The First 300

Golf and Cycle Clubs

Overbrook Golf Club

The Overbrook Golf Club.

It was in 1900 that the Overbrook Golf Club was incorporated and the golf course built on some 93 acres of land leased from the owners of the Greenhill Farms Plantation. There were still great trees and green hills as well as a flowing stream at the site. Originally deeded by William Penn to Thomas Lloyd in 1682, the tract had increased to over 300 acres by 1714. Wistar Morris, whose mother had inherited the property in 1799, spent his life on the property. His stone mansion built in 1863, is now owned by Friends’ Central School.

The golf club remained on the site until 1948, when it was sold for $500,000 to developers. Then the club moved west to Sproul Road where it intersects Godfrey Road in Villanova. On its former site we now find Lankenau Hospital.

The Philadelphia Field And Cycle Club

The Philadelphia Field and Cycle Club.

Philadelphia and its Main Line, including the social and athletic movers and shakers, enjoyed to the full the advantages of the countryside—its trails, roads and rivers—from the late 1700s on. The invention of the cycle, the high-wheeler, gave another risky pleasure, followed by the bicycle which gave safer riding and greatly increased the number of cyclists.

The two oldest clubs, the Germantown Club and the Philadelphia Field and Cycle Club, were born in 1879. The site of the Philadelphia Club was on the corner of Church Road and Lancaster Pike in Ardmore. Early in this century, the cyclists had rehabbed a summer residence at that location called Green Gables.