Memory Of The Week: Tuscaloosa Country Club Through The Years

Editor's Note: As part of an ongoing partnership with our friends at Historic Tuscaloosa, Patch will be bringing you a quick piece of local history per week provided by those working hard to preserve the memories of our community.

TUSCALOOSA, AL — This installment of Historic Tuscaloosa's Memory of the Week shines the spotlight on the history of a venue many of you will know well: the Tuscaloosa Country Club.

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Historic Tuscaloosa's Event & Digital Media Coordinator Sarah-Katherine Helms told Patch that the Tuscaloosa Country Club first opened in 1922, making it one of the oldest courses in Alabama.

Tuscaloosa businessman and civic leader Sam Friedman who, along with his brother, organized the Tuscaloosa Rotary Club in 1916 and also served on the City of Tuscaloosa's very first Board of Commissioners, touted the idea of bringing a private golf course to the city.

"Tuscaloosa is at last to have a country club," Friedman said during a trip to Birmingham. "For many years we have been talking about such a club, but something always happened to make us put it off."

According to business entity records on file with the Alabama Secretary of State's office, a capital investment of $40,000 was authorized for the construction of the course and clubhouse when the idea was first conceived.

In a story published in the Birmingham Age-Herald before construction began, Friedman was quoted as saying that nearly all of the professional men of the city had signed up in support of the endeavor. He also insisted that the support for the private course and club underscored Tuscaloosa's rapid growth and development, despite sharp downturns in both the lumber and the cotton markets at the time.

"We have had a golf course, but have decided to move to a larger and better location and have an up-to-date country club," he said. "It is probable that the site to be selected will be near the Warrior River, back of the old Mayfield place. You can tell our Birmingham friends who have for so many years entertained us at their country club that we will soon be in a position to reciprocate."

Designed by renowned golf course architect Arthur Davis, Helms explained that the private, 18-hole course in Tuscaloosa's Historic District is also one of three golf courses in the United States with an active railroad running through it.

When the club was first constructed, it initially offered a nine-hole course, but Helms pointed out that it was not the first golf course in Tuscaloosa. Indeed, the Tuscaloosa County Club was preceded by the Riverside Golf Course — a public course on what was once Queen City Park and which had nine holes and sand greens.

According to the Tuscaloosa Area Virtual Museum, plans were formed for the Tuscaloosa Country Club to open its own private golf course, with organizers opting to build it off of Sixth Street in Tuscaloosa's West End under the direction of Charles Hall, who had been the golf pro at the Birmingham Country Club.

As an interesting side note for golf history buffs, Hall moved to the U.S. from England when he was three years old and would go on to become the last foreign-born president of the Professional Golfers' Association of America — now the PGA Tour — serving from 1931-32. He was also one of only three PGA presidents to date to have come from the Southeastern PGA Section, with the last being Harold Sargent from 1958-60.

Serving as a golf pro in Nashville and Birmingham, Hall won the Southeastern PGA Section Championship twice, according to the PGA, and is held in high regard for his leadership during the Great Depression.

Once open, Tuscaloosa mining magnate and city politician Frank Gamble Blair was elected as the Tuscaloosa Country Club's first president. Author and historian Ben Green, in his "A History of Tuscaloosa, Alabama 1816-1949,” credits Blair with being responsible for the coal boom in the area around the turn of the 20th Century, which resulted in rapid population growth.

Additionally, R.E. Dunham served as the first vice president of the Tuscaloosa Country Club and Frank Maxwell as secretary-treasurer.

Despite the excitement and initial success of the country club, its clubhouse would see all but its basement leveled by a tornado in 1932.

While not quite as deadly and devastating as the 2011 tornado that cut a large path through the city, the 1932 tornado was just as powerful as an EF-4, resulting in 37 deaths, 98 homes destroyed, along with damage reported to at least 300 others. Reports following the devastation claimed that the destructive force of nature left 2,000 people homeless.

A reporter for the Tuscaloosa News wrote that much of the city was a "picture of wartime desolation," going on to comment on the scene at the Tuscaloosa Country Club.

Bricks and golf clubs were scattered for yards, the reporter commented, before pointing out that the Tuscaloosa Country Club's clock was blown down and stopped at exactly 4:01 p.m.

Club Secretary Frank Hully was injured in the storm, along with caddy master Henry Smith, greenskeeper Frank Delbridge, and his wife and two children.

Following the tornado, Helms explains that the club ran into financial trouble, resulting it in the mortgage being foreclosed. Nevertheless, the club was reopened in 1937 as the Country Club of Tuscaloosa, with Hayes Tucker elected its new president.

The Tuscaloosa Area Virtual Museum says Tucker would later go on to head up Tuscaloosa Hotel Co. — a collective of influential businessmen responsible for the construction of the Hotel Stafford in downtown Tuscaloosa in 1956.

As for the Tuscaloosa Country Club, nine holes were added to the private course in 1947, but the financial hardships would continue for the next several decades.

At one time serving as a popular venue for school proms and wedding receptions, the clubhouse was sold in 2013 to TC Acquisition Partners LLC for around $1.4 million, according to AL.com, while the investor firm paid roughly $2 million for adjacent property in the area.

The new owners intended to build a residential development on part of the property while still maintaining the course and its clubhouse and, at one point, city leaders considered expanding the Tuscaloosa Riverwalk to the property.

Despite the optimism brought by new owners, who at one time attempted to operate a restaurant in the clubhouse, the Tuscaloosa Country Club was never able to get on sound financial footing and remains closed to the public as of the publication of this story.

Click here to learn more about our friends at Historic Tuscaloosa and be on the lookout for the next installment of our Memory of the Week.

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