If These Walls Could Talk
A Look at Private Squash Clubs, Architecturally
By Anna Minkowski
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Disclaimer: Below is an article describing and exploring the aesthetics of a handful of private squash facilities in the United States. You will notice that many of the courts discussed fall along the Eastern Seaboard; this is both a matter of geographical convenience to the author’s hometown as well as an accurate reflection of where most of the squash centers in the US are located. The editors at Squash Magazine want to be clear that we do not endorse these clubs and facilities over other such squash centers in the US; instead these facilities were selected at random. We opted to focus only on private facilities as they tend to be, in the words of the author, “traditionally places of the elite…very interesting and mysterious.” With no further ado, let’s shed light on some squash courts that you may never otherwise have the chance to see.
—Eds.
It is inefficient to spend time on the T noticing your club’s ceiling moldings. It is inappropriate to ask your losing opponent to admire the structural design of the court. And it is not okay to carry your racquet bag all the way from your apartment to the club solely to smell the maple floors.
But our sport, with origins in distant lands, elite societies and possibly prison cells, deserves to be recognized for its survival in nearly every structural environment, from factories to barns to train stations. Squash facilities today illustrate the natural evolution of science and technology, of skill and talent. The courts house our favorite moment: when pure fun fuses with pure obsession.
Squash has become an increasingly popular sport among high school and college students. To accommodate both the growing number of racquet heads and the conversion to mainstream international courts, many schools and universities have updated old facilities.
In Baltimore, the sport has recently thrived due to the widely known “Field of Dreams” clause, “if you build it, they will come.”
In the late 1960s, John Riehl and Bob Vokel transformed an abandoned basketball gym (once belonging to Girls’ Latin School) into the Racquet Club of Roland Park. They installed two hardball courts and a doubles court front wall to front wall to maximize the club’s space. In the narrow remaining area, they erected narrow gallery balconies behind each court, and a small locker room and sauna in the basement.
Original members of the Racquet Club paid dues and received a key to this unattended “turn key” facility. In the winters, the toilets would freeze but members continued to show up. The Club was used for squash, but also, as rumored, for late night sauna sessions.
Roland Park
In 1985, Frank and Nancy Cushman of Meadow Mill Athletic Club bought the Roland Park building and by 1994, they had creatively converted the old layout into four adjacent international courts with glass backs. Side walls of old courts became front walls of new. Wood floors remained largely intact. The building dates itself with the vaulted wooden rafters of the ceiling, which, incidentally, nearly caved in during construction. There is adequate heat and a brightly painted apartment for a live-in pro. The building now belongs to the Roland Park County School and in the winter, the courts host team practices and interscholastic matches.
As many local players will vouch, this little club is certifiably the “birthplace of junior squash” in Baltimore. It has earned notoriety by facilitating the conversion of potential players into actual ones.
For many college players, the squash courts were our second home. We left toothbrushes in locker rooms, ate meals in the gallery, slept and wrote theses listening to forehands against the front wall. Many of us started taking calls in our coach’s office. The structural details of these places hold more psychological importance than we’ll probably ever know.
Brown and Trinity are comfortable with carpeting and bleacher seating, Amherst’s row of courts and wooded banisters feels like a living room, Princeton is a cement catacomb, and Yale towers with a labyrinth of walls, players and stairs. Harvard’s shiny wood bleachers make an amphitheater and Dartmouth’s courts seem on stage in the center of the larger gym.
Part of the Ringe Squash Center at Penn
Many schools have forced, yet fit, squash courts into ancient existing campus structures. The Ringe Squash center at the University of Pennsylvania, designed in 1959 by Paul Monaghan, however, was built for squash. Today, Ringe houses the Intercollegiate Squash Hall of Fame. A total of seven courts make an H shape on the first floor, and the layout allows three stories of observation balconies. Used to its maximum capacity, each square foot of Ringe is saturated with squash paraphernalia, and the school houses squash’s Intercollegiate Hall of Fame.
After college, we all need somewhere to play. In fact, all adults need somewhere to play. Fortunately, there are private and public clubs all over the nation that have created scenic and suitable spaces for squash.
Pennsylvania’s Merion Cricket Club rapidly produces some of the toughest players on the circuit. It was once, however, just an idea in the heads of 15 men who liked cricket. In 1865, they formed a club in Wynne Wood. With membership growth they moved to Ardmore, and finally, in 1893, the expanding club planted roots in Haverford.
In 1965, the Club completed an expansion. Now there are six international singles courts, three hardball singles courts and two doubles courts at the club. Philly players are known for their intimate sense of “personal space” on the T. Perhaps it results from playing at a club where dining and socializing are only slightly separated from sport.
In New York City, magnificent buildings and quaint neighborhoods camouflage clubhouses and public gyms.
Heights Casino
Brownstone Brooklyn’s Heights Casino opened in 1904 offering four bowling alleys, four squash courts, and two indoor tennis courts. Indoor tennis was highly sought-after in the early days, so the Casino’s reputable tennis facilities attracted some of the nation’s best players to its membership. Squash caught on a bit later.
In a financial crunch created during WWII, the Casino issued a discounted “squash membership” for players uninterested in the tennis facility. Lucky for the Casino, many of these “squash members” dedicated their lives to the sport, thus increasing the Casino’s squash reputation and landing it onto the international playing field.
The Heights Casino recently expanded its squash facilities into a neighboring building, but the four courts in the original clubhouse continue to be the scene for the persistence and celebration of the sport. In 2004, the Casino toasted its 100th Anniversary with a retrospective publication dedicated to its history.
On West 54th Street in Manhattan is the University Club, a private club with athletic facilities, art collections, hotel services and a library of rare books. The club purchased land from St. Luke’s Hospital in 1899 and commissioned Charles McKim of McKim, Mead and White to design the building. Lending his notoriously idealistic aesthetic to this project, McKim erected it in the style of an Italian Renaissance palazzo with a classic milford granite façade.
Marble columns, dark glossy woods, and decorative art and textiles cover the interior of the structure. The University Club was the first clubhouse to have elevators, a small detail that explains the lack of a large palatial staircase in the foyer.
In the 1900s, the University Club shared the block with the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts. Today, the Museum of Modern Art is across the street. The building is a New York City landmark and it is perfectly fitting that a club with the “promotion of arts and literature” as its charter would prioritize seven squash courts to satisfy the athletic intellect of its members.
Library director and curator Andrew Berner has never played the sport but he acknowledges his own intrigue. A hypothetical match between the erudite Berner and head pro Damien Mudge would be proof to the thesis that squash truly is the greatest sport in the world.
Mike Moran's private squash court, in a barn
It is blatant that squash lovers will find a way to buttress their sport into the beams of their lifestyle. Penn graduate, squash player and racehorse trainer Michael Moran did just this when he converted an old hay barn into a private court on his 250-acre Pennsylvania farm.
Why his own personal court? A self-proclaimed squash addict, he says simply, “I love competition.” On the exterior, the structure looks like a wooden barn. Inside, tongue and groove pine lines the walls. As you enter, a court with fiber paneling and a beautiful maple floor appears to the left. Across from it, there is a comfortable gallery area with a woodstove and a kitchen. The court shares the structure with a bedroom and bathroom for overnight houseguests.
Moran certainly gets use out of his private court. He plays every day at five o’clock. He has created an environment to satisfy that forehand volley cross-nick itch any time of the day.
Next time you play, notice things beside your waning drop-shot or your tiring legs. Instead, give thanks to the intricate design of wood and walls that enclose you. These structures, and the histories in the buildings and spaces that house them, allow us to relish in the best part of the game: play.
Additions
Other Structures of Note
St. Andrew’s School in Delaware is notorious for its cameo in the cult-acclaimed film “Dead Poets Society.” The campus is rife with beauty, history and noble architecture and the squash courts are no different. The original gymnasium, built in the early 1930s, has a foyer with a grand wooden staircase that sweeps from wide to narrow between the first and second floors. The lighting is minimal yet quintessential to illuminating the dark wood walls and the high ceilings.
At its inception, there were four hardball courts. But over time the demand for squash has grown and, thanks to the generosity of an alum’s family, there is now a row of five international courts, three of which were configured from the walls of the old courts.
According to Bob Colburn, who has been in the athletic department at St. Andrew’s for 45 years, the expansion was necessary to accommodate growing interests in squash. “The level of intensity has always been high, but with the renovation to a first-class facility, the students really felt proud of their sport.”
The beautiful San Francisco Bay Club opened in 1977 in an old ice and storage building with a red brick exterior and an industrial history. Five international courts are now at the center of the club in a layout that forces non-playing members to pass through the courts on their way to work out.
—A.M.
Photos courtesy Heights Casino, Univ. of Pennsylvania, Roland Park Country School, Mike Moran
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