The Philadelphia School of Design refers to a group of influential golf course designers from the 1910s and '20s, including notable figures like George Crump and A.W. Tillinghast. Their work significantly advanced golf architecture, coinciding with the PGA Championship being hosted at Aronimink Golf Club in 2026.
Key points
The Philadelphia School of Design refers to early 20th-century golf course designers.
Notable designers included George Crump and A.W. Tillinghast.
Their work advanced golf architecture significantly.
Aronimink Golf Club will host the PGA Championship in 2026.
This is the club's first PGA Championship since 1962.
Mentioned in this story
Aronimink Golf Club
PGA Championship
Poke your nose into enough golf architecture discussions, and you’re bound to hear someone mention “the Philadelphia School of Design.” It’s particularly relevant this week when Aronimink Golf Club, in the west Philadelphia enclave of Newtown Square, hosts the PGA Championship, its first since 1962.
What exactly is the Philadelphia School of Design?
In the simplest explanation, the Philadelphia School refers to a group of golf course designers and developers in and around Philly in the 1910s and ’20s who knew each other and occasionally collaborated. They included George Crump, William Flynn, George Thomas, Albert (A.W.) Tillinghast and Hugh Wilson. Many of the courses these men created were milestones that helped advance architecture at a time when courses were exploding nationally. Their association seemed to point to Philadelphia as a special crucible of golf architecture innovation, a wellspring of emerging ideas.
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The ‘School’ wasn’t as connected as you might think
Given the prominence of these architects and the courses they made, it’s worth exploring what made them cohere as a “school.” Upon closer look, their output was not as unified as it might appear.
While the importance of their individual architectural accomplishments is indisputable, it’s an overstatement to assert they represented anything like a cohesive school of design with a defined, purposeful point of view.
While several of the aforementioned communicated and were sometimes friendly rivals, the architects generally operated independently and in places well outside of Philadelphia. They shared a skill for using land in ingenious ways, but their connections and specific design ideas were more coincidental than coordinated. Over the course of their careers, they evolved separately and approached their craft differently. Compared to better defined schools of art or philosophy, the Philadelphia designers did not advance a specific agenda beyond a desire to build harmonious, strategically rich golf courses, and even those were to their own tastes and to the wishes of the clubs they worked for.
Q&A
What is the Philadelphia School of Design in golf architecture?
The Philadelphia School of Design is a collective of golf course designers from the early 20th century who collaborated and influenced golf architecture.
Who were the key figures in the Philadelphia School of Design?
Key figures include George Crump, William Flynn, George Thomas, A.W. Tillinghast, and Hugh Wilson, who were instrumental in advancing golf course design.
When will the PGA Championship be held at Aronimink Golf Club?
The PGA Championship will be hosted at Aronimink Golf Club in 2026, marking its first championship since 1962.
Why is the Philadelphia School of Design significant in golf history?
It is significant because it represents a pivotal moment in golf architecture, producing innovative designs during a time of rapid course development in the U.S.
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Tillinghast and Thomas
Thomas and Tillinghast were born into wealthy families in the 1870s and circulated through Philadelphia’s social elite. Thomas, slightly older, dabbled in golf but pursued other passions, including gardening, and even wrote a well-regarded book on growing roses.
His only local design is Whitemarsh Valley Country Club (above), a course developed on his family’s estate north of the city in 1908. Thomas’ greatest impact on golf architecture occurred more than a decade later after he relocated to California in 1920 where he designed landmark courses like Los Angeles Country Club, Riviera and Bel-Air. It was in Southern California that his philosophical outlook on architecture and construction crystalized, expressed in another book, “Golf Architecture in America,” published in 1927. He created a language of angles and bunkering that was uniquely his own, but it was one formed by opportunities and landscapes 2,500 miles away from Philadelphia.
Situated just north of Philadelphia, Whitemarsh Valley Country Club was the first 18-hole course designed by George C. Thomas. Thomas designed the course, originally known as Mount Airy Country Club, on his family’s estate. The course is one of the few that Thomas created before heading to California, where he designed Los Angeles Country Club, Riviera and Bel-Air Country Club, among other notable layouts. At Whitemarsh, Thomas used sprawling bunkers with jagged thumbs to shape many holes, as he would come to do at his top designs. Many of the greens accept run-up shots, making Whitemarsh playable for the average golfer, though clever shaping requires precise shots to get close to many hole locations. View Course
Tillinghast worked hard in his early life to cultivate his image as a Gilded Age scion and socialite. Though a good enough player to compete in U.S. Amateurs, he, too, had many interests and didn’t get involved in golf design until age 32. From 1915 onward he was prolific, designing up and down the east coast and as far west as California (San Francisco Golf Club, 1915). He built now-revered 36-hole courses at Winged Foot and Baltusrol, 27 holes at Ridgewood in northern New Jersey and finished his career designing the first courses at Bethpage State Park with Joe Burbeck before losing his fortune in the Great Depression. Toward the end of his life (he died in 1942), he moved to California where he temporarily formed a business with William P. Bell, Thomas’ former collaborator, though clients were scarce.
Yet Tillinghast's body of work in his hometown market was light, with what is now the Wissahickon course at Philadelphia Cricket Club (above, No. 120 on America’s 100 Greatest Courses) the most significant of his designs. Tillinghast was a giant of golf course architecture (he was also an editor of Golf Illustrated) and left behind some of the sport’s most enduring playing fields. He worked in a broad range of styles and proved to be the most adaptable designer of the era. His oeuvre is one of an impressionist who could coax wildly diverse golf courses out of equally diverse properties. This trait enhances his stature but makes it difficult to distill a distinctive point of view that can be summarized or integrated into any kind of school of thought.
Philadelphia Cricket was A.W. Tillinghast’s home club in his early years as a golfer, so when he laid out a new course for the club in the early 1920s, he devoted special attention to it. Over the century, it aged. Greens shrank, bunkers eroded, trees grew (including one right through the roof of a clubhouse veranda). In 2008, Keith Foster was retained to restore the course to its Tillinghast glory, but a poor economy postponed the work until the summer of 2013. The Cricket is now faithful to Tilly once again, with trees removed and original greens and bunkers reclaimed, including the famed “Great Hazard” that must be carried on the par-5 seventh. As per his request, Tillinghast’s ashes were scattered in the Wissahickon Creek that crosses the 18th green. The PGA Tour's Truist Championship was moved to Philly Cricket Club for 2025, with Quail Hollow Club hosting the PGA Championship. View Course
Hugh Wilson designed Philadelphia’s greatest course, Merion, currently No. 6 in the U.S. He was appointed by Merion Cricket Club, where he was a young member, to design the layout for their new Ardmore site, and as homework, took an ocean liner to the U.K. to study the great links holes there. He returned and incorporated many of those concepts at Merion, just as C.B. Macdonald had done at National Golf Links of America a few years earlier, though with less obvious derivation.
Merion made some alterations in the years after its opening in 1912, but the fundamental identities of the holes imbued by Wilson remain remarkably intact, the foundations set by the DNA of the British links. Sadly, Wilson designed only two other complete courses, the West course at Merion and Cobbs Creek (currently undergoing a rejuvenation project by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner after being closed for years). He died in 1925 at age 45, taking with him any chance to further impress upon the sport his evolving design perspective.
Merion East has long been considered the best course on the tightest acreage in America, and when it hosted the U.S. Open in 2013, its first since 1981, the present generation of big hitters couldn’t conquer this clever little course. They couldn’t consistently hit its twisting fairways, which are edged by creeks, hodge-podge rough and OB stakes. Additionally, players couldn’t consistently hold its canted greens, edged by bunkers that stare back. Justin Rose won with a 72-hole total of one-over-par, two ahead of Jason Day and Phil Mickelson. With Gil Hanse's extensive two-year renovation after that tournament, making even more improvements at Merion's East Course, the design should be even more polished and pristine when the U.S. Amateur returns in 2026 and the U.S. Open returns again in 2030. View Course
Of the four practicing Philadelphia architects in the “school” (Crump was a hotelier who founded his own golf club), William Flynn had the most direct impact on golf in the Philadelphia region. The courses he designed in Pennsylvania remain vital, including Lancaster Country Club (1920), Manufacturers (1925), Lehigh (1926), Rolling Green (1926), Philadelphia Country Club (above, 1927) and Huntingdon Valley (1927).
Flynn was just 19 when Wilson hired him to help oversee the construction of Merion, and he became the club’s first superintendent after the layout opened. He began designing courses on his own in the middle 1910s, later joined with partner Howard Toomey, and continued building courses through the 1930s, expanding into Florida, Ohio and even Colorado at Cherry Hills Country Club. He was a hands-on architect and a genius at routing courses, incorporating natural grades into his strategies and blending hazards into the land. His career culminated with the major remodel and expansion of Shinnecock Hills in 1931, site of this year’s U.S. Open.
Originally a small nine-hole course founded in 1901, William Flynn designed the layout we see today in 1920. The course is constructed on rolling terrain with a river flowing through the heart of the property, and water comes into play on the vast majority of holes. The course really shines from holes two to eight, all in a river valley that provides the golfer with exciting yet testing shots. The bunkering on the course stands out, and like with all Flynn courses, it is placed in a way that forces golfers to take extra consideration. The par 3s, too, are very good with great variety and intrigue. The course was the host of the 2015 and 2024 U.S. Women's Open. View Course
If there’s a case to be made that these Philadelphia figures were united by more than proximity and camaraderie, it centers around George Crump and Pine Valley Golf Club (above). Crump sold his Philadelphia hotel in 1912 and purchased over 180 acres of sand and pines in the New Jersey barrens 20 miles southeast of Philly. Rather than hiring a single architect or attempting to design the new course in isolation, Crump asked for input from virtually anyone connected to golf that he knew.
That included Thomas, who was an early investor, and Tillinghast, who visited the site on numerous occasions and claimed to introduce the idea for the Hell’s Half Acre bunker on the seventh hole (a hazard he later included on his own designs at Baltusrol, Philadelphia Cricket, Brook Hollow in Dallas and elsewhere). The British designer Harry Colt completed the routing for Crump on one of his few visits to the U.S., and when Crump died in 1918 with the course still under construction (and with a quarter million dollars of his own capital sunk into the project), Hugh Wilson came in to complete the last four holes with the help of his brother, Alan. After Pine Valley opened, designers including C.H. Alison, Perry Maxwell and Flynn all consulted on changes and improvements.
The talents of each of these men are all ingredients in the magical soup that makes Pine Valley everything that it is, not the least of which is the longstanding No. 1 course in our ranking of America’s Greatest Courses. More significantly, those talents contributed to the great leap forward American golf course design experienced at a critical moment of expansion. But their skill alone doesn’t comprise a unique architectural league.
A genuine original, its unique character is forged from the sandy pine barrens of southwest Jersey. Founder George Crump had help from now-legendary architects H.S. Colt, A.W. Tillinghast, George C. Thomas Jr. and Walter Travis. Hugh Wilson (of Merion fame) and his brother Alan finished the job, while William Flynn and Perry Maxwell made revisions. Throughout the course, Pine Valley blends all three schools of golf design—penal, heroic and strategic—often times on a single hole. Recent tree removal at selected spots has revealed some gorgeous views of the sandy landscape upon which the course is routed, and Tom Fazio has put his own touch on the design with bunker remodels that have given the barrens a more intricate and ornate look. View Course
“The Philadelphia School” has become a convenient way for historians and those who follow the topic to talk about a group of localized people whose careers overlapped for short periods of time. As the Philadelphians were developing their architectural applications, so were, in similar ways, Seth Raynor and Walter Travis and Alister MacKenzie and a dozen or more other prominent architects across the country. Every designer working was embracing strategic principles, grabbing inspiration from wherever they could, experimenting with form and utilizing new technologies in construction. The 1920s, in particular, was a decade of dizzying exploration and advancement in all matters of architecture, not just in Philadelphia but in Florida, Minnesota, California, Texas and beyond.
Yes, there was a group of visionary, intellectually curious designers with roots in Philadelphia, but they’re better understood in the broader context of their contributions to a country’s architectural coming of age than for the city in which they lived.
Which brings us back to this week’s PGA Championship, held at a course in the Philadelphia suburbs that was not laid out by someone named Crump, Flynn, Thomas, Tillinghast or Wilson. Aronimink was designed in 1928 by Donald Ross, from Pinehurst by way of Massachusetts by way of Dornoch, along with his onsite associate, J.B. McGovern, who was from Philadelphia.
Ross, naturally, had his own ways of arranging hazards and building greens and bunkers, yet the golf course fits harmoniously into the nearby neighborhoods of Merion and Rolling Green and other Main Line courses. It’s not of a different piece. The land gave him a big canvas upon which to route serious golf holes that could measure up to the local competition, and he did with it what any Philadelphian would do—he made it great.
And that does point to one unifying accomplishment of the so-called Philadelphia School of Design: The excellence of their work here and elsewhere motivated architects and golf clubs around the country to be better.
