New Jersey

Shady Rest Country Club, Scotch Plains, New Jersey (40.656070, -74.372602)

Felling dates: Primary House Unsuitable

Felling dates: Secondary House Winter 1840/1

Site Master 1693-1840 (pine) JMNJx1 (t = 11.95 PA011; 10.05 RHDEx1; 9.83 NY042). .

The Shady Rest Country Club is the oldest African American golf clubhouse in the United States of America. The building was once a dwelling of a Revolutionary War hero and in the twentieth century it was home for over thirty years to John Shippen, the very first American-born golf professional. The Shady Rest, as it was called from 1921-64, has undergone major alterations over time and exhibits some deterioration of certain materials; however, significant original fabric and original space configurations remain. The building’s period of significance is defined as ca. 1921-1937. This period of the golf club is nationally significant for its associations with the earliest African American golf pioneers and its legacy as one of our nation's oldest surviving community centers dedicated to the social and recreational pursuits of the emerging black middle class. The Shady Rest played host to some of the biggest names in American jazz and American cultural history including Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, and WEB Dubois. In 1964, the building was returned to public use and has supported a variety of functions ever since for the Township of Scotch Plains. (Description of significance courtesy of Barton Ross.)

The clubhouse at Shady Rest was originally a simple frame farmhouse, presumably built by the Tucker family, who owned the property in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was later expanded to a much larger five-bay, two-and-a-half-story building during the 19th and 20th centuries. In 2014, a dendrochronological survey of the primary phase sampled two timbers that provided felled-after dates of 1790 and 1792, which were interpreted as being consistent with a construction date in the very late 18th or early 19th century (Stahle 2014). The building was extensively rehabilitated in 2018, during which many of the original timbers were covered over and made inaccessible. Another dendrochronological survey was undertaken in 2025 of both the primary and secondary phase timbers. None of the remaining exposed timbers from the primary phase were found to be suitable for sampling at this time, but a timber from the secondary phase of the building provided a precise felling date of the winter of 1840/1.

Worthington, M J and Seiter, J I 2025 “The Tree-Ring Dating of the Shady Rest Country Club, Scotch Plains, New Jersey" unpublished Oxford Tree-Ring Laboratory archive report 2025/19

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