[T_MacWood]

Here are the pictures Mark Fine spoke of on the 'mystery' thread. A nine hole golf course built around 1915 for the Hill School in Pottstown, PA.

[Steve_ Shaffer]

How about Hugh Wilson?

[wsmorrison]

Is this the same site of the current Brookside CC in Pottstown that was built in 1916?  Steve, that seems like a good guess.  I sure would like to know more about this.  

By the way, anybody know who designed the Brookside CC in Macungie, PA around 1929?  Mike Cirba, where are you?

[Mark_Fine]

Thanks for posting these Tom.  The holes shown in the old photos we found were from the original nine holes designed in 1915.  They were the impetus for creating what would be called Brookside Country Club of Pottstown in 1916 (Wayne these are the same photos I sent you a few weeks ago that you had trouble downloading).  

There were several attempts over the next 30+ years to add nine holes to the existing nine.  However, it wasn’t until 1955 when a decision was finally made to expand the golf course to a full eighteen holes.  Architect William Gordon and his son David were hired to design a new nine holes and renovate the existing nine.  The new course opened for play in 1958.  Some old records indicate that James Harrison may have done some further remodeling of the course in 1959, but no firm evidence has been found and we have old aerials from the period showing no visible changes.  Maybe he just did some drainage work, who knows?  

The original nine holes are very interesting and the bunker work quite extraordinary.  We have suspicions of who might have done it but no factual confirmation.  Unfortuately Gordon blew it all up when he came in back in 1955.  

What is there now is very average (the bunkering is soooo repetitive).  The property does have potential and the course will be significantly improved when work is finished but it would be nice to know who did that original nine??  Any help would be appreciated.
Mark

 

[wsmorrison]

Mark,
Shall I contact David Gordon and see what he knows about the origins of the course?  Have you tried to do so?

[Mike_Cirba]

Darn...I have this info somewhere.  

Off the top of my head, I'm thinking that it was J. Franklyn Meehan, who also designed the original nine holes at Lulu, and the courses at Paxon Hollow, North Hills, Sandy Run, Ashbourne, and did some work at Shawnee on the Delaware, post Tillie.

I'll try to dig up my confirming info.  

[Mike_Cirba]

Meehan also designed the first nine holes at Spring-Ford CC in Royersford, as well as Brookside CC near ALLENTOWN (Macungie), so I may be confused.  

I will see what I can dig up.  I know I researched this.

[wsmorrison]

Mike,
Did you know that Wilson and perhaps Flynn were involved in the second 9 at North Hills for Meehan?  I have some drawings with writing that looks like Flynn for changes to many of the 18 holes there.  Perhaps Wilson or Wilson/Flynn worked with Meehan if in fact he was at Brookside/Pottstown.  

[Mark_Fine]

Wayne,
You can give it a shot but I talked to David Gordon on several occasions about this course and others and he had little to add.  As you know, he is not very cooperative and his recollection of courses is weak.  I even told him we were writing a book that had a section on him and his Dad and their design philosophies and that didn't even get him excited.  

Mike,
Any thoughts you can offer would be great!  I have contacted numerous people at The Hill School including the Alumni office and school historians and have not had any luck (though we all are still trying).  I wanted to go through their archieves of payment records from that timeframe to see if I could find anything but the school declined to give me access.  

Again with what Gordon did to the course in 1955, it would be near impossible and very expensive to restore much of that work anyway.  However, it would still be interesting to figure out the history.

Mark

[Mark_Fine]

Wayne,
It would be great if there was some Flynn/Wilson link but that would have been very early - 1915.  It's possible.  It could even be early Tillie maybe even Colt or Tucker.  
Mark

[Tommy_Naccarato]

For more modern day version of the Hill School.....

The Aerial

[Mike_Cirba]

Ok guys...I've got it.

The 9-hole course in question, which is now Brookside CC in Pottstown..

Built by the folks at the Hill School.

was designed in 1915 by (drumroll please)

One Arthur G. Lockwood, assisted by founding member Dwight Meigs.

Not too much exciting, I know, but them's the facts.

As far as Brookside CC in Macungie (Allentown), well..

That was J. Franklyn Meehan in 1929.

[wsmorrison]

"Wayne,
It would be great if there was some Flynn/Wilson link but that would have been very early - 1915.  It's possible.  It could even be early Tillie maybe even Colt or Tucker.  
Mark"

Hey, come on.  There was a Wilson/Flynn link in 1912 or 1913 at Merion.  A probable Wilson/Flynn at North Hills, at Kittansett and at Marble Hall.

However, by the looks of Mike's findings, I guess it is doubtful.  What does the Macungie course look like?  Wilson was dead in 1925, but perhaps Meehan still consulted with Flynn.

[Mike_Cirba]

By the way, the GapGolf site is wrong.

In the case of Brookside (Allentown/Macungie), my source is Jim Finegan.

Although Oliver Harvard was the President of the club, and took off time to oversee the construction, Finegan writes,

"Meanwhile, preliminary works was well underway on the golf course, which Frank Meehan had been commissioned to design.  Preparing the land was a difficult task...Harvard devised a tool of spikes and hooks for digging that was found to be extremely useful..."

In the case of the Pottstown Brookside, GAPgolf lists Harrison and Garbin who would have respectively been about 2 and -25 in 1915.  Chronologically, they aren't even correct, as there work followed the mass revisions done by the Gordons in 1955.

[Mike_Cirba]

Wayne;

While digging up my stuff, I missed your message about the Wilson/Flynn connection to North Hills, which is very cool.

