Club informed that the land they had leased from 1911 could be sold (1920). Emily Butler was divesting her Fox Meadow holdings; options for alternative sites become a priority

For more than forty years the Tennis Club had borrowed or leased Fox Meadow land for a token sum. In 1920, however, a Butler representative alerted the Club that it might be asked to vacate immediately if and when the land it occupied on Church Lane was sold.

On July 24, 1920, FMTC members met at Town Hall to hear various proposals for buying or leasing a permanent site. The first of two possibilities was outlined by a representative of the Village Planning Board who suggested that the Club might lease a Fox Meadow tract from the Village and operate tennis courts there as a community service. A second option was to purchase four to five acres in an area of Scarsdale where prices were lower and more land could be bought. Members favored the second plan, and Club President Rollin Kirby named John Jackson, Pliny Williamson, William White, Oscar Williams, and Alan Chalmers to investigate and, if need be, to negotiate the purchase.

Less than a week later the special committee reported that Willard Parker Butler, Emily Butler’s representative (and cousin) would be willing to sell two and a half acres just west of the Club’s existing courts on Church Lane for $15,000. This was the site the Club ultimately bought, but in 1920 the board asked for more information on alternatives.

In December a special committee chaired by John Jackson told the board that Miss Butler would sell a three-acre site south of Wayside Lane for $15,000. The committee, however, recommended purchase of an alternate site, 4.72 acres south of Richbell Road on the Burgess property. The board took no action on either property, although at the 1921 annual meeting a “sense of the meeting” vote favored buying the Burgess land.

Source: Diana Reische, Fox Meadow Tennis Club – The First Hundred Years, 1983