Phoenix Country Club is a country club in the southwestern United States, located in Phoenix, Arizona. The club was founded in 1899 and was moved to its current location in 1921. Golf Connoisseur Magazine rated Phoenix Country Club among top 100 Most Prestigious Private Clubs in America in 2006. The club was chosen for the “ultimate mix of course, history, membership, tradition and class.” In 2009 and 2014, PCC was selected by its peers as a Platinum Club of America. The original golf course designed by Harry Collis was redesigned by Tom Lehman and John Fought in 2002.
History
Phoenix Country Club was officially incorporated on October 25, 1900 by a 12-member board including Webster Street, Chief Justice of the Arizona Territorial Supreme Court; and Dwight B. Heard, president of the Arizona Cotton Association. On October 29, 1919, the club voted to purchase a 160-acre tract of land at 7th Street and Thomas Road for the construction of a new club with and 18-hole golf course, tennis grounds, and a club house. This new property was to become the current location for the club. The land was purchased for $56,000.
Golf course designer Harry Collis, of the Flossmoor Country Club in Chicago was hired to design the layout for the new course in 1920. Los Angeles-based Landscape Architect Lloyd Wright designed the landscape gardening plans for the course. A former employee of the landscape architectural firm of Olmsted Brothers, Wright was the son of architect Frank Lloyd Wright and was noted for his landscape design of the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego, and later became a production designer for Paramount Studios. To fund the construction of the new $200,000 club facilities, 52 homesites were incorporated into the plans for the new location and are known as "Country Club Estates."
The new club opened on October 27, 1921. A white tie ball celebrating the opening of the new club was held on October 28 and was restricted to membership. The following day, the golf course was inaugurated with a men's golf tournament alongside a bridge tournament for female members. The original clubhouse was of brick, painted white, with red tile roofing. It was of the Spanish Colonial style of architecture, the main portion of the structure facing a southwesterly direction. From this main portion were two wings, on at each end extending in northeasterly and southeasterly directions, respectively.
The building featured a main reception hall, ballroom, and banquet hall; men's and women's locker facilities and showers; a men's grill room; a dining room; large ornamented tile fireplaces; French doors; and verandas where afternoon tea was commonly served. Also featured were a swimming pool and four tennis courts. The entire structure was designed by Phoenix architectural firm Lescher & Kibbey.
On September 12, 1922, the body of Phoenix Country Club secretary Guy N. Dernier was found, strangled to death and cast into the Arizona Canal. No water was found in his lungs during the autopsy meaning that he had been strangled before he was disposed of in the canal. In his Dodge automobile, parked along the canal bank, were his eyeglasses, watch, purse and articles of clothing. Found among his personal effects was a diary implicating twenty two society women in both Phoenix and Los Angeles with whom he had carried out affairs. Many of the women had compensated him for their liaisons, one paying him $600. Of the twenty two women all were married but one, a widow. Dernier had been an employee of Montgomery Ward in Chicago and came to Phoenix in 1917 for treatment for tuberculosis. He was a members of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. It was the opinion of the police that one of the twenty one husbands of the women with whom Dernier had had an affair was the murderer.