Wayne Stiles and John Van Kleek

Wayne Stiles was a native of Boston, born in 1884 to a father who managed a theater and a mother who occasionally played golf. Despite pursuing no higher education, Stiles worked at a landscape architecture firm, Brett & Hall, starting in his late teenage years. At first, he was an errand boy, but by the time he left the firm in 1914 to form his own, he had become a junior partner. Still based in Boston, Stiles was a member of Brae Burn Country Club, where he played competitively from 1905-1915, before his career as a course architect kicked off. Having met Francis Ouimet, Donald Ross, and Walter Travis in the area, Stiles was well equipped from both golf and architectural standpoints when he received his first commission to design nine holes at Nashua Country Club in 1916.

Stiles’s next projects came after World War I, when he laid out the original nines at Boothbay Harbor (1921) and Oak Hill Country Club (1921). He also oversaw the design of South Shore Country Club (nine holes in 1922, expansion to 18 in 1925) and a renovation of Woods Hole Golf Club (1919). 

After traveling to Missouri to lay out 45 holes at Norwood Hills Country Club (1922), Stiles announced an addition to his firm: Cornell-educated landscape architect John Van Kleek. Stiles and Van Kleek opened offices in New York and St. Petersburg, Florida, in addition to their initial home base in Boston. Van Kleek manned the Florida office until the state’s golf boom ended around 1927, while Stiles ran the firm’s projects in the Northeast. These included Pine Brook Country Club (1924), Prouts Neck Country Club (1924), Hooper Golf Course (1927), and Rutland Country Club (renovation, 1927). Upon returning to the Northeast, Van Kleek collaborated with Stiles at Taconic Golf Club (1928). According to one source, the Taconic project was the last that Stiles and Van Kleek completed as a pair.

Both architects continued their solo work after their firm dissolved. John Van Kleek worked for New York City planner Robert Moses and his Parks Department, laying out or modifying all of the city’s courses, such as Kissena Park Golf Course (1934) and the Pelham Bay and Split Rock course (1937). Farther north, Stiles renovated the Country Club of Pittsfield (1931), laid out North Haven Golf Club (1932), and created municipal courses at Olde Salem Greens Golf Course (1933) and Robert T. Lynch Golf Course at Putterham, aka Brookline Municipal (1933). Later in his life, Stiles recommended changes to Gulph Mills Golf Club (1940), his only work in the state of Philadelphia.

Stiles and Van Kleek designed more courses separately than together, but they tend to be mentioned in the same breath, even in cases where they should be recognized separately. Van Kleek moved to North Carolina in his later years, still designing courses, and passed away there in 1967. Stiles, meanwhile, was a founding member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects in 1947, and died six years later.