1963 PGA National Golf Club Estates Map, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
PGA National Golf Club Estates.
$800
1 in stock
Description
This is an unrecorded 1963 map of the PGA (Professional Golfers’ Association of America) National Golf Estates, an unusual, high-end housing development in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
The Map in Detail
The map presents a plan of two 18-hole courses, the West and East, with every hole numbered and measured, and the clubhouse, parking, practice ranges, half-way houses, and maintenance area clustered at the center. The residential lots are drawn individually and are grouped into seven color-coded sections scheduled to open between early 1964 and November 1965. Yellow zones along the edges are reserved for apartments, motels, hotels, and restaurants, and the boundary roads include Monet Road, Military Trail, and the Sunshine State Parkway. A score card, a column of lot prices by block, text about the East Course and a quotation from its designer Dick Wilson, and three photographs of model homes fill the margins.
The verso opens with a drawing of the new “million-dollar clubhouse,” and also carries photographs of boating, water-skiing, fishing, and beach life, a map locating the development between the Sunshine State Parkway and the Intracoastal Waterway near Lake Worth, and a checklist of reasons to buy lots in the development. It lists five terms of the special privileges, including first choice of one estate, payment over three years, and a promise that the lot owner could build whenever ready.
Historical Context
The documents catch the project at its most optimistic moment. Two personal messages appear on the verso, one from John D. MacArthur, the insurance magnate who founded Palm Beach Gardens, who writes with pride of seeing a city rise from palmetto swamp, and another from Lou Strong, president of the PGA, who says he is moving his own family there. The text stresses deed restrictions, a ban on sales to speculators, a requirement that builders start within six months, and the advice of city planners that included I. M. Pei. It promises that all 11.5 miles of streets and more than a thousand acres would be finished by November 1965. The courses also hosted major tournaments, with Jack Nicklaus winning the 1971 PGA Championship on its East Course.
What followed was less smooth. The PGA, looking in 1964 to move its headquarters from Dunedin, Florida, was induced to relocate to Palm Beach Gardens in exchange for two golf courses and a clubhouse loan from MacArthur, who contributed more than $2 million, and in 1965 it moved into office space in the clubhouse’s east wing. By 1972, the two sides were in litigation, and MacArthur renamed the club JDM Country Club. The club was later sold and renamed BallenIsles in 1988.
Publication History and Census
This map was issued by the PGA itself in August 1963 and is unrecorded in institutional collections, with very limited market history.
Cartographer(s):
The Professional Golfers’ Association of America was founded on April 10, 1916, at a luncheon hosted by department store magnate Rodman Wanamaker at the Taplow Club in New York City. Wanamaker, convinced that the professional game needed an organizing body to rival the amateur-dominated United States Golf Association, gathered 35 golf professionals and underwrote the founding himself, including the trophy that still bears his name and is awarded to the winner of the PGA Championship, the organization’s flagship major, first played that same year.
The PGA grew steadily through the mid-twentieth century as golf expanded from an elite pastime into a mass sport, administering club professionals, running tournaments, and establishing standards for instruction and equipment. Its headquarters moved over the decades, settling in Dunedin, Florida, before John D. MacArthur lured the organization to Palm Beach Gardens in 1965 with the offer of two golf courses and a subsidized clubhouse, an arrangement that looked visionary at signing and ended in litigation by 1972. The PGA remains headquartered in Palm Beach Gardens today, though the club at the center of that original deal has long since passed through other hands and other names.
Condition Description
Very good.
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