The incredible story of Seminole Golf Club includes E.F. Hutton and Donalds Ross and Trump
The incredible story of Seminole Golf Club includes E.F. Hutton and Donalds Ross and Trump
When the 1929 stock-market crash caused economic turmoil and hardship, Palm Beach VIPs were excited about the upcoming debut of an exclusive golf club.
It's not that the Oct. 29-spawned financial meltdown that year didn't affect any of the wealthy in Palm Beach — the town's then-mayor, for one, stepped down, citing financial stress — but social affairs and pet projects continued.
And plenty of buzz surrounded the new golf course on the horizon.
Along with expectations that Seminole Golf Club would boast one of America's best golf courses, its founding members amounted to a Palm Beach Who's Who.
At the helm was E.F. 'Ned' Hutton, who wintered on the island with his famed cereal-heiress wife, Marjorie Merriweather Post, in their 1927-completed estate, Mar-a-Lago, now owned by President Donald Trump.
Talk about a power couple: Hutton, an avid sportsman, had founded his well-known New York-based investment firm in 1904; Post was a hostess extraordinaire, businesswoman and philanthropist.
They entertained lavishly and could always be counted on to don elaborate garb for the Everglades Club's then-annual Costume Ball. They were instrumental in the 1927 founding of Mar-a-Lago neighbor The Bath & Tennis Club.
Hutton loved golf. At the same time that he commissioned a 9-hole mini course for Mar-a-Lago's 17 acres, he began planning for an 18-hole course on 140 acres in his possession.
That land about nine miles north of Palm Beach, had formerly been owned by Lake Park founder Harry Kelsey and extended from U.S. 1 to the ocean. This would become the home of Seminole Golf Club.
Once work began on the project in spring 1929, it was dubbed 'Palm Beach society's latest stronghold' thanks to Hutton and his VIP friends rallying behind it.
Car-company founder Walter Chrysler, publishing-heir Herbert 'Tony' Pulitzer, and financier sportsman Henry Carnegie Phipps were among charter members who wintered in Palm Beach.
Why were they all eager for a new golf course? It's not as though Palm Beach didn't have enough golf holes to play.
What's said to be the oldest continuously played golf course in Florida was opened in Palm Beach in 1897. Never mind that its founder, Standard Oil partner and Florida east-coast developer Henry Flagler, once declared golf 'a passing fancy' in America.
He established the 1897 course between two Palm Beach hotels he developed (including The Breakers and a now-long-gone lakefront resort property).
Two more golf courses debuted in Palm Beach by 1920: the original 1917 course at Palm Beach Country Club and a 1920 course at the Everglades Club.
But clearly Hutton and friends wanted to enhance the golf scene with a new exclusive club centered around golf.
The Juno site for it was punctuated with swampland and sand dunes, but most of the area — including Palm Beach — remained largely undeveloped, too. Some of the topography could be advantageous for a golf course.
At the same time, it's not as though Juno was no-name hinterland. Before Palm Beach County's inception in 1909 after it broke away from what was then called Dade County, Juno was the seat of a county stretching from the Florida Keys to Stuart.
When work began on Seminole Golf Club, the club's officers included, of course, Hutton as president, but also vice president Jay F. Carlisle, a financier and Palm Beach winter resident; and secretary-treasurer Martin Sweeney, a well-known Palm Beach hotelier who'd overseen Flagler-connected hotels.
Among numerous notables on the organizing committee: Barclay Warburton, Palm Beach's so-called 'first society mayor' who resigned from that position after the stock-market crash.
Hutton tapped famed Scottish golf-course architect Donald Ross for Seminole. Ross had designed Hutton's mini course at Mar-a-Lago, but more importantly, he'd conceived numerous nameplate courses in the country — from famed Pinehurst in North Carolina to Oakland Hills in Michigan and Scioto Country Club in Ohio.
He also designed the original course at Palm Beach Country Club.
Once Seminole debuted on Jan. 1, 1930, it received gushing kudos for the challenging golf course by Ross, and for the clubhouse.
Then-described as a Mediterranean building with an unpretentious 'Spanish farmhouse' look, it was designed by Palm Beach architect Marion Sims Wyeth.
With a huge terrace and patio overlooking a large swimming pool, the clubhouse originally was painted red, according to accounts, with white ornamental trim, green shutters and blue-green awnings. What awed most: an immense men's locker room with a 20-plus-foot ceiling, new-American furnishings and 72 knotted-pine lockers — details that today make it a 'gold standard' for such spaces, golf experts note.
Architect Wyeth, who'd been part of the architectural team behind Mar-a-Lago and other Palm Beach estates and projects, was the first in Palm Beach inducted into the American Institute of Architects in 1954.
In the end, the cost of creating Seminole was estimated at around $500,000 (the equivalent of around $10 million today), although it may have been closer to $750,000, as some estimates suggested.
The club's reputation quickly grew. In time, staff pros included Masters champs. Joseph P. Kennedy, Henry Ford and the Duke of Windsor became members.
The club's daily closing time of 6 p.m. may also have had a Palm Beach connection: Local lore has it that Hutton's wife Post and other influential club-members' wives (who enjoyed a much smaller locker room at Seminole than the men) wanted their spouses home in time to ready for evening soirees on the island.
Today, Seminole still ranks high in golfing circles. In Golfweek's 2024 list of the top Classic courses, Seminole is No. 12.
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