#UNWALKABLE CITY WORCESTER MA FULL#
#UNWALKABLE CITY WORCESTER MA PRO#

On the contrary, they further deteriorated.įranklin Park was down to four holes in the early 1980s, maintained by volunteers. Nor did the courses benefit from efforts at private management. Parks Department budgets and maintenance left the courses derelict, and the simultaneous spread of neighborhood unrest and decline made the courses anathema less as destinations.

#UNWALKABLE CITY WORCESTER MA FULL#

Kleinīoth courses flourished in reputation and a full tee sheet until urban woes of the 1960s and 1970s took their toll. The clubhouse at George Wright Golf Course Bradley S. The coup de grace to the ambitious golf course was a Norman-style chateau clubhouse with 335 lockers and a vaulted ceiling main hall that became a popular venue for private gala events.

A three-mile-long stonewall, 3-6 feet high, encircled the property. Ross’ former longtime civil engineer and draftsman, Walter Irving Johnson, oversaw the work in his new capacity as engineer for the Boston Metropolitan District Commission. Blasting through ledge and clearing wetlands required up to 1,000 laborers. Funding efforts dissolved, and it took a decade for the course to be built and opened, most of it courtesy of the federal Works Progress Administration.Īt $1 million it was the country’s most expensive public golf undertaking. Ross’ 1928 routing for the site anticipated a private club for the 156-acre site in Hyde Park/West Roxbury section of town. While golf at Franklin Park arose gently on top of existing terrain, George Wright Golf Course had to be hammered into place. The park tied into a vast Emerald Necklace of preserved and restored green space he designed to encircle the city of Boston. In a succession of plans for the park drawn 1884-1891, Olmsted dedicated an open meadow and wooded hilltop as a focal point for the municipal reserve. It occupies 112 acres of an eponymous 527-acre park that was designed by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Donald Ross expanded the course to 18 holes in 1922, though it’s not clear which holes today are due to whom.įranklin Park has yet a more distinguished design lineage.

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These are not features that anyone could ever build and get more properly placed than their perfectly natural feel allows for.Ĭredit for the design of Franklin Park is somewhat elusive in detail, though it certainly involves an early nine-hole redesign by Willie Campbell, who until his untimely death at the age of 38 in 1900 was pro nearby at The Country Club in Brookline. It is a glorious par 4, climbing steadily, 40 feet from a tee set back in the woods, with a fairway pitched to the right and with a natural protuberance deep in the fairway landing area that further kicks shots away from the centerline.

No less a golf luminary than Robert Tyre 'Bobby' Jones once extolled it as among his favorite par-4s anywhere. And so he stands at the foot of the uphill 12 th, 404 yards long, its bunkerless fairway leading up to a perched green. That means there’s always more to be done. Devine Golf Course at Franklin Park and George Wright have been piecemeal projects.

Persistence and commitment go along way in this business. A good measure of his personality is that Mungeam spent that Open not in the press room touting his work but with rake in hand working bunkers and the rough as a grounds crew volunteer. Among several dozen renovations and restorations he had, one stood out above all: Olympia Fields Country Club in Illinois, which Mungeam prepped for the 1997 U.S. More than two decades later, Mungeam, a member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, headed off on his own with a portfolio that included primary credit for half a dozen courses, including The Golf Cub at Oxford Greens in Connecticut, and LeBaron Hills Country Club in Massachusetts. After securing his undergraduate degree in civil & environmental engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1983, he worked in golf construction before landing a job as a draftsman and apprentice for New England golf design stalwart Geoffrey Cornish. As someone who has worked hard to establish himself in a highly competitive trade, patience comes to him now by second nature. Mungeam, 57 years old and a native of central Massachusetts, is used to it. And both are seeing lots of golfers lined up to play. Now they are sparkling examples of classical design.

Both municipal tracts were desperately in need of work when Mungeam came on board a decade ago. Mungeam has been hired by the city to renovate and restore the golf course – along with its nearby sibling, George Wright Golf Course. as only the country’s second municipally owned and operated layout. Franklin Park dates to 1896, back when it followed Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, N.Y. No, he’s not the original designer of the course. Devine Golf Course at Franklin Park in Boston and course designer Mark Mungeam is contemplating the next step in his work.

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