Brookside Country Club

Brookside Country Club is a William Flynn–designed private club in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Its classic Golden Age layout winds through the Lehigh Valley's rolling terrain, offering a refined and strategic golf experience.

Brookside Country Club in Allentown, Pennsylvania carries one of the more charming founding stories in Pennsylvania private golf: the club may be the only classic American country club conceived in a sporting goods store. Owners Harold Witwer and Harold Jones, working from their Allentown shop, came up with the notion that the city could use a second country club with a more relaxed, friendly focus — an institution that would complement Lehigh Country Club with a different character and a more accessible community orientation. The founding idea's retail origins gave Brookside a democratic spirit that has distinguished the club from more formally organized institutions since its founding days. The club was formally established in 1929, and on November 9 of that year Allentown's Mayor, Malcolm Gross, used a gold niblick to take a divot that ceremonially marked the start of course construction. The architect was J. Franklin Meehan, who designed the original nine-hole layout across the property's lower meadow. Sand greens characterized the early course — a common feature of clubs founded during the late 1920s and early Depression years when financial constraints limited the investment available for bent grass putting surfaces. Despite these modest beginnings, the founding membership moved rapidly: by October 3, 1930 — just one year after the ceremonial groundbreaking — the club had constructed a full 18-hole golf course and planted 6,000 trees across the property. This pace of development, achieved during the opening years of the Great Depression, reflected the commitment and organizational energy of the founding membership. The Meehan original design served the membership for decades before the club undertook the expansion that brought it to its current scale.

In 1989, the club purchased 200 acres of adjacent farmland, significantly expanding the available land and creating the conditions for the facilities growth that followed. A new 25,000 square foot clubhouse was dedicated, reflecting the membership investment that sustained the club's development through the late twentieth century and into the contemporary era. The most recent chapter of the course's design history came in 2023, when Jeffrey Stein conducted a comprehensive restoration of the Meehan layout. Stein's work returned the course toward its original character and strategic intentions, engaging respectfully with the design philosophy that Meehan established in 1929 rather than replacing it with contemporary design sensibilities. This restoration approach — treating the original design as worthy of preservation and enhancement rather than wholesale revision — reflects the growing recognition among private clubs of the value embedded in their historical course designs.

The 2023 Stein restoration gave Brookside renewed clarity and cohesion after nearly a century of accumulated alteration. Allentown's position as the largest city in the Lehigh Valley and one of the three largest in Pennsylvania gives Brookside Country Club the metropolitan context of a significant urban center while maintaining the community-oriented private club character that its founding members envisioned. The Lehigh Valley's manufacturing and industrial heritage — the iron foundries, textile mills, and diverse industrial base that made the region one of Pennsylvania's most economically productive corridors through the twentieth century — created the professional and business community that has sustained both of Allentown's distinguished private golf clubs across generations of membership. Brookside's founding as the "second club" with a relaxed, welcoming character has defined its identity through nearly a century of membership, distinguishing it within the Allentown golf landscape.