooden fences were removed from the site, mowing machines and rakes requisitioned, shallow sand traps installed, and a small club house, once an annex of St. Mary’s, erected near the first tee on Fourth Street and Hilton Avenue. In spite of the fact that the membership had to maintain the course and club house, dues were only $6 a year, which somehow managed to cover tournaments, prizes and a rousing 4th of July baseball game with refreshments as well.

With all this enthusiasm for the new game seething in the Village, it is not surprising to read in The Sentinel that “Golf links have been laid out on the grounds adjoining the See house. Rev. and Mrs. W.P. Bird and friends find much enjoyment in the contests almost daily engaged. It is not improbable that the Bishop will soon follow suit.”

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