Garden City Golf Club vs Cherry Valley Club: Golf Community Comparison

Garden City Golf Club is one of the last explicitly men-only golf clubs remaining in the United States, with membership deliberately capped at 399 -- reportedly to stay under a 400-member threshold that would trigger additional New York State equal-access provisions for private clubs; women may play only on select days or as invited guests. Cherry Valley Club's current membership policy was not independently confirmed to carry the same restriction in sources reviewed this pass -- this is a real, documented difference in one club's case and an open research item in the other's, not something to assume either way.

Garden City Golf Club's course, designed by Devereux Emmet and opened in 1897/1899, carries a genuinely major championship record: the 1902 U.S. Open, the U.S. Amateur in 1900, 1908, 1913, and 1936, and the 1924 Walker Cup. Cherry Valley Club's course, opened in 1916, was designed by Walter Travis, Devereux Emmet, and Frank Duane on the site of the earlier public Salisbury Links (1907-1916), and hosted the inaugural Long Island Golf Association Open in 1922 -- a real but more regionally-scoped tournament history than Garden City Golf Club's national major championships.

Both clubs sit inside the same historic, planned Village of Garden City (median home sale price around $1.3 million as of mid-2026), but neither bundles membership with a home purchase, and village residency confers no preferential access to either club. A buyer choosing a home in Garden City for its golf-club density should understand that proximity to either or both clubs does not itself open a path to membership at either.