I cannot even begin to keep up with you guys, but here are some responses which may or may not be garbled.
TEPaul wrote:
Thanks for responding on this. Wayne and I are not saying MCC and Lloyd and HDC were ONE and the SAME thing (I may've said that once weeks ago when I was having such a hard time reading that hand-written June 24, 1909 indenture). All we're saying is that Lloyd was acting in MCC's interest and obviously Lloyd was acting in his own real estate interest with the rest of the land to the west for himself and Merion members or friends interested in real estate and supporting the club.
No doubt that Lloyd had an interest in the real estate project after this deal was put together, but let’s not forget that even after he and Merion Members became involved around one half of HDC was still controlled by non-Merion members. And before the deal, Lloyd and the Merion Members may not have had any interest at all. Indeed Lloyd said as much when he wrote that members had invested in HDC “in order to consummate the purchase” of the land for Merion. He invested in HDC so that the sale could be completed.
HDC must have needed investors to raise money and exercise their options on the other properties secured by option. The same day the Inquirer announced that the sale of the land from HDC to MCC had settled (1/7/11) the paper also announced that the HDC had settled on their purchase of the George Taylor property, the 56 acres immediately west of the golf course.
As for the “1909 Indenture” I do not think that Lloyd is even mentioned. Do you think he was? If so where?
Would you mind taking another look at your second paragraph? There have to be mistakes or typos in there and misdate by a year or so. It seems like you might need an "if" in one part. I don't want to respond to that paragraph until you think it really says exactly what you mean to say.
Nope. No mistake.
On November 4, 1910 the Inquirer reported that brokers had sold and effected settlement of the Dallas Estate to James Freeman.
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Wayne
Thanks for filling in some of the information on the property listing. Somewhere I have a clipping that mentions the exchange involving the Wheeler property, but for some reason it was not on the page of clippings I sent you. If I locate it, I’ll send it.
Wayne wrote:
Notice that the land where the original 12th and 13th holes were located was not controlled by MCC until they rented the land from the P&W in May 1911.
So noted.
This seems a reasonable date to me. They did not start construction until around then, and no use formalizing what must have been essentially a gentleman’s agreement before they began to use the property. I wonder what efforts, if any, they made to purchase the land before they decided to rent it.
You are not suggesting that they were waiting to sign this lease until after M&W came back down to check on the lay out before construction, are you? I didn’t think so.
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Mike Cirba wrote:
I think it is misleading to suggest as your White Paper does that Merion somehow picked out 96 acres out of 300+ available that was under ownership of the HDC. While that is technically true, it's also true that really only 140 of those acres, the property known as the "Johnson Farm" was really even evaluated by the club or made available by the HDC.
It is only misleading if you misinterpret it.
The point was that, instead of staying within the vast holdings of HDC for their extra acreage, they instead went outside those holdings to the Dallas Estate and the RR land. This strongly suggests that they were not interested in just any 120 acres, but wanted specific land for specific purposes.
. . .
The green line on the aerial means nothing to me. I drew the yellow line. I don’t think I said the green line meant something.
. . .
The property selected was L shaped, but the Johnson farm was shaped like a J. They did not buy the entire Johnson farm; it was split up. The point is that this was already done before Nov. 15, 1910.
However, what is still difficult for me to understand is how ANY routing was supposed to work without the northern 5 acres that is today's 15th approach and green, and 16th tee down to the bottom of the hill.
Francis and Lloyd didn’t think it would work either, so they changed the shape of property. I’ll speculate about it in an answer to a few TEPaul questions that I did not post earlier.
I would also question whether the original Johnson Property went as far to the south as to encompass the present 11th green as you have it drawn, but I'd have to look at that closer.
That green line is not the old Johnson property. It was just on the google screen I copied. I think it is supposed to be the course boundary.
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TEPaul wrote:
So, the question is, is it your feeling AND YOUR CONTENTION in your essay that Macdonald (and Whigam) actually left Merion with something physical such as a real drawn routing and design plan? Is it your feeling and contention that such a physical thing as a drawn routing and design plan was included with that "LETTER" that the site committee mentions they got from him and mentioned to the MCC board.
In the essay I tried to avoid “contentions” or “conclusions” where I did not feel I had adequate support. I don’t know what M&W left the property with, and I don’t know the details of their “views as to what could be done with the land” that the Committee recommended for purchase. So I have tried not to speculate. I was saving the rampant speculation for part II (this is a joke Mike, so please try to restrain yourself and not throw it back in my face.)
That being said a case could be made that they did something similar to what they did at NGLA, where they inspected the property, found the holes they were looking for, and recommended purchase of the land containing these holes.
Assuming without knowing that the letter did not contain drawings or sketches (it could have, but we don’t know the details because the committee chose not to publish the letter or describe its contents,) they easily could have written this out by referencing landmarks, the barker routing, or even references to stakes or marker that they had placed (as they did at NGLA.) Again, I am NOT claiming any of these as fact, but none of them conflict with them facts as we know them.
It would not be hard to describe their “views on what could be done with the property,” especially given his reliance of hole types or principles, and the existence of the previous map and routing by Barker.
Purely as a hypothetical, here is an example.
Seventh Hole: Based on a mirror image of a Redan type hole, with the tee located to the right of [landmark or previous description] and the green located on the plateau left of the old barn; place deep bunker to guard the front right of the green.I'm sort of wondering if there wasn't something like that how in the world could people like Francis and Lloyd be out there "tweaking" whatever it was you say Macdonald left them with?
Because for whatever reason Francis and Lloyd couldn’t figure out how the holes would fit either. Maybe they (Barker and/or Macdonald) hadn’t considered a entry road, or maybe when inspecting the property it just seemed the holes fit better than they did. All of the Barker routing had to be terribly cramped, and it could be that M&W liked what Barker planned for this part of the property or that Merion did, until they figured out that it just too tight. Or maybe M&W thought that holes were longer than they were, or maybe they planned holes too close together for Merion’s comfort. Surely sometimes designers walk a property and come up with a vision of the property, but when they actually stake out the holes, it doesn’t quite work how they thought it would.
Again purely hypothetical, and probably unreasonable, but wasn't the first tee originally around the corner of the clubhouse? If so, maybe Barker or/and M&W thought that the 14th tee should be closer to the clubhouse, not fully realizing the extent to which this would interfere with the 18th green and possibly even the first hole. This would have given them more length in theory but wouldn't work too well in practice, and this might have become apparent to Francis when he tried to convert Barker's and/or M&W's views into a more detailed routing plan.
Another possibility is things fit okay, but Merion wanted the 14-16 to be longer holes, or that they did not want the holes to be so immediately adjacent to each other, and stretching this portion out gave them a little wiggle room to avoid excessive overlapping tees and greens. I have not researched the issue, but it seems that around this time a preference for separate playing corridors (as at Pine Valley) was starting to emerge and Merion wanted a bit more of this that had thus far been suggested by anyone.
Again, not offering these as proof or as my theory, but merely to put out some possibilities that explain what might have happened. All of the possibilities share a common denominator and that is that this land exchange was crucial to creating what exists to day on that part of the course. While the quarry was still well within the property even without this exchange, Hole 16 could not have utilized the quarry in quite same the way it does had the extra land not been available.