Taking Shape: Construction Well
Under Way At Palmer Center For Golf History
September 24, 2007
E-mail address:
mediarelations@usga.org
By Rand Jerris, USGA Far Hills, N.J. - In February 2005, the USGA first
announced its intention to create a new museum facility at
its headquarters. This new building, to be named the Arnold
Palmer Center for Golf History, is to provide a permanent
home for the USGA's vast collections of historic
artifacts. At the same time, a decision was made to fully
renovate the John Russell Pope house that has served as the
home of the nation's oldest sports museum since 1972,
when the Association relocated its offices from midtown
Manhattan to the farm country of north-central New
Jersey. For nearly two years, an accomplished team of
architects, engineers, and exhibit designers dedicated
their attentions to the design of Palmer Center. In
December of last year, their plans were turned over to the
accomplished staff of Gale Construction, which has since
been working to turn the design team's vision into
reality.  | | Construction continues to move at a
feverish pace for the new Arnold Palmer Center for Golf
History. (John Mummert/USGA) |
In the past few months, the Palmer Center has risen out
of the ground. Once the initial site work had been
completed, and the concrete foundations and footings
poured, the steel structure of the new building rose with
great speed. The first important milestone in the
construction project was reached on April 26, when
steelworkers symbolically raised an American flag on the
highest point of the new building, signifying that the
final steel beam had been secured in place in the roof of
the rotunda that will house the new Hall of Champions. Visitors to Golf House during the last few months no
doubt have noticed the large steel fence that cordons off
the construction site from the surrounding USGA campus
(indeed, the eight-foot-high, chain-link fence is hard to
miss!). Within this fence, materials for the new building,
as well as for the restoration of the Pope House, have been
stockpiled - palettes of red brick and CMU block that will
form the walls of the new galleries, storage areas, and
research center; bundles of grey slate recently quarried in
Vermont that will form a new roof over the historic house;
long lengths of steel conduit and large spools of insulated
cable that will deliver A/V programs from a central control
room to monitors located throughout the new exhibits. A careful observer might even notice several mockups
that were created to insure that the materials, means, and
methods of construction are consistent with the
architect's vision. Several 4'x4' panels of
masonry were constructed, for example, to insure that the
bricks and mortar selected for the new construction would
be the perfect match for the 88-year-old exterior walls of
the Pope House. Another mockup displays the detailed
structure and substructure of the standing-seam metal roof
that will cover and protect the new wing. Throughout the
process, the designers and contractors have worked closely
with one another to insure that the Palmer Center will be
the perfect complement to the USGA's campus. The pace of construction increased rapidly through the
months of June and July. Many USGA staffers who were away
from Golf House for several weeks earlier this summer at
various championships noticed great changes upon their
return. Indeed, it is now possible to walk within the walls
of the Palmer Center and readily understand the scale and
proportions of the new spaces - the main exhibition gallery
of 5,000 square feet where the story of the USGA's
national championships will be told; a research center
where scholars and students of the game's history will
be able to access the world's premier golf library and
archival collections; the new state-of-the-art storage
rooms, where the museum's treasures will be housed and
preserved for future generations; and the signature
architectural space of the Palmer Center, a clerestory-lit
rotunda called the Hall of Champions that will house all 13
of the USGA's original national championship trophies,
and display on its walls the names of every USGA
champion. The crews from Gale Construction remain on schedule to
complete their work in early 2008. The project schedule
allows several months thereafter for the installation of
the new exhibits, including dozens of artifact cases, A/V
kiosks and monitors, and hundreds of artifacts from the
museum's deep and rich collections. If all goes according to plan - and we'll keep our
fingers crossed that it does! - the USGA Museum's new
Arnold Palmer Center for Golf History will be open for
visitors in early summer of 2008. We'll look forward to
the day when we reopen our doors to our many supporters, to
the USGA's many members, and to every individual that
loves the game and its history. Rand Jerris is the USGA's director of museum and
archives. E-mail him with questions or comments atrjerris@usga.org
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