Harbour Town Clubhouse
The Harbour Town Clubhouse at The Sea Pines Resort was designed in 2014 by Grady Woods, a Lowcountry architect who raked bunkers at Harbour Town as a boy. Home of the RBC Heritage, the three-story Lowcountry clubhouse was demolished and rebuilt between tournaments in a 10-month construction sprint.
The architect of Harbour Town's flagship clubhouse raked the bunkers there as a boy. Designed by Lowcountry architect Grady Woods and completed in March 2015, the three-story building was demolished and rebuilt in 10 months between two RBC Heritage tournaments. Today it anchors the 9th green and practice facility of the Pete Dye course.
Best Clubhouse's tour of Harbour Town Golf Links' Clubhouse at the Sea Pines Resort
Most tour clubhouses get 30 months. Harbour Town got 10. The Sea Pines Resort tore down its 1969 clubhouse after the 2014 RBC Heritage and handed architect Grady Woods an immovable deadline: have a new one standing by the 2015 tournament. Woods is a local. He grew up in the Lowcountry, earned a Bachelor's and Master's from the Savannah College of Art and Design, and as a boy had a summer job at Harbour Town raking bunkers and pulling crow's feet from the greens. The kid who maintained the course designed the building that anchors it.
Woods described the clubhouse as a civic building, not a private one. "It has a prominence in the community, as would a courthouse." The result is three stories of Lowcountry coastal architecture scaled up to civic proportions: hipped roofs, broad overhangs, deep porches, a slate-roofed clock tower capped by a copper weathervane. Inside is a 2,400 square foot tour locker room with reclaimed white oak beams, Italian marble bathroom floors, and the Hall of Champions with original oil portraits of every RBC Heritage winner since 1969. The rebuild came in at $26 million, with Atlanta-based Choate Construction running 160 workers a day on 60-hour weeks while the golf course stayed open. The project superintendent reportedly cried when the certificate of occupancy was delivered.
The clubhouse sits a short walk from the 18th green, where its more famous neighbor holds court. The Lighthouse at Harbour Town, built in 1969 by developer Charles Fraser and ridiculed at the time as "Fraser's Folly," is the backdrop of nearly every Sunday broadcast frame at the RBC Heritage and the logo of the entire resort. The clubhouse is the building; the lighthouse is the icon. Together they form the visual signature of Harbour Town.
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Key Details
- Club: The Sea Pines Resort, Harbour Town Golf Links
- Location: Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
- Clubhouse Architect: Grady L. Woods, AIA
- Year Built: 2015 (on the site of the 1969 original)
- Architectural Style: Lowcountry vernacular at civic scale
- Notable Features: Three-story, 55,000 square foot building with hipped roofs, broad overhangs, and deep porches; slate-roofed clock tower with copper weathervane, copper gutters, and downspouts; 2,400 square foot tour locker room with reclaimed white oak beams, custom steam room, and Italian marble bathroom floors; Hall of Champions with original oil portraits by Coby Whitmore and West Fraser of every RBC Heritage winner since 1969; 700 square foot Pete Dye Room exhibition added in 2018; demolished and rebuilt in 10 months between the 2014 and 2015 RBC Heritage tournaments by Choate Construction; winner of Golf Inc. Magazine's Clubhouse of the Year (New Construction) in 2016
The 1969 original was described in contemporary accounts as a "rather lonely building in the woods," completed as the inaugural Heritage Classic was already underway. The 2015 rebuild is its opposite: a tournament-scale building engineered for 140 mph wind gusts and designed to feel like a courthouse. Harbour Town hosts the RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing every April, the week after the Masters.
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