Golf Architects — Landscape Engineers
William Boice Langford
William “Bill” Langford was born in Austin, Illinois in 1887. He took up golf at age 12 as rehabilitation from childhood polio. He attended Yale University from 1907-1910 and played on their Intercollegiate Championship golf team. He then attended Columbia University and graduated in 1912 with a degree in Mining Engineering. However, by 1914 Langford was working in golf course design and completed several solo renovations and new course commissions.
Theodore Joseph Moreau
Born in Turners Falls, Massachusetts in 1890, Theodore “Ted” Moreau was one of 13 children. He attended Massachusetts Agricultural College in nearby Amherst from 1908-1912, majoring in Landscape and Athletics while winning several awards for his speaking skills. After graduation, Moreau joined American Park Builders in Chicago focusing on city and parks planning.
By 1916, American Park Builders had added golf course work to their portfolio, primarily with clubhouse and grounds design, and by 1917 the company formed an association with Langford that would continue for the next several years. It’s not known exactly when Moreau became more involved with Langford and the golf course planning and construction, but by 1920 some of the courses began to exhibit the distinctively bold features that would become a recognizable and enduring hallmark of their designs.
Langford and Moreau formalized a partnership and left American Park Builders in 1921. Over the next two decades, the duo built at least 40 golf courses with increasingly bold shaping of bunkers and greens.
After World War II, Langford resumed golf course design, completing at least 12 courses by the early 1960s. He was also a founding member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects (ASGCA) in 1947.
Langford died in 1977 in Sarasota, Florida a few months before his 90th birthday.
During the Great Depression when golf course development had almost completely stopped, Moreau oversaw the operation of one of their own designs, the Mid-City Golf Course in Chicago, which opened in 1924 as a public daily-fee course.
Moreau died in 1942 at age 51 at his home in Wilmette, Illinois where he lived with his wife and four children.
