An arcane historical question

[JMorgan]

Alfred Geiffert, who was briefly one of landscape architect Ferruccio Vitale's partners, designed a golf course on the Guggenheim estate in Port Washington, NY.

Does anyone know anything about this course?  Was it plowed under? redesigned? subsumed by another club?

[Tom_Doak]

James:

I believe that is the course which is now The Village Club of Sands Point.  I was told that Robert Trent Jones Sr. had designed the nine holes which were there 20 years ago, but perhaps he just redesigned an older nine.  We added nine holes and changed much of Jones' nine in 1998-99.

[JMorgan]

James:

I believe that is the course which is now The Village Club of Sands Point.  I was told that Robert Trent Jones Sr. had designed the nine holes which were there 20 years ago, but perhaps he just redesigned an older nine.  We added nine holes and changed much of Jones' nine in 1998-99.

Tom, that's kind of what I thought; but what happened to the course between 1920, when Geiffert completed it, and 1953, when RTJ designed the nine-hole course for IBM?  Also, Village Club dates itself back to 1929.  

[Emmy]

Speaking of history........Can someone shed some historical light on Carmel's first golf course? Records reveal it was located at Carmel Point around 1912, but closed a few years later. We've just set up a second residency in Carmel, CA., and I have a hunch we're located somewhere on the former site of CGC.

Nor Cal golf history buffs, please share...I'd love to know more about this long-gone course.

Thanks,
Emmy  

[Sven Nilsen]

Stumbled across this thread looking for information on Isaac Guggenheim's Private Course on Long Island.  The course is noted on a map of Metro Area Courses in the July 1917 edition of Golf Illustrated, but like many of the estate courses from back then there is little to no coverage of its design and construction in the various periodicals and guides.

Guggenheim built "Villa Carola" around 1916-17, a project that took several years to complete.  At the same time work was started on a 9 hole course.  The story is that Guggenheim was denied entry to the local club and decided to build his own course.  Isaac would pass away in 1922, with the estate being taken over by his brother Edward who renamed it "Trillora."  From what I can gather the estate and the course were maintained by Edward and later Solomon Guggenheim up until Solomon's death in 1950.  At that time, the estate was briefly leased by Glen Oaks CC pro Spencer Murphy, before being sold to IBM.  From the sounds of it, this is when RTJ came in to rework the course.  As Tom notes above, Renaissance added nine holes a little while back.

By all accounts, the Guggenheims had a passion for the game.  They hired a slew of professionals, including Willie MacFarlane, Francis Gallet and one or two of the Mackies.  At one point a team of women "ringers" was organized to participate in MGA events, but was disqualified as they had recruited the best women players in the district.  The course itself was considered to be a good test, containing two par 3's and 3 par 5's and measuring out to around 3,600 yards.

The only report I can find on the original architect of the course, other than the one above, is that Isaac hired the best golf course designer in the country (taken from John H. Davis' book The Guggenheims - An American Epic).  The Guggenheims didn't do things in half measure, and certainly had the means to draw the best talent.  Unless I missed something, I don't think Alfred Geiffert was ever considered the leading golf architect of his time.  Maybe one of the leading landscape architects, but he was not a golf course designer.

So who did design the course?  There's a relatively short list of suspects to be considered, with MacDonald, Raynor, Travis, Emmet and Willie Park being some of the bigger names that worked on Long Island.  MacDonald seems unlikely, but the other four seem plausible.

I've copied below an aerial of the course from the 1930's.  Perhaps it contains some clues.



Here's a shot of the 9th Green from the June 1951 edition of Golfdom.

[Sven Nilsen]

One additional note. 


An Aug. 1953 Golfdom article on "Industry Courses" notes the sale to IBM.  In describing the course, the article notes that each hole is modeled after a famous hole in England or Scotland.


Sound familiar?

[Jaeger Kovich]

Sven,


I have been consulting at The Village Club of Sands Point for about a year and half now. I cannot possibly imagine that the golf course in these pictures is the work of MacDonald or Raynor. The other architects you listed I supposed could be possible as well, but that may be a bit of a stretch as there hasn't been any evidence in the dirt or in any of the writing I have seen to support them. It would have been far from their best work!


The holes seen in your pictures are on some of the least interesting ground on the property, and the building in the perspective shot of then #9 is not The Mansion, but one of many buildings that has changed uses over the years. It has been used a golf clubhouse, and has been staff housing for about the last 20 years.


If you want to see/learn more about what the golf course is like today you can learn more here:
http://propergolf.net/village_club_build.html

[Sven Nilsen]

Jaeger:


Are any of the photos in that link historical?  If so, do you have more?


There have been close to a 100 years of evolution on the course since it was first laid out, and it looks to me like it went through a bit of a rerouting when RTJ came through (in addition to 9 new holes being built by Doak).


I'd like to see more of the original course as I'm not so sure there's much on the ground today that looks like it used to.


Sven

[Sven Nilsen]

Question for Jaeger, which is where on the aerial image the clubhouse/staff housing building is located.


Here's another aerial shot similar to the one I posted above which shows a bit more of the course.  I am assuming the building is one of the ones on the middle left of the shot.

[Sven Nilsen]

I'm also trying to work out the old routing of the course.


Copied below are a modern aerial of the old section of the course (the portion used for golf in the old aerials), and the current plan of the course.  I've aligned the modern aerial to somewhat match up with the angle of the aerial shots.

