William P. Bell

William Park Bell was born in the coal town of Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1886, and grew up near the Gilded Age industrial powerhouse Pittsburgh around the turn of the 20th century. After studying agriculture downtown at Duff’s Business Institute, he moved to Southern California in 1911. Originally the caddie master at Annandale Golf Club, he became head superintendent at nearby Pasadena Country Club in 1914. 

During the late teens, he began work as a construction superintendent with Willie Watson, a notable golf architect who had designed both of Bell’s home courses in Pasadena. Bell oversaw important projects with Watson at Annandale Golf Club (renovation, 1919), Hacienda Golf Club (1920), and San Diego Country Club (1921). Next, Bell teamed up with George C. Thomas, whom he had met in Northern California, and they worked together on the design of Thomas’s Southern California masterpieces: Bel-Air Country Club (1926), Riviera Country Club (1927), and the North Course at Los Angeles Country Club (renovation, 1928). 

As a solo designer in the 1920s, Bell created, among other courses, San Diego’s centrally-located Balboa Park Golf Course (1921) and Pasadena’s Brookside Golf Course (1928), located adjacent to the Rose Bowl. Palos Verdes Golf Club (1924) and Stanford Golf Course (1930) were completed under Thomas’s name, but are likely mostly Bell’s work. Bell’s commissions in this time period also took him to Arizona and Las Vegas.

In the late 1930s, Bell teamed up with A.W. Tillinghast to renovate Virginia Country Club in Long Beach, California. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as a turf consultant. His son, William Francis Bell, joined him in the golf architecture business after the war, and they formed the firm William P. Bell & Son. Billy Bell Sr. became a member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects upon its creation in 1947, serving as the president of the organization from 1952 to 1953.

Before his death in 1954, Bell Sr. was hired by the city of San Diego to build a golf course on the cliffs north of La Jolla. In 1957, his son finished that project, creating future major championship host Torrey Pines Golf Course.