This year’s house tour starting point and nearby homes sit on land that was once part of the original Allegheny Country Club golf course.
Reprinted from “Davisville to Brighton Heights a trip through time” by John J.Canning 1998 with additional notes.
Allegheny Country Club
The year was 1895 when a group of Alleghenians, led by John Moorhead Jr. of Ridge Avenue, sought out an area in the Allegheny City countryside for the development of a golf course. The land Moorhead and his friends selected was at the northernmost reaches of Davisville (Brighton Heights) and the golf course was the only part of the Allegheny Country Club that was to be located there. The club was situated on about fifteen acres of leased land located between California Avenue and Brighton Road and between Benton Avenue and the top of the bluff overlooking the Jacks Run valley.
(For those who wish a closer look at the original Club property there are remnants still standing today. The old house at the corner of Kleber and McClure Avenues was the former caddy house (probably an outbuilding of the William Walker estate.) The clubhouse (or the William Walker home) was undoubtedly behind the residence now located at 1800 Kleber Avenue.)
Here the leaders of the club developed one of the first golf courses west of the Atlantic seaboard. On Decoration Day 1895 the remodeled clubhouse of the Allegheny Country Club opened with rave reviews.
“The Allegheny Country Club is so attractive in its newness and beauty of surroundings that many country houses will not be opened as early as usual this year.” (Pittsburgh Bulletin, 1895)
“The Club is located in a ideal spot not yet marred by the advances of civilization. [it has a ] complete and
very beautiful house and grounds sufficient for any athletic sport its members may
desire. Golf links, tennis, cricket, polo, etc., have been provided for… ” (Pittsburgh
Commercial Gazette,1895).
Most of the Club’s land, on which a nine hole golf course was laid out, was leased from the {William} Walker family. Here men and women of Allegheny’s wealthiest families would journey by coach or train or streetcar to socialize in the countryside of Davisville. By the turn of the century, however, residential development in the Davisville area along with the coming of the automobile as well as the desire of club members to have an eighteen hole golf course led the leaders of the Allegheny Country Club to move the location of the club. The site they chose was in the hills behind the village of Sewickley where many of the club’s founding families were already moving their residences.
