William J. Devine Golf Course

Established in 1896 inside Frederick Law Olmsted's Franklin Park, William J. Devine is one of the oldest public golf courses in the United States — often cited as the second-oldest. The original nine was laid out by Willie Campbell, the pro at The Country Club, and Donald Ross expanded and redesigned it into a full eighteen in 1922, a routing little changed since. It is named for former Boston Parks commissioner William J. Devine. Local lore, commemorated on a plaque in the clubhouse, holds that a young Bobby Jones practiced here — on the 12th hole — while attending Harvard University in the early 1920s. Franklin Park is also thought to be the site of the first game of golf played in New England, in 1890. The course's story runs straight through the game's reckoning with race: in its early decades it was segregated — George Franklin Grant, the Harvard-trained Boston dentist who patented the wooden golf tee in 1899, could play here only after white golfers had finished — yet generations of Black golfers kept it alive through the lean years, even cutting the greens with their own mowers when the city debated shutting it down. That perseverance is honored on the clubhouse Founders Plaque, dedicated by Mayor Thomas M. Menino, which credits the community "whose spirit kept the William Devine Golf Course alive… making it Boston's inclusive golf course," welcoming golfers "regardless of race, religion or gender." Today Devine is celebrated as one of the most diverse public courses in America — home to a historically Black Men's Inner Club — a place where, as its regulars put it, "people are still people." Among those honored on the clubhouse plaques for keeping the course alive are Lefty Brown, Melvin Eldridge, Archie Williams, Maceyo Vaughan, George Haygood, Alfred Hayes, John Moreland, George Lyons, Robert McCoy, and Rudolph Cabral Sr. — the community whose spirit made Franklin Park what it is.