Philly Cricket Buys Its Historic St. Martins Site

Silly me for thinking Philadelphia Cricket Club owned the St. Martins golf course property recently restored and so very historic to early American golf, but after Jacob Adelman's report of a $600,000 purchase, now we know they were leasing all along. (Thanks to reader LM.)

Not anymore, thankfully. So one of America's most important early homes to championship golf and still the place where members can whap it around using hickories, is safe from future development.

The PCC closed on the nearly 41-acre property on Dec. 17, according to the Media-based Lands Trust, which is empowered to preserve the property for open-space recreational use under the sales agreement.

The property was sold to the PCC by the families of Quita Woodward Horan and George Woodward III, whose forbears had owned the land since the 1880s. The club had long leased the property for part of its nine-hole golf course.