Essex County Country Club is a living anthology of classic design. A.W. Tillinghast first laid out a new course on the present site in 1918, and in 1925 Seth Raynor reworked the property, preserving seven Tillinghast holes (Nos. 1–6 and 9). Raynor died before construction, leaving Charles Banks to carry the project forward, and his Raynor/Macdonald-inspired templates—Redan, Double Plateau, Alps, Punchbowl, and Eden—remain signature moments. In the early 2000s a young Gil Hanse stretched the course to roughly 7,100 yards, added strategic fairway bunkering, and cleared extensive tree cover to reopen vistas and angles. Hanse and partner Jim Wagner returned in fall 2023 to refine features and refresh select holes, most notably sharpening the dogleg-left opener—another chapter in the club’s long collaboration with leading architects.