How and to what extent did the Great Depression influence architecture ?

[Patrick_Mucci]

The discussion about template holes and the Biarritz led me to think about the impact of the Great Depression on architecture, existing and future.

How and to what degree did the Great Depression impact existing and future architecture ?

Was the intent and play of Biarritz's altered by not mowing the front tier and swale to green height ?

Were greens deliberately shrunk ?

Were fairways deliberately shrunk ?

We know bunkers were removed on existing courses, but how were the number of bunkers on new courses affected ?

Is there anything in the writings of prominent architects pre and post the depression that provides insight into this matter.

A subsequent question will deal with WWII's impact.

[Tom_Doak]

Patrick:

The combination of the Great Depression and the Second World War stopped the progress of golf architecture dead in its tracks.  [It also put it in its proper place, I guess.]

By the time the war was over, 3/4 of the past masters of the profession were out of practice, and a new generation started pretty much from scratch.

PS  As George mentioned elsewhere, the front part of the Biarritz was never green surface on many of those old holes; the impact of the Depression was to fool many future experts on golf architecture into believing that those greens had shrunk.

[A_Clay_Man]

Not too sure if it's relevant, but because of the depression, the wealthy soughtout far away places to have their summer fun. One of those places was Banff Springs.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Tom Doak & George Bahto,

Is there any clear record, photographic or otherwise that details those Biarritz's totally mowed to green, as Yale is today, and those Biarritz's where only the rear portion or the rear portion and the swale is mowed to green ?

Could deep core samples solve the mystery on a course by course basis ?

[Jonathan Cummings]

Pat - Geoff Cornish once told me that from 1930 to the Korean War the number of golf courses in America went down.  The ones that were built over those or so years were mostly done by the government.

JC

[Tom_Doak]

Patrick:

There is no "absolute record" on anything in golf architecture, and even deep core samples would only provide a bit more speculative evidence.  

Nassau County did aerial photos of the county for the first time in 1926.  The photographic record shows that The Creek, Piping Rock, The Links and Lido had Biarritz holes and [to my recollection] that none of them had green mowed in front of the swale.  It's been a long time since I looked at those photos, honestly; I could not swear to The Links and Lido, I was looking when we were restoring the other two.  The old Deepdale should have been on there, too, but I've never looked at it.

The photos are in the Nassau County planning department, just a couple of miles from Garden City Golf Club, if you want to check them out yourself.  That crisp aerial photo of Lido is something to behold!

[TEPaul]

The various ways the Great Depression effected golf and architecture is an entire multi-faceted subject in and of itself.

I've found that some of the preconceptions today of the effect the Great Depression had on architecture are almost the opposite of historical fact.

One preconception today is that no redesign work was done in the depression because the money to do it wasn't available.

Ron Prichard mentioned to me once how untrue that was---that actually massive amounts of redesign went on at many clubs in the depression. The reason he gave was not that people still had a lot of money but that laborers were willing to work for 5 and 10 cents on the dollar the unemployment was so high during the depression.

If one checks redesign cycles on many clubs one can see an amazing amount of redesign went on during the depression. Perry Maxwell was one of the busiest in that era. My own club is an excellent example.

One aspect of the Great Depression, however, was the general loss of members at most all clubs during the depression years. Near the end of the depression the great Pine Valley, for instance, was down to 88 Active (resident) members!!

[Dan Moore]

Based on Golfweek's Top 100 Classic's list here is how the depression/war impacted new course openings of that caliber design.  

1910's     22 course openings
            
1920's     56 course openings

1930's      8 course openings

1940's      2 course openings    

[Paul Payne]

Dan,

This list I assume refersw only to openings that appear on the top 100 list.

I ask because one of the things I have noticed about the impact of the depression on golf course design is the number of courses that were built as WPA projects in conjunction with state parks etc. I am curious about the actual design of those courses. Were they often built by well known architects of the time or were they more "design build" developments simply to get a golf course in place? The quality of these courses seems to vary substantially.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Dan Moore,

Your list might be more reflective of the talent pools during those eras rather then the number of golf courses built in each period.

That 78 courses built in the 10's and 20's remain in the top 100 is eye opening and perhaps an indication that golfers, over the next 80-90 years continue to prefer the architectural style of the architects designing in those years.

[Tom_Doak]

Pat:  That's 78 courses on the Golfweek Classic list ... so it's 78 of the top 100 courses built before 1960, not right up through today.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Tom Doak,

Thanks for the clarification.

That still represents 78 % of the golf courses from the period 1900 to 1960.

You seemed to indicate that the Great Depression and WWII stifled golf course architecture.

Those stats would tend to confirm your position.

The next question is.

Why was there an abrupt halt with respect to creativity ?

Did the lack of funds cause potentially talented architects to seek other professions ?

[Dan Moore]

I assumed the GW numbers represented a dramatic drop-off in new course construction rather than a decrease in architectural quality.  

