Richmond County Country Club (RCCC) is a private country club in Staten Island, New York. The club includes a golf course, tennis courts, an aquatic facility, and two clubhouses. The golf course and the main clubhouse have impressive views of New York Harbor, the Atlantic Ocean, and the New Jersey highlands. For more than a century Richmond County has been the only private county club in New York City and is one of the oldest in the United States.
History
Richmond County Country Club was organized on April 18, 1888 by Clarence Whitman, W. Henry Motley, Adolph J. Outerbridge, Gugy M. Irving, Wethered B. Thomas, and Eugene H. Outerbridge. The club was officially incorporated in 1891. Richmond County Hunt Club had formed in 1887, and some of their members established RCCC to provide a place where people could socialize while participating in fox hunting and other sports that would eventually include golf and lawn tennis. For years Richmond County Hunt Club operated in close affiliation with RCCC sharing social activities and facilities.
RCCC was founded in the same year as The Saint Andrews Golf Club in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. St. Andrew's is one of the founding members of the United States Golf Association (USGA) and is considered the oldest continuously operating golf club in the United States.
In 1901 RCCC had four classes of membership: Resident, Non-resident, Associate, and Summer. Summer members were permitted to join for 5 months only without an initiation fee. Resident and Non-resident membership had an initiation fee of $30, with the annual dues of $50 for Residents and $25 for Non-residents. Summer members paid dues of $35.
Original location
RCCC's original location was on the grounds of the former Vanderbilt estate, near Ocean Terrace and Little Clove Road on Staten Island, utilizing property that was owned by the Wittemann family. A two-story Victorian house was used as the clubhouse. When the club incorporated in 1891 it had over 60 members. In 1906, after the club moved, Charles Rudolph Wittemann established Wittemann Aeronautical Engineers and built the world's first commercial airplane manufacturing plant at the location.
Golf
Golf began at RCCC in 1894 led by club members George Hunter, George Armstrong, and James Park. The three members, who were all from England, had played golf at Harbor Hills Golf Course in New Brighton, which had opened in 1878, while visiting the island the previous year. At the time, Staten Island was a retreat for people living in the New York metropolitan area. Hunter and Armstrong were members at St. Andrew's, and had participated in one of the two "National Amateur Championship" that were conducted in 1894. Hunter, Armstrong, and Park designed a 9-hole course near the clubhouse, and Hunter donated a golf championship medal to the club. This medal has been awarded every year to the winner of the RCCC club championship qualifier since 1895, and remains one of the oldest commemoratives used continuously in American golf.
In 1897, RCCC moved to its present location in Dongan Hills (also known at the time as Garretson), near Todt Hill, to accommodate the rising interest in golf. Member and property owner George Cromwell allocated land that was north of Four Corners Road on which the club built a nine-hole golf course. A year later, nine more holes were added on land rented from Cromwell that was routed away from the original nine. The new nine became known as the Meadow Holes. It was noted in the New York Times in 1898 that Albert E. Paterson won the opening day tournament with a score of 83.
The early course totaled 5,175 yards, "with bogie figured at 77" and covered about 90 acres. The golf course's signature hole was the same hole as the current signature hole, the short par 3 third hole with a drop of over 100 feet from the tee to the green. In 1901, Paterson, who held the Hunter Medal at the time, was the owner of the amateur course record of 80 and Harry Vardon held the professional record of 71. At the time, the golf course scorecard looked as follows:
Scorecard note: Bogey is considered PAR.