Stumbling onto a perfect Raynor aerial

[Brad Klein]

Amazing what you can find to make the time worthwhile. This afternoon I attended my wife's aunt's 80th birthday party in Queens County, NYC. It was held at Alley Pond Environmental Center, at the southeast corner of Northern Blvd. and the Cross Island Expwy. We toured around the ecological gardens and turtle tanks, and there, above the terrapins, were some old, undistorted, perfectly clear aerials of the immediate area from the 1930s. Lo and behold, there was a fine image of Raynor's long-lost Oakland Golf Club (opened 1915, closed down 1952), with every hole and every bunker crystal clear. The course used to adjoin Alley Pond Park on its western flank, before road and university construction displaced it. It's a much better photo than the image produced by Daniel Wexler in his "Missing Links" chapter on Oakland (p. 120). I love finding stuff this way.

[Doug Braunsdorf]

Wlliam Quirin's book America's Linksland has a diagram of Oakland Golf Links ("located at Bayside, LI") dated 1915.  Yardages are given for each hole and bunkers are notated, but there is no mention of Raynor in the book.  It does say that Walter Travis was a member here, of Oakland (and there is a picture of Travis & Vardon playing at Oakland).  

From this EXCELLENT book, Queens was home to many fine golf clubs (Fresh Meadow, etc) before the need for housing prevailed.  

Forest Park is still in existence; I think this was a Bendelow design, and Van Kleek did some work (redesign) there as well.  I haven't played it, but I imagine, being a city course, it has lost all its old architectural style and detail.

Same goes for Douglaston, which was built about 1927 or so by William Tucker.  (FKA North Hills CC before they moved to Nassau Cty and had RTJ build them a course).  I have played here a few times, pretty poor conditioning (but it is NYC after all) it has many par 3's, but it's obviously an old golf course.  The clubhouse is magnificent, as are the views of NYC.  Lots of big, old trees and severely sloping fairways (the 13th and 14th are high above some shopping center in Queens) I think the preponderance of par 3's is due to the course selling off property and needing to shorten holes.  It's plenty quirky.  
I understand a management company runs it now, but I doubt they are restoring old features such as greenside bunkering, etc., on original holes.  

[TEPaul]

Brad:

It is amazing what you find in the oddest places regarding golf architecture--including aerials. An old aerial got me interested in architecture in the first place. The thing that amazes me more, though, are these beautiful old aerials and on-ground photos hanging in the clubhouses of the old classic courses all over the place and God knows how many thousands of people have obviously looked at them over the years and never thought to do anything about the course from them!

[BCrosby]

Brad/Tom -

I have a story somewhat similar to Brad's.

I sometimes hire surveyors in connection with the financing work I do. A couple of months ago I got a solicitation from a surveying company that uses a satellite aerials/GPS-based system (to supplement physically checking the metes and bounds). It's an interesting product and we got to chatting about old aerials. They told me that the Georgia Department of Archives had a web site that contained all the old Ga. Department of Transportation aerials going back to the 30's.

So I checked it out. For the fun of it, the first thing I looked for was East Lake. I wanted to see if there was a picture of the old Ross course and of the second, NLE Ross 18 that disappeared in the late '60's.

Both courses popped up immediately. The best pictures were from about 1955. As you may recall, the exisitng 18 is the course Rees Jones couldn't find any Ross materials on for his "restoration". The NLE 18 is the course all the old timers say was the better of the two.

(I tend to believe them about the NLE course. The '62 Ryder Cup was played on a composite of the two courses. In fact, given the layouts, I suspect most of the holes used in the '62 Ryder Cup were from the NLE course. It does appear extraordinary from the old aerials. For one thing it was built on much more intersting terrain than the surviving East Lake 18. But that's a topic for another thread.)

At any rate, I had a similar thought to Tom Paul's. If you have just a modicum of curiosity about how these old courses might have looked and played, there are ways to find answers. What is surprising is how few people have even a that modicum of curiosity.

That's a forgivable sin in an ordinary member. It is much less forgivable when you are a professional architect doing a high profile "restoration" of a historic Ross course.

Bob

 

[TEPaul]

BobC:

Good point and probably a better point that many architects, perhaps ANY architects who are attempting any kind of restoration should probably check into GOLFCLUBATLAS.com and at least ask a few questions if they're looking for something. Some of these guys on here just could be some of the very best in the world at figuring out how to come up with good research material, particularly aerials. This guy Craig Disher--he could be a potential gold mine for any architect that way!

[RJ_Daley]

Bob, could you give us the url for that web site?

[BCrosby]

RJ -

http://www.galileo.usg.edu/cgi-bin/homepage.cgi?_cc=1&_id=cf3b8ac2-1114097186-1167

It's been several weeks, so I forget how to get from there to the page on aerials. But it's in there somewhere.

Bob

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Bob,

1963 Ryder Cup, I think.  Quite a few current architects (or those who give their names to someone else's architecture) in the teams: Alliss, Thomas, Huggett and Coles for GB&I, Palmer for US.  Does any of them remember the old East Lake courses in any detail, I wonder?