For example, William  Langford would have been only 43-44 years old when the depression hit.  He had just completed Lawsonia, arguably his finest course.  Based on C&W he only designed 1-2 new 18 hole courses over the next 20-25 years before, in his 60's, he began to design a few new courses in the 1950's such as the Country Club in Tennessee.  It would certainly appear the depression dramatically impacted his career and raises the possibility he would have been a much more significant figure had he been able to build on what he had accomplished at Lawsonia.  

I would venture a guess other architects were similarly affected.  

[Tom_Doak]

Dr. MacKenzie might have built a half-dozen more great courses if the early 1930's had been as productive as the late 1920's.  Instead, in the last four years of his life, he only worked on a handful of projects ... Sharp Park, Bayside, The Jockey Club, Palmetto (revisions), and Augusta National.

[M.W._Burrows]

The biggest outcome of the great depression would probably be tree encroachment.  In many cases golf clubs did not have the labor to maintain their courses well and that's when a lot of trees and brush sprouted on those open golf courses (such as Myopia and Shinnecock).  

Greens probably started shrinking later on with the invention of the riding greens mower (triplex). The original triplexes, invented to save labor, did not have hydraulics to lift and lower the three reels.  The operators had to lift and lower the units manually.  Therefore intricate corners and lobes were gradually let go due to difficulty in mowing and laziness of operators.

[Mike McGuire]

Pat -

I think the depression caused a lot of people to be wary of borrowing money.

Our Langford nine was built in 1930. When the club finally got around to building the back nine in 1960 there was a reluctance to go in debt and the club oficails decided to ignore the Langford plan  and build something much cheaper.

[Jim Nugent]

How and to what extent will the next depression influence architecture?  

[john_stiles]

Well, when you go through The Golf Course (Cornish & Whitten) you can see that very little new work or remodeling was done from the mid 30s and on.

You look at work by Bell, W. Gordon, Diddel, Robert Harris, Van Kleek/Stiles, Maxwell, Langford, Langford/Moreau, Tillinghast, DJ Ross, et al in The Golf Course.

There is very little work credited in mid 30s and on. You take out a few big cities like NYC, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, and there was not much work.

You look at the bios for Mathews (Stiles &Van Kleek) and Wilson (Toomey& Flynn) and  some, associated with well known firms, were dropping out to take golf course jobs.

While RTJ was a young man, he was involved with Thompson by 1930s.  A  scan of RTJ work in C&W,  you can see that little work was undertaken by RTJ from 1936 through about 1946.   A quick count is about 6 new courses and about 7 remodeling jobs over that span from 1935 to 1945.  Not much. Looks like Link Hills in Greenville, Tennessee was his first course after WWII.

You also get a flavor from C&W that much of the work in this period was municipal / WPA work.  

Sure there was work and a few new courses here and there, but by the early 30s, there was not much going on.

[BCrosby]

The Great Depression and WWII devasted golf. The number of courses in the US didn't return to 1930 levels until the 1960's. People don't appreciate how many courses went under. In Athens, GA, alone three went under, never to return.

Post WII was all about the money. Necessarily so. RTJ dominated gca post WWII with the mantra that his courses could be built and maintained cheaply. That went on for nearly 40 years. (Which is one reason why so much of his stuff is so forgettable.)

Part of the motivation for tree planting programs in the 50's was that they reduced acerage and the number of fairway bunkers that needed to be maintained.

Golf architiecture went from Golden Age artistry to post WII no non-sense. Get that froo froo stuff outta here. Clear sight lines, fewer but bigger, flatter bunkers. Stuff that could be maintained efficiently with machines. Etc.

It was the Dark Ages.

Bob

[TEPaul]

Bobzee;

You know, one does wonder if an entire era of mediocre golf architecture that some assign to most of the mid-moden age should be accounted to the architects of those courses or to the golfers who kept accepting them willingly and gladly.

Max Behr contended that "man", the golfer, would virtually demand the production of "natural" appearing golf architecture by criticizing that which he sensed was artificial and withholding any criticism of that which he sensed was natural.

I wonder if Behr didn't totally OVERESTIMATE "man", the golfer?

All this reminds me of how most peoples' perception of things can get so way-layed and distorted.

I remember the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings.

Most everyone who watched those hearings with odd fascination figured Thomas was essentially on trial "at the Court of the US Senate's Judiciary Committee" for sexual harrassment---to determine if his accuser, Anita Hill, was sexually harrassed by him.

But it took the New York Times in an editorial to get to the nub of things by saying Thomas definitely was not on trial but in their opinion if Felix Frankfurter had been guilty of putting a pubic hair in a coke bottle (amongst other things Thomas was being accused by Hill of doing) and sexually harrassing Anita Hill with it, in their opinion, he still should have been confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice because he was such a brilliant jurist but that in their opinion, if Clarence Thomas had in no way whatsoever sexually harrassed Anita Hill he should still not be considered as a candidate for the US Supreme Court because he simply did not have ability to be a competent Supreme Court Justice.