I really like that golf course.

What year did they add the nine?

[Craig_Rokke]

Finegan has a half page write up about Hill School/Brookside, Pottstown in his tome "A Centennial Tibute to Golf in Phila.".
While no original designer is listed, he goes into pretty good detail about the club's formative years, also mentioning that big-time golf came to the borough in 1921 when Vardon, Hagen and two other pros squared up for a match at the club.

[wsmorrison]

Mike,

I believe the new nine at North Hills was added in 1913, a few years after the course opened in 1907 as Edge Hill CC.  The drawings we have inidicating changes by Flynn seem to have been completed in 1922.

[T_MacWood]

Arthur Lockwood appears to have been a polished architect. Does anyone know anything about him?

[Mark_Fine]

Tommy,
Thanks for posting that aerial of Brookside from the early 1990's.  You can see what I mean about repetitive bunkering. Every green, I mean every green, is bunker right and bunkered left.  Very dull and uninspiring but this is going to change big time and be pretty cool.

Mike,
That is great news about Lockwood!  We need to talk!  I know nothing about the man, do you?  If you look at those pictures, he obviously had some clue about what he was doing.  That one bunker on that ridgeline is amazing.  It was basically a big cross hazard which was very common at the time as all know.  

Craig,
Thanks for posting as well.  I have all that info and its quite interesting.  The club has some intriguing history.  Unfortunatetly, Gordon didn't build them a great golf course to go with it.  What Tommy posted in that aerial is pretty much what Gordon built for them in 1955.  

Wayne,
It would have been nice if Flynn/Wilson had somehow been involved but they weren't on the top on my list or anyone else's that I consulted with given the shaping and location of the bunkers.  What do you think?  A number of the bunkers were blind and there was that massive trap beyond the pond fronting that par three greensite.  I would not have guessed Flynn.  

If anyone knows more about Lockwood let me know or email me directly.

Thanks guys!
Mark

[Mike_Cirba]

Wayne,

As I understand it, the original course at North Hills (1907) was at a different location.  The course that was built in 1913 (that still exists) was actually on Franklyn Meehan's property, originally planned as a nine-holer, but opened as eighteen, according to Finegan, using Meehan's plans.  Was Wilson involved at that point?  

Mark/Tom/All,

Unfortunately, I know next to nothing about Lockwood.  I don't even have my source quoted, but it's on a page of notes I had handwritten after a visit to the USGA library about 5-10 years ago next to other findings.  It was probably from an account in an early Golf Illustrated, or one of the other magazines at the time, but I didn't write down the exact attribution or take a photocopy of the page.  

[wsmorrison]

"Wayne,
It would have been nice if Flynn/Wilson had somehow been involved but they weren't on the top on my list or anyone else's that I consulted with given the shaping and location of the bunkers.  What do you think?  A number of the bunkers were blind and there was that massive trap beyond the pond fronting that par three greensite.  I would not have guessed Flynn."

I don't think the Hill School GC looks anything like Flynn.  I was confusing Brookside Macungie with Brookside Pottstown The only possible Flynn connection I would look into would be with Meehan at the Macungie site since they worked together at North Hills a few years earlier.

[wsmorrison]

Mike,
Of course Wilson was pretty busy with his insurance business, Merion East and West and agronomic issues in 1913.  But you know how these guys were--they collaborated big time.  Chances are he may have helped out that early in an advisory capacity with the second nine (1913) and/or with the remodeling in 1922; hard to say but I believe Joe Shevlin has club records that indicates Wilson's assistance on the second 9.

[Mike_Cirba]

Wayne,

I'd like to hear more about Wilson & Flynn's input when we get together this week.

Mark Fine,

Let's talk this week as well, if we can get through the frozen tundra to the reception for Mark Rowlinson.  

[TEPaul]

Mike:

One thing about Hugh Wilson is he may've done some basic architectural advisory or consulting work at a greater number of places than we are now aware but I don't think any of it could or should be considered anything like what he did at Merion. He may've gotten into advising on site selections and hole design and stuff like that here and there but we should all remember and appreciate that Wilson was considered the purist of the pure "amateur" architects and he dedicatedly never took a penny for anything he ever did in the field.

But from our so-called "agronomy letters" (probably near 2,000 in all from 1911-1925) we can see that what Wilson was really into was perfecting golf's agronomy and the efficiencies of its maintenance. This did initially revolve around Merion but as the years went by Wilson undeniably became known as perhaps the best expert on golf agronomy in the Nation. And he sure wasn't interested in keeping his experiences to himself---his efforts with his brother Alan, and Toomey and Flynn and Piper and Oakley to disseminate all they'd learned through trial and error and massive experimentations (which appears far more than anyone else in a general sense) was the best in the Nation and it all morphed eventually into the creation of the USGA Green Section itself with the US Dept of Agriculture's Piper becoming the first chairman.

Some of Wilson's contemporaries like Philadelphia's George Thomas had great praise for Wilson as a talented architect but in the end it was in the area of golf agronomy where he really shone. Wilson was the collector and disseminator of this agronomy information from Merion but it was Flynn that was always his on the ground OJT guy!

As to early greenkeeping and course maintenance efficiencies and cost analyses there was no one better in the world in Wilson's opinion than William Flynn.

[TEPaul]

Actually, many may not be aware of this but if you go around a golf course with many of the architects that built them it's not the architecture their that into it's the grass, how it's doing, how it looks and how it plays.

This has sure been my experience with architects from Bill Coore to PB Dye.

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