Many local residents oppose Sterling Bay’s new big box commercial development at the serene and wooded site of the Evergreen Golf and Country Club at 91st Street and Western Avenue. Unfortunately, groups preserving open space are always in an uphill battle once the development process is in motion. In this case, the biggest foe is the Village of Evergreen Park, who strongly supports this development. Village studies would reveal many other available commercial sites for this development. Leaders at the Village of Evergreen Park could easily turn to the redevelopment of Evergreen Plaza, the area’s earliest regional shopping mall. Dating to 1952, Evergreen Plaza has been extensively altered through the years, leaving a visually unappealing mall that is plagued with high retail vacancies. Yet, the Village of Evergreen Park chooses to ignore the obvious redevelopment project instead of preserving open space for the greater public good.
The Evergreen Golf and Country Club is significant in the history of recreation in Chicago’s south land. As the last remaining daily fee golf course of the early-twentieth century, Evergreen Golf embodies a historic movement to level the recreational playing field. Before daily fee and municipal golf courses, golfers only hailed from the upper classes. Both daily fee and municipal courses allowed all citizens an opportunity to be introduced and enjoy a sport in scenic outdoor spaces.
Golf provided a respite from city life. One of the Chicago area’s principal havens for country and golf club development is nestled within the natural contours in and around the Beverly-Morgan Park neighborhood. In the early twentieth-century, the south side community’s appealing natural surroundings and a variable terrain was ideal for a pleasurable and challenging golf course. It was here, just outside the city limits, that Evergreen Golf and Country Club had its start.
In the early 20th-century, a great number of country clubs with golf courses began to spring up around the Chicago area at a rapid pace. Founded by a small group of like-minded colleagues, the country club offered restricted membership for a fee. The club would then cover all of the expenses of land acquisition, facilities construction, operation and maintenance. Local clubs organized where elite members settled in country homes, away from the city, and in close proximity to transportation routes. In Chicago, the earliest country clubs were formed along the area’s highly developed railroad system. Railroad transportation was vital in bringing members from the city to the outlying private clubs. Later, motoring members formed clubs along Chicago’s network of paved roads.
Newly organized country clubs found large parcels of wooded and prairie land for lease or purchase in the lands near Beverly, meeting their requirements for golf course development. Additionally, as one of Chicago’s higher-class residential districts in the early twentieth-century, Beverly-Morgan Park provided a local membership base essential for club success.
Located just west of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad and hugging Western Avenue, golf enthusiasts easily reached the area’s top-notch cluster of courses for their enjoyment.Here, the Ellerslie (Cross) Country Club opened in 1899, Ridge Country Club incorporated in 1902, and Beverly Country Club was founded in 1908. The Rock Island Country Club, organized in 1926 for employees of the railroad, was a latecomer to the area. All four clubs were private clubs, offering golf as its main activity.
The area’s earliest club was Ellerslie (Cross) Country Club, founded in 1899 between 91st Street, 93rd Street, Western Avenue, and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad tracks.[i] Ellerslie’s 65-acre site was both wooded and prairie, perfect for experiencing a round of golf. Most of its members were not from Beverly-Morgan Park,[ii] rather they arrived at the club via the railroad. In close proximity to the club was a Rock Island station at Beverly Hills (91st Street).
The designer of Ellerslie’s original golf course, whose fairways crossed the B & O tracks, is unknown. Architect Zachary Taylor Davis, best known for his designs for Wrigley Field and the old Comiskey Park, designed a Dutch Colonial Revival style club house for Ellerslie’s members.[iii] (It burned to the ground in 1906.) With a limited membership of 50, the club was short-lived. Ellerslie Country Club members golfed on their nine-hole course until 1908, when they dissolved the club to join with the newly formed Beverly Country Club.
Ellerslie Country Club’s site became the home of the Evergreen Golf and Country Club in 1924, established by the Ahern family a daily fee course.[iv] Evergreen, as one of Chicago’s earliest daily fee courses, delivered a new golfing alternative to private country club membership. Before daily fee courses, only the Chicago Park Distirct offered golf to the general public. According to Tom Govedarica in Chicago Golf: The First 100 Years, Evergreen Golf and Country Club was the sole survivor of the six daily-fee courses built in Chicago during the 1920s.
Brothers Arthur and Walter Ahern recognized the opportunities their land introduced in the early automobile era. When they opened their semi-private course in the summer of 1924 along Western Avenue, Chicagoans were traveling on newly paved roads to find new leisure opportunities. Nearby was Dan Ryan Woods, a recreational playground operated since 1916 by the Cook County Forest Preserve District. The Aherns opened Beverly Gardens, a wayside restaurant/roadhouse catering to travelers along area roads. The roadhouse, notorious as the site of a 1933 New Year’s Eve robbery and shootout by John Dillinger, burned down more than 10 years ago.
With the death of 103 year old Anna May “Babe” Ahern in December 2010, the longtime family operators sold Evergreen Golf Club for commercial and residential development in 2011. A Mejier and Menards are planned for the site.
[i]“Ellerslie Country Club Links.” Chicago Daily Tribune. July 23, 1899, p. 6.
[ii]A check of members with the 1900 Chicago City Directory shows that many Ellerslie club members resided in the Grand Boulevard community area of Chicago.
[iii]Cronin, Timothy W. Beverly’s First Century: The Country Club in the City. Chicago: The Beverly Country Club, 2008, p. 17
[iv]Krum, Morrow. “New Evergreen Golf Course Semi-Public.” Chicago Daily Tribune. May 20, 1925, p. 30.
Jennifer Kenny, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog, author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jennifer Kenny and/or Local Architecture Chicago Blog with direction to the original content.