About Devereux Emmet
Devereux Emmet (1862-1934) was the son of a judge and a descendant of Thomas Addison Emmet, a founder of Tammany Hall. The Emmet family was listed in Ward McAllister's First Forty Families in America. Devereux and prominent architect Stanford White married sisters who were nieces of financier A.T. Steward.
Emmet was a golfer and huntsman. For two decades he routinely bought hunting dogs in the South in the spring, trained them on Long Island through the summer, sold them in Ireland in the autumn and spent the winter hunting and golfing in the British Isles. One such winter was devoted to measuring British golf holes for his friend C.B. Macdonald, who was then planning The National Golf Links of America. Emmet was a founding member of The National. Emmet was also a talented golfer, making the quarterfinals of the 1904 British Amateur and winning the Bahamas Amateur at the age of 66. Emmet designed his first course, the Island Golf Links (a forerunner to Garden City GC), upon his return from an extended trip to the great links of Scotland. His other early design work, including one for his own family's estate at Sherewogue and Cherry Valley (built on property belonging to his father-in-law), was done at no charge. But later he became a professional golf course architect and accepted fees for his work.
In 1929 he formed a design partnership with his associate Alfred H. Tull. A year later, Emmet's son, Devereux Emmet, Jr., joined the firm. But despite the name Emmet, Emmet and Tull, there is little evidence that Devereux Jr. actively participated in any design work. Alfred Tull continued the practice on his own after Emmet's death in 1934. Among Devereux Emmet's work in New York state are Rockaway Hunting Club, Pelham Country Club, Leatherstocking Country Club, the Seawane Club, Leewood Golf Club, and the Green Course at Bethpage State Park (formerly known as Lenox Hills Country Club). Other courses include the original Congressional Country Club course near Washington, D.C., and Wee Burn in Darien, Connecticut.
(Source: The Architects of Golf, Geoffrey S. Cornish and Ronald E. Whitten, Harper Collins Publisher, 1993.)