From the club website:

The history of Monroe Golf Club actually began in 1920, when a committee of members from the long-since vanished Genundewah Golf Club of East Rochester were charged with finding a new site for the club after its lease could not be renewed.

After several months of searching, the committee eventually narrowed its choices to four potential locations for the new club: one in Penfield, the Harris farm in East Rochester, and two in Pittsford, one of which was the Stoutenberg, Brizee and Palmateer farms of 214 acres. Gordon Kellogg, an outside consultant to the committee who had chaired Oak Hill's recent relocation task force, took one look at the Stoutenberg site and reportedly exclaimed, "Here's something that Donald Ross would rave about."

At this point, committee member Irving W. Robeson – a close friend of the legendary Scottish golf course architect Donald Ross – brought the architect before the committee for an interview, as well as to survey the Stoutenberg property. His enthusiastic reaction to the property all but decided the issue.

On October 20, 1922, during a meeting of the club's founding members, led by Henry L. Perrigo, the club's first president, at the Rochester Club, the committee voted to reorganize under the name "Monroe Golf Club," to buy the Stoutenberg-Palmateer-Brizee site and to issue an Invitation-Prospectus for new members.

In December, 1923, Ross was notified that he had been commissioned to design and construct the course and that he would have 150 out of the Club's 214 acres to choose from. In return, Ross was offered a compensation package that included a $5,500 architect's fee and a construction fee of $50,000 (based on an estimated cost of $3,000 per hole).