TomD:
Good post there on #4, and I think your post #1 probably hits the two primary points that we can learn from those early architects who dedicated the rest of their lives to those special long-term projects.
I shouldn't have implied that there were no failures of those types of architects and projects. I'm just not aware of what they were, but you listed a few. Obviously something like JFK and Jackie O mowing a field for golf isn't even in the same universe as the dedicated long term projects of Leeds's Myopia, Macdonald's NGLA, Wilson's Merion, Crump's Pine Valley, Fownes's Oakmont or Ross's Pinehurst #2.
But what else can we learn from what those early amateur architects did and the way they did it?
I think these are some of the areas that we can learn alot from them;
1/ In that early day and age of architecture in America there basically were no professional architects who had either the time or the inclination to do a really comprehensive architectural job on an American course. By a comprehensive job I mean a project that they might spend months on or a year or more, like all those early amateurs mentioned did.
Perhaps to say no professional architect did not have the time or inclination is not the correct way to put it. Perhaps a more accurate way to put it historically is basically there just wasn't a client who actually thought to use a professional architect that way on a long term basis. Perhaps that type of mindset had simply not evolved yet in America. Most of those early architects like the Findlays, Benedelow et al really were sort of a form of architectural Johnny Appleseeds who would be in and out of a project in a day or two. The fact that we really do have the term "Eighteen stakes on a Sunday Afternoon" should definitely not be lost on us if we are to understand American architecture in that early time and those first formative years or even decades. The likes of the Findlays and Bendelows of that time really only planted a seed for a day or so and then they were gone onto something else leaving those behind to fill in the blanks anyway they chose or could.
Who else could take the place of those early gentleman amateur architects if a club and project wanted really longterm dedication? The only other alternative was the likes of the immigrant Scots such as Dunn or Davis or even John Reid (not of St Andrews in NY) but the one who acted as pro/greenkeeper/architect/or even clubmaker for so many early clubs around here such as Atlantic City. Those men stayed at clubs and obviously continued to work the architecture of courses but their records with architecture is curiously pretty unimpressive on the whole.
Is it any wonder that the work of professional architect Willie Park Jr in the Heathlands with Sunningdale and Huntercombe was considered to be such a breakthrough in the evolution to quality golf architecture INLAND---and basically for the first time in the world?? After-all Park really did stay with those sites and projects for a few years. On one of them he was even an investor. He was the first professional to really put the time in on a project INLAND!
So who was left who could fill the void created by the lack of time in with projects of those early peripatetic player/professionals?
Obviously it was the "amateurs", those early gentlemen, club member, architects who were willing and able to put in the time, often years, often the rest of their lives into certain projects. First Leeds at Myopia, then Emmet at GCGC, then Macdonald at NGLA who was the first to really define the modus operandi to some serious fanfare with his four year project at NGLA from beginning to the time the course opened for play. That fact alone probably really got golf's attention!
Is there really any question why Merion tapped club members Wilson and his Construction Committee to do Merion East and West? How and why would Merion have thought to do such a thing?
In my opinion, it was pretty simple really. Most all those gentlemen amateur golfers knew each other anyway back then. How did they get to know each other? There is no question at all if one merely reads who the participants were in the Lesley Cup begun in 1905 at GCGC, and even the interstate competitions begun in 1900 that preceded the Lesley Cup by five years. The Lesley competition was between Philadelphia, New York and Massachussets, and Quebec was added after a time. The participants were Macdonald, Emmet, Tillinghast, perhaps Whigam, Crump, Carr, the Smiths, Perrin, Quimet, Travis, Travers, Behr et al.
(In the first few years of the Lesley Cup Competitions begun in 1905 Philadelphia was getting hammered so bad the Philadelphia team decided to create the Pennsylvania Golf Association of which I was the president last year. I've also played in the Lesley Cup for the last decade. Why was the Pennsylvania Golf Association started in 1907-8? For basically one reason---to get W.C. Fownes from Pittsburgh to play for the team. In 1910 Fownes would win the US Amateur. He would also be a real moving force not just in the architecture of Oakmont but in the architecture of Pine Valley after Crump died).
From Merion itself Lesley was the club's president and Rodman Griscom, a big man in the Lesley Competetions in the early days was to become the first president of Merion Golf Club. Rodman Griscom was the moving spirit of Merion Cricket Clubs move to Ardmore Ave, and ironically away from the first Merion Cricket Club on leased land of which the second nine holes actually belonged to his father Clement Griscom.
Is it any wonder that Merion chose the amateur architect route that they did? Lesley and Griscom were completely familiar with Macdonald for all kinds of reasons not the least being the Lesley Cup. Today we look at NGLA as the first really good eighteen hole course in America but back then they probably looked at him as an amateur sportsman who thought to devote his time and energies to a single golf course as had not really been done before in America. Obviously Merion felt if C.B could do what he did at NGLA beginning with real lack of architectural experience they could too with Wilson and his Merion Construction Committee!
This was the new modus operandi of creating great architecture in America for the first time---eg Myopia's Leeds, Emmet's GCGC, Oakmont's Fownes, NGLA's Macdonald, Thomas's Marion and Whitemarsh Valley, Tillinghast's Shawnee, all before 1910. Quickly followed after 1910-11 by Merion's Wilson, 1912-13 by Pine Valley's Crump, all gentlemen, clubmember amateurs who did not even refer to each other in the beginning as "architects" (Alan WIlson's mentioned that Merion never used an "architect" by that meaning Hugh Wilson and even C.B. Macdonald).
And look what those amateur created!
What else can we learn?
Probably that back in that day professional architecture and professional golf architects were simply not remotely like what they were to eventually become after WW1 and into the 1920s and on. I don't think even we on here are enough aware of that fact and what it all really meant back then
The subject of the lack of understanding of agronomy back then is something else we can learn and what was done to eventually overcome that. Again, Hugh Wilson figures more prominently in this early evolution of golf agronomy than most have ever known. In a sense it was he woh would basically set the stage for the USGA Green Section. Most probably don't even know that he and his early cohorts in early agronomy almost convinced President Woodrow Wilson to get the US Department of Agriculture to take on the development of American golf agronomy!!
This was some time in American architecture---eg a gestation period for something amazing to come, a searching for how to define it all, a quest to set standards of cost, quality, understanding----a roadmap, in fact, for the future of golf and its architecture in America.