Golf Course Information

Description

The Depression and World War II had a debilitating effect on golf course construction on Long Island. There was not a single new private golf course opened on Long Island between 1930 and 1955, the year the Pine Hollow County Club opened its gates in East Norwich.

The Pine Hollow concept must be credited to Jerry Wolk, a Queens lawyer, and Irving Fagenson, a New Jersey businessman, who headed a small syndicate that invested more that $1 million to purchase the 133-acre estate of Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan and convert it into a golfing utopia, a luxurious private club that they hoped to sell eventually to the membership for a substantial profit.

The 42-room French-Norman style Vanderbilt mansion was built in 1934 by Dorothy Schiff, daughter of financier Mortimer Schiff, and sold to Consuelo Vanderbilt, a great-granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, in 1939. It was one of the first of the great estates to be fully air-conditioned, and also featured a swimming pool, tennis courts, formal gardens, marble fireplaces, sculptured gold bronze dolphins for sink faucets, and a direct phone line to Europe. The estate cost $750,000 to build, and welcomed such guests as Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, and the Duke of Windsor. When converted to a clubhouse, it included 19 private guest rooms that could be rented for the season.

The syndicate built a new two-story wing to house locker rooms, a dining room, grill room, and cocktail lounge. They also engaged New Englander William Mitchell to build a championship golf course, the first of several he would design on Long Island. More than 1000 trees and shrubs were transplanted to help frame the individual holes.

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