Forgan Family: Clubmakers and Financiers

James Berwick Forgan was born in 1852 in St Andrews, Scotland where the family made golf clubs in a shop along the 17th fairway of the Old Course. Forgan of St. Andrews is the oldest golf club factory...

Edith Cummings: The Fairway Flapper

“…there was a jauntiness about her movements as if she had first learned to walk upon golf courses on clean crisp mornings.” --F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Knollwood Club: Smiling Land and Charm

Formed at the height of estate and club culture in 1924, Knollwood encompassed all the trappings of the 1920s boom, as well as an escape from them. No expense was spared in the creation of a top-notch...

Lake Bluff Golf Club: Public Recreation

Three 1960s’ themes—suburban sprawl, public recreation, and government projects—all came to the fore in the development of the Lake Bluff Golf Club. In the early part of the decade, plans surfaced for...

Lake Forest Golf Club: An All-Absorbing Sport Grows Amongst Sheep and Trains

Within a mere three years of Charles Blair Macdonald’s first swing over the bluffs of Fairlawn, the Chicago Daily Tribune reported that “Golf is now the all-absorbing topic at Lake Forest.” Local golf...

Old Elm Club: "An Eveless Eden"

No further testament to the growing appeal of golf in the 1910s is needed than the formation of Old Elm Club in 1913. The founders took their inspiration for a new kind of club from a long wait on a c...

Mellody Farm Country Club: High Flying Ideas

Commonwealth Edison magnate Samuel Insull was an idea man, and an expert at combining two good ideas into one great one. One might have assumed that his notion of pairing two of the great passions of...

Fairlawn: The First Chicago Golf Links

The storied linkage between Lake Forest and the origins of Chicagoland golf begins at Fairlawn, the lakeside estate of Senator Charles B. Farwell. In 1892 Charles Blair Macdonald finally piqued the in...

Onwentsia Club: Social Center from Golf to Horses

Following the Lake Forest Golf Club's 1895 season, increased enthusiasm led Lake Forest golfers to look west, beyond Leander McCormick’s property, so a proper 18-hole course could be built. They purch...

Conway Farms Golf Club: Patience with Golf and Planning

Though the Conway Farms Golf Club was built in 1991, the idea to put a course on early Lake County settler John Conway’s former dairy farm had been germinating for a long time. When three area familie...

Shoreacres: Best Laid Plans

Given its location near Naval Station Great Lakes, it is fitting that Shoreacres, more than any other local club, had its early history framed by the two world wars. First, World War I delayed its con...

Mill Road Farm Golf Club: Tough Stuff

In 1925, noted golf architect William Flynn designed a course for Albert Lasker’s new estate, Mill Road Farm, that looms large in the lore of Chicago golf. Its difficulty was legendary. Length ranged...

Deerpath Golf Course: Golf for Everyone

With golf at local private clubs booming and the twenties starting to roar, in 1922 Lake Foresters began to clamor for a public course. Mayor Henry Rumsey heeded their call, seeing in it a project tha...