The car’s engine downshifts as it makes its way up the hill, climbing among homes built of brick and stucco with mansard, gambrel, and gabled roofs – relics from the 1920s. The lawns roll out expansively, majestically, one by one in front of the estates on Algonquin Road. En route to my destination the groomed white oaks and red maples lining the street sway overhead in the breeze, ushering me along. I arrive at the pristine, discreet entryway to Brooklawn: an understated white-wooden gatehouse replete with a white polo shirt clad attendee who admits me to the membership only Country Club, circa 1895.
Brooklawn Country Club is located in Fairfield, CT, fifty-one miles from Manhattan. Fairfield belongs to Connecticut’s Gold Coast, an enclave of wealth that is also home to Greenwich, Cos Cob, Darien, Rowayton, Westport, New Canaan (think Ang Lee’s 1997 The Ice Storm) among other towns. Fairfield’s population is approximately 60,000. The commute to and from “the city” on the Metro North is an hour and ten minutes making it manageable via train, but brackish, to say the least, on either the Merritt or 95.
Back at Brooklawn, thoughts of commuting and Manhattan’s congestion are relinquished as the senses are careened toward vistas of lush green lawns rolling on and on, blinding white sand in the traps contrasting with green hues, wide open sky, perennials popping in borders of never ending bright color and hawks circling high above it all. Oft sighted on the property are deer, coyote, owls and red fox. The place is, aesthetically speaking, an oasis. Grounds-crews painstakingly manicure the property ten months out of the year. The eighteenth hole earned a new sand trap this spring to keep the golfers on their toes. Twenty recently planted cherry trees surrounded by mulched flowerbeds adjacent to the entrance, bordered by white horse fencing, now occupy a previously barren field. Brooklawn Country Club keeps on keeping on.
A full service club, blue blood to the core, with screening policies in place (some members grandfathered in), Brooklawn sticks to its founding principles. The basics: championship eighteen hole golf course, har-tru tennis courts (white attire only, please), pool, clubhouse with fine dining, no cell phones allowed anywhere on the premise except locker rooms and parking lot. There are excellent summer camps for members' children of all ages. For a family with a parent or two who golf, or take lessons with Mitch the tennis pro, plus kids enrolled in the summer camps, the annual membership fee may be amortized away into sensible sums. Club activities do not stop when the cool weather sets in. The “fabric of the club” is its membership and there are activities to support camaraderie including a Harvest Festival, Ladies Fashion Show, Christmas Ball, Easter Bunny Brunch and year round Clubhouse access.
Brooklawn Country Club, 500 Algonquin Road, Fairfield, CT 06825