[Sven Nilsen]

Copied below is a Jan. 20, 1951 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article discussing a bit of the history of the Trillora course.  It is of interest to note that this article notes a second course, this one belonging to Isaac's brother Daniel.

[Jaeger Kovich]

Hi Sven,


Looks like you are on to some cool stuff! I'm happy to help you connect the dots here.


Can you please email me the highest res copies of those articles and all the historic aerials? I will try to mark them up with labels.


I have a lot of the documentation that was available in the 90's when The Village purchased the club from IBM and wanted to expand it to 18.


Jaeger

[Bret Lawrence]

Sven,


Daniel Guggenheim purchased Howard Gould's Sands Point Estate in 1917.  Howard Gould had a private golf course dating back to 1900.  You can see a map of the course from 1900 in Reply #941 of the Compilation of Routings thread.


Bret

[Sven Nilsen]

Bret:


Thanks for making the link between Gould and Daniel Guggenheim.  Explains where the other course came from.


Jaeger:


Unfortunately, the resolution you see in the thread is about as good as its going to get.


I'll forward on what I have, and would be interested in seeing what you have on the old course.


Sven

[Jaeger Kovich]

[Jaeger Kovich]

Sven - I will start to sort through my aerials and old plans and start moving them to photobucket... I have some new plans to reroute the course again, this time making The Mansion the new clubhouse, but I won't post those on here!

[Jim_Kennedy]

Here's the Villa and course - resolution is OK when fully enlarged. There are also some fantastic views of Emmet's Meadowbrook ('32-34), Newport CC ('32-34), Houston CC- 1948, Sleepy Hollow, Gulf Stream, Ross' Longmeadow, etc.
 http://digitalcollections.smu.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/ryr/id/503/rec/3
There are 3 more photos, just type "Trillora" into the search box.

Sven,
Not to sidetrack this discussion, but there's one in Brewster, NY called Kishawana CC that I believe began around 1900 and folded in the late '40s. The land is still as open in 2015 as it was then and it's called Kishawana Farm.  Any idea as to who built ti?

[Tom_Doak]

In the photo shown, which I can't make notes on here, the position of all greens is basically the same as when I first saw the course in the 1990's, prior to our work.


The hole playing to the bottom right of the picture [green just out of view or partly so] was the opener by then.  The green bottom right-center was the par-3 2nd.  [There are still holes similar to both of these in the current routing.] 


The next hole originally played along the road to the left; I believe Trent Jones re-routed that one into a longer par-5 that played around to the right.  [Perhaps that's all he changed?]  The green just above and to the left of the 2nd was the old 4th, and the 5th played across the driveway and up along it as shown.  6th was a long par-3 playing back to the right over cross bunkers to the green in the center of the photo.


The 7th hole played as a dogleg right uphill toward the mansion.  The 8th green is almost right beside the 7th; it was a par-3 played from a tee behind #7 green.  And then the 9th played its tee shot to a bluff and then its second shot down the hill back toward the pro shop as Jaeger marked it.  So, everything in this photo [except for the bunkering shown on #1 and #2] lasted until the 1990's ... the only things Mr. Jones would have changed would be at the 3rd and 4th holes, out of frame to the left.


I always wondered about his name being on the course; they never looked much like Mr. Jones' greens.  Because they weren't.[/color]

[Sven Nilsen]

Here's the Villa and course - resolution is OK when fully enlarged. There are also some fantastic views of Emmet's Meadowbrook ('32-34), Newport CC ('32-34), Houston CC- 1948, Sleepy Hollow, Gulf Stream, Ross' Longmeadow, etc.
 http://digitalcollections.smu.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/ryr/id/503/rec/3
There are 3 more photos, just type "Trillora" into the search box.

Sven,
Not to sidetrack this discussion, but there's one in Brewster, NY called Kishawana CC that I believe began around 1900 and folded in the late '40s. The land is still as open in 2015 as it was then and it's called Kishawana Farm.  Any idea as to who built ti?

Jim:


I have Kishawana as an unknown.  The Annual Guides give three different dates of organization, 1895, 1902 and 1903.


Sven

[Sven Nilsen]

Tom:


Is this pretty close to what you were talking about?


Sven

[Tom_Doak]

Sven:


Yes, that's right, although the 8th tee is a bit further back on the line you drew, by the darker smudge. 


That was the way the holes were numbered when I saw them, though it seems unlikely it was always that way.  But who knows?  The little pro shop building they used by the one entrance gate was pretty old.

[Sven Nilsen]

Here's the article accompanying the photo in the first post from the June 1951 edition of Golfdom.

[Jaeger Kovich]

Sven - I'm not sure I agree with your 7/8. You got #9, which must have been a crazy hole playing off a cliff on a par-5!


I think the course looked something more like this by the end of the IBM days when The Village of Sands Point purchased it. The bunkering had certainly changed by this time... Google Earth says it is 1994. I think I have a copy of an RTJ 9hole plan somewhere, not sure it is digital though.

[Jaeger Kovich]

A clean aerial I used for recent work. Nearmaps.com had some really up to date ones where you could see the bunkers as they were being reshaped this summer, but my free trial expired.


A few other photos of the Guggenheim days:

[Sven Nilsen]

Tom and Jaeger:


The old articles talk about a 3,600 or 3,750 yard course, and one of them mentions 3 par 5's and 2 par 3's.  I'm guessing 3, 7 and 9 were par 5's.


From the sounds of it, there were three par 3's in the '90's.  Wonder if one of the old holes was shortened, or if it played as a short par 4 originally.


Sven