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The late, great Green Gables

On Nov. 22, 1928, the Intermountain Jewish News prominently ran an article headlined: “Green Gables To Become Setting of Jewish Club and Social Events.”

The article noted plans to create an 18-hole golf course, a riding track for polo and the conversion of the “palatial” former mansion of Vernon Z. Reed, Jr. into a new clubhouse.

Thus was born Green Gables Country Club which, true to the newspaper’s prediction, would soon become the center of the Denver Jewish community’s elite social life.

Formed out of the Progress Club, a Jewish social organization that had been based in central Denver, Green Gables signified the community’s financial and social coming of age.


Long denied membership in Denver’s Waspish blueblood country clubs, successful Denver Jews finally opted to form their own. By the late 1920s, the mostly second-generation community had acquired enough wealthy members to purchase the sprawling and picturesque Reed estate in southern Lakewood, some eight miles from downtown Denver.

For the next 83 years, Green Gables hosted countless weddings, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, birthdays, parties and community gatherings. Everybody who was anybody in the community golfed, rode, swam, played tennis or simply relaxed in its bucolic embrace.

The rest of the interview is available in the IJN’s print edition only. Contact Carol to order your copy at (303) 861-2234 or [email protected]



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IJN Assistant Editor | [email protected]


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