David,
I spent a good couple of hours at the Historical Society and took about 100 photos of various pages. I'll crop them and label them and send them to you in due time. Please remember to send me the horticultural plan when you get time.
Thanks.
WSM
Great. I look forward to seeing them.
As for the letter you posted last night, what NEW information do you think it brings to the table?
1. We knew the members of the construction committee.
2. We knew that Hugh I Wilson was its chairman, worked very hard "in the construction of this beautiful course."
The gentleman who wrote the article noted that Wilson devoted most his spare time to "laying out and constructing this course." But this is the same way that Hugh Wilson described what happened, and something that I have agreed with all along. Hugh Wilson and his committee laid the course out on the ground and constructed it. But according to the evidence I have seen, they did so:
1. After the routing had already been planned by some yet undetermined combination of Barker, M&W, and the site committee, and
2. After Wilson and the committee had traveled to NGLA to learn how to build the holes on Merion's natural conditions, and
3. After M&W returned to Merion before construction to further advise Wilson regarding the plan.
Please explain specifically how, if at all, this latest letter changes any of this?
Pat,
Merion had a celebratory dinner for Wilson and his committee after the course was built. Should they have held the dinner beforehand so it would fit your timeline. According to you, seven months after the opening is too far removed from the events to be considered contemporary. Watch that limb you are climbing out on....I hear some cracking.
You jump from when the course was built to when it was opened. To keep the same frame of reference: The dinner took place about a year and eight months (about 20 months) after the East Course had been built and seeded. In fact it took place around the time they were finishing building the WEST course. So by the time this dinner took place, Wilson had built and seeded the East, traveled to Europe to get ideas for the finishing work, returned and continued to work on the course for
one year. The West course had also been planned, construction was just being finished, and it would soon be seeded.
By the way, in Wilson's excellent essay for Piper and Oakley's book, Turf for Golf Courses, Wilson in his manuscript removed the section on the design and theory of bunkers. In his notes, he said that it was better discussed in another paper on construction. I believe Wilson's definition of construction was broader than yours and most of us today. Still, shouldn't we consider his use of the term rather than yours?
No doubt Wilson conceived of and built the bunkers and other features (including those in the 1912 photos) and no doubt he determined where to place many of these as well. But surely he understood the difference between constructing the bunkers in a certain style and planning the routing of a course, didn't he?
Your version of the draft of the the Wilson essay substantially differs from how TEPaul has described it in the past. Can we all see it?
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"After the visit of these gentlemen Mr. Macdonald wrote a member of the committee expressing the views of himself and Mr. Whigam, as to what could be done with the property. The report, as made to the board, embodied Mr. Macdonald’s letter, but it was not written for publication. We do not, therefore, feel justified in printing it. We can properly say, that it was, in general terms, favorable, and the committee based its recommendation largely on their opinion."
David Moriarty:
That is what the site committee wrote to the board.
It is NOT what the committee REPORTED to the board. The Committee's Report to the board "embodied M&W letter" and so the actual report described what M&W thought could be done with the property.
It is entirely disingenuous for you to pretend that the Committee's cursory and general statement written for circulation equates to M&W's description of what could be done with the property. In fact this version explicitly excludes any description of M&W's views on what could be with the property.
When you have to distort things and make things up to justify your theory, it is time to get a new theory.