Mark.

[BCrosby]

Mark -

I stand corrected.

I would love to find more information about the composite course used in '63 at East Lake. The old-timers I've talked to don't seem to remember much. I have been unable to locate any contemporary materials.

Any research ideas would be most welcome.

Bob

[TEPaul]

Bob:

Why doesn't or didn't Tom Cousins know?

[BCrosby]

Tom -

I don't think Tom Cousins was a member at EL then. In fact, I don't think he had much involvement with the course until he bought it.

For various reasons (most of which are pretty easy to guess), I don't think anyone tried very hard to understand the Ross original at East Lake that they "restored" for $25MM.

"Restoration" was a pretext for other things, some of which were/are very good. Like the neighborhood redevelopment. But for wingnuts like me, there was an architectural price paid.

Bob  

[Craig Disher]

Brad,
I've also seen the aerial. What is surprising is how cramped the course was - the fairways almost abut each other. Wexler's photo was an oblique view. The one you saw was taken from directly overhead, right?

[Daniel_Wexler]

My friend Craig Disher is, as usual, correct.  The Oakland photo in Missing Links was an oblique, taken from the old American Golfer magazine.  It was taken from a bit too high and then, unfortunately, Sleeping Bear had some reproduction problems to boot.  (Reproduction of aerials, in general, was not their biggest strength in that book   )

Bob C:
I was unaware of a composite being used at that Ryder Cup so I just did a little checking and, matching the yardages of the RC course with some old East Lake scorecard numbers, it does indeed appear to be the case.  This confuses me a bit, however, because 1) I can't immediately find a sequence that matches the Ryder Cup scorecard, and 2) The courses were not immediately abutting, having a swath of what appears to have been woodlands separating them.  The players might have been shuttled back and forth, of course, but I'll bet the galleries just loved the arrangement.

BTW, I have the NLE course mapped in Missing Links, taken from aerials and Ross's plans.

Also, I'd not heard the Rees Jones story of allegedly not being able to find anything before attacking East lake but IF he really did claim that, the club should sue him for malpractice.  I was able to get good quality 1940 aerials from the National Archives through standard channels -- just about the most fundamental acquisition procedure imaginable.  If a man claiming to be a restoration specialist was unaware of such a resource (which is only the largest repository of documents in the known universe) that would be truly stunning.  And if he was aware of it and simply pretended that he couldn't find anything.....

I wonder if he checked the Tufts archives, where I had no trouble whatsoever getting the plans for the No.2 course....  

Not to put you on the spot, but is Rees's claim documented somewhere?  I'd love to see his quote....

DW

[BCrosby]

Dan -

It was (and is) the view among members at East Lake that the drawings for the no. 1 course are lost. Rees, therefore, was asked to do the best "restoration" he could. As best I can tell the drawings are indeed lost.  

As for aerials, you might be interested in following anecdote. The author of the definitive history of EL is Linton Hopkins. A wonderful man. A neighbor and a friend. He and I have had several conversations about Rees's work at EL.  The last time on my porch about a month ago. He says that EL turned the club upside down to find the Ross drawings for no. 1 and nothing was found. When I asked if they had tried to locate aerials of the old Ross course, he was surprised to learn that any might exist. He honestly (and by implication EL) had not considered the possibility that the US government had archived such things.

I can understand Linton and other members at EL for not knowing about the existence of old aerials at NARA. That Rees would be equally ignorant of that resource, however, is much more surprising. Or worse.

As for the Ryder Cup composite course:

The no. 2 course was separated from no. 1 by a road that still runs along the current 4th hole. The entrance and clubhouse to the no. 2 course was across that street from the current 5th tee. I am guessing (and this is rank speculation) that the composite course for the '63 Ryder Cup matches went as follows:

1 - 4 - current course, cross over the road to:
5- 13 - NLE no. 2 course (don't know what holes these would be on the NLE no. 2 course), cross back over road to:
5- 9 - current course, and you are back at the clubhouse

That means they would have used none of the holes on the back nine of the current course. Sounds crazy, but I'm having trouble figuring out how it would work any other way.

I would love to hear other views or other information regarding the foregoing.

Bob

[michael j fay]

I could well be wrong but my understanding was that the Ryder Cup was played on the #1 course as it hasd been altered by George Cobb. He swithched the par aon a coupl,e of holes on the front side.

When Rees redid the course for Tom Cousins he changed the holes to reflect the original pars.

The information on East Lake was scarce in the 1990's when Cousins took over the property. Memories were sketchy and nearly every photograph taken at East Lake was of Bobby Jones.

It would be nice to know the true evolution.

[BCrosby]

Michael -

Interesting. Did Cobb work only on the no. 1 course? Is it possible that part of his revisions included holes on the no. 2 course?

I also wonder what sort of drawings Ross did for no. 1. It was originally a Bendelow course. Ross substantially redid it about 1921. Is it possible that he never did a full set of drawings because no. 1 was a remodelling of an existing course?

Bob