Newport Country Club (1894-95 et seq.) (Newport, Rhode Island)

 golf course, country club

Newport Country Club (1894-95 et seq.; Whitney Warren [New York], architect; William F. Davis, original landscape architect; course remodelings by A.W. Tillinghast, Donald Ross [1915], and Orrin Smith [1939]):

An elaborate, symmetrical splayed-V-plan (originally Y-plan) building with a prominent 3-bay high-hip-roof central entrance pavilion framed by colossal Corinthian columns and fronting a low- balustrade terrace, 5-bay 11⁄2-story jerkinhead-gable-roof wings with pedimented dormers and semi- circular-plan porches at each end to the north and south of the entrance pavilion, and a 21⁄2-story hexagonal-plan main block with high hip roof and prominent chimneys east of the entrance pavilion.

To the north of the clubhouse, and screened from its immediate view by a large bank of trees are three barns and a shingled 11⁄2-story Foursquare house with flared hip roof and flared-hip-roof dormers.

The clubhouse, its design the product of a competition of more than 40 nationally-known architects whose entries were displayed at the Casino on Bellevue Avenue in the summer of 1894, is one of the earliest purpose-built country-clubhouses in the country, following that designed by McKim, Mead & White for Shinnecock Hills Golf Club (1892) in Southampton, NY. Warren was recently returned from studies at the École des Beaux-Arts when he produced this career-jump-starting design, an appropriate combination of French hauteur in its form and detail and seaside New England informality in its use of shingle and wood. A loggia to the east of the main block, equal in size and massing to the north and south wings, was destroyed in the 1938 hurricane.

The Newport Country Club employed Davis (1863–1902), the first British professional golfer to come to this country, as the staff professional and course designer. This was the site of the first U.S. Open, the winner in this tournament being Horace Rawlins of England, in 1895, the year of completion of both building and course. The golf course here has been expanded and remodeled by some of the country’s most important designers. (6 contributing elements: 5 buildings, 1 site).

Robert Yarnall Richie aerial photo ca. 1932-1934 - digitalcollections.smu.edu/u?/ryr,403