By Richard Harris, President, San Francisco Golf AllianceA permanent exhibit in the entry hall of the Sharp Park Golf Course clubhouse in Pacifica, Calif., dedicated to Alister MacKenzie, the course's architect, opened in March, 81 years after the April 1932 opening of the course.
The exhibit, donated to the City by the non-profit San Francisco Public Golf Alliance, features photographs of:
- world-renowned architect MacKenzie and his collaborators Robert Hunter, Marion Hollins and Bobby Jones
- MacKenzie’s original 1932 Sharp Park routing map
- construction of Sharp Park and MacKenzie’s famous Cypress Point Club on the Monterey Peninsula
- a MacKenzie-drawn map of the Old Course at St. Andrews, the Scottish ancestral home of golf
- the architect’s design principles
- a list of his most famous golf courses around the world
The exhibit also memorializes the late-San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, a weekend public golfer who was instrumental in saving Sharp Park from closure in 2011, and Sharp Park’s mid-1950s role in the racial integration of golf.
The Spanish Revival-style Sharp Park clubhouse is the work of the Willis Polk Office, one of San Francisco’s preeminent early 20th Century architectural firms. The golf course and clubhouse are officially recognized as significant historic resource properties by San Francisco and as landmarks by the City of Pacifica .
For more on the history of Sharp Park Golf Course and Clubhouse, see:
