Franklin Park’s public course began life as an accessible nine laid out and promoted by Willie Campbell; Boston Parks records and contemporary accounts traced the municipally owned links to an October 26, 1896 establishment. By the early 1920s, sustained play and pressure for capacity led Boston officials and the Massachusetts Golf Association to pursue expansion. In April 1922, Golf Illustrated reported that the City would extend the municipal course to 18 holes “under the superintendency of Donald J. Ross,” noting that Ross had volunteered his services. The resulting 18-hole course opened on April 24, 1923, with the City shifting to a permit-based model that first year and reporting more than 36,000 rounds—evidence of the immediate public draw. Later decades brought decline, including the 1970s nadir when only a handful of holes remained playable. The City, the Massachusetts Golf Association, course operator Bill Flynn, and architect Phil Wogan then led a comprehensive reconstruction, culminating in a July 31, 1989 reopening of the 18-hole course. Since 2003, architect Mark Mungeam has advised the City on incremental renovations and restorative work at Franklin Park, a multi-year engagement that continues today.
Unique Design Characteristics
Because the 1980s work was billed as reconstruction rather than a light-touch restoration, the most reliable way to see Ross at Franklin Park is through the routing logic and use of the park’s existing landforms rather than expecting intact 1920s green pads or bunker lines. The front nine still occupies largely open, meadowed ground with modest relief, producing short par-4s that emphasize angle and placement—e.g., the blind-from-the-tee 5th (“The Bell”) and the right-to-left sloping 6th (“School Master”) whose green rarely yields a level putt. The back nine ascends and folds across hillier terrain, a shift in cadence consistent with the 1923 expansion across the park’s varied topography: the 10th (“Uphill Climb”) demands a strongly uphill approach guarded by a penal bunker; the two-tiered 16th (“The Bridge”) plays to a severely sloped green after a positional tee shot over a widened corridor; and the finishing stretch doubles down on elevation with 18 (“Heartbreak Hill”), a par-5 where the ideal line hugs the left to avoid a right-side lost-ball hazard. Two modern interventions are expressly documented: the 11th green complex was “completely renovated and enlarged some forty percent,” and the 16th was “completely redesigned with a wider playing zone.” These changes, though recent, sit within the original parkland corridors that date to the 18-hole era established under Ross’s superintendence. Contemporary descriptions of Franklin Park’s playing experience—“lilted” fairways framed by shaggy mounding, rock outcrops influencing lines of play, and several “turtleback” green targets—track with what one would expect on this Olmsted park ground and within an early-1920s routing, even as the individual surfaces and bunkers have evolved.
Historical Significance
Franklin Park matters in Ross’s Boston story because it represents his municipal work within an Olmsted-designed urban park and because his 1922–23 expansion helped cement Boston’s early public-golf culture at scale. The course is often cited as the second-oldest municipal in the United States, and it became a proving ground for public-course champions and community programs across the 20th century. The site’s associations are unusually rich: Bobby Jones practiced here while at Harvard; Georgina Campbell (widow of Willie) taught women golfers on these grounds; and Franklin Park’s role in opening the game to a broad city clientele has been chronicled repeatedly by the City and regional golf press. The course’s contemporary profile was underlined when the 2018 Massachusetts Amateur used Franklin Park in tandem with George Wright GC—the first time in the event’s 110-year history that a daily-fee municipal complex hosted the championship. Within the literature on Ross, Franklin Park typically appears as a 1922 municipal expansion rather than a pristine study in his bunker styling; its significance lies more in what he did for Boston’s public-golf infrastructure, and where—inside a landmark urban park—than in intact 1920s features.
Current Condition / Integrity
The course that opened in April 1923 has not survived intact. The City-led 1980s reconstruction restored 18-hole golf to Franklin Park after a period when neglect and vandalism had reduced play to a few holes.
That project—driven administratively by Boston Parks with the MGA, executed on the ground by Bill Flynn’s management team and architect Phil Wogan—returned the routing to continuous play and reset greens, bunkers, tees, and irrigation to then-modern standards. In the current era, Mark Mungeam’s on-going advisory role (since 2003) has produced targeted changes such as the full rebuild and enlargement of the 11th green and the complete redesign of 16, as well as broader programs of bunker work and tee expansions reported around the 2018 Massachusetts Amateur. The routing framework—front in the meadows, back in the hills—reads as the persuasive surviving legacy of the Ross-supervised expansion, while the features (greens, bunkers, some fairway widths and tree lines) reflect layered 20th- and 21st-century reconstructions. Today the course presents as a compact, sub-6,100-yard par-70 parkland with two par-5s, no par-5s on the front, and several short-par-4 decision holes.
Clubhouse and grill functions were upgraded in the late 1990s with a new building, and the City advertises function-room rentals; practice putting and chipping areas are normally available when not subject to temporary closures. For scholars, a precise mapping of what, if anything, remains of 1923 greens or bunkers would require access to original Ross drawings, 1920s Parks Department construction files, and aerial photography from the 1920s–40s; in their absence, the record supports a Ross-directed expansion and an enduring routing idea, overlaid by later feature-scale work.
Two points warrant explicit flags. First, the date of Ross’s intervention is well supported as 1922 planning with an April 1923 opening, based on a contemporary Golf Illustrated report and the City’s compiled history; a 2018 Boston Globe feature loosely described Ross’s redesign as occurring “late in [the 1920s],” which conflicts with the primary-sourced 1922/23 timeline and is best read as a generalization. Second, attribution of specific surviving greens and bunkers to Ross is uncertain after the 1989 reconstruction and subsequent renovations; both municipal and trade-press sources acknowledge that it is “not clear which holes today are due to whom.”
Sources & Notes
City of Boston Golf, “William J. Devine Golf Course” (course overview, establishment date and historical vignettes).
City of Boston Golf, “William J. Devine Course Tour” (hole-by-hole notes; explicit statements that No. 11 green was “completely renovated and enlarged [~40%]” and No. 16 was “completely redesigned”).
City of Boston Golf (MassGolfer reprint), America’s Public Links Cradle—Franklin Park History (PDF). Evidence that, in April 1922, Golf Illustrated reported the City would extend to 18 holes “under the superintendency of Donald J. Ross…,” and that the new 18-hole course opened April 24, 1923; later 1980s reconstruction led by Bill Flynn and architect Phil Wogan; 1989 reopening.
Boston Globe, “Restoration has made George Wright and Franklin Park golfing jewels” (2018): municipal investment context, 2018 Massachusetts Amateur at Franklin Park/George Wright, and general course-feature observations used here only to characterize present conditions; note that this article loosely references Ross’s timing as “late [1920s],” which conflicts with Source 4’s 1922/23 evidence.
GolfPass, “Architect Mark Mungeam oversees revival of historic Boston munis” (2018): states Ross expanded Franklin Park to 18 in 1922 and acknowledges uncertainty as to which present holes belong to which era; documents Mungeam’s continued role since 2003.
Golf Course Architecture, “The return of George Wright and the ghost of Olmsted” (2021): notes Mungeam has worked at William J. Devine since 2003; includes image captions of Franklin Park.
GOLF.com, “The second-oldest muni in the U.S. is loaded with throwback charm…” (2022): contemporary, descriptive account of Franklin Park’s present-day playing features (blind shots, elevation shifts, rock outcrops, “turtleback” greens) used to characterize current experience rather than to attribute features to Ross.