"Now what I think would be a more intriguing question is what happened to that abruptment that use to run from the 6th hole across the 8th, behind the 9th green and down the right hand side of 10. The abruptment still bisects the 7th hole and it is a really cool little feature."
SPDB:
I've never had much interest in horse racing or the history of it (other than one brief time in my life
) but having grown up around Piping Rock I've always been aware polo was a big deal there once (I believe I do remember a few polo matches at Piping when I was very young). I've always heard there was a racetrack at Piping Rock and that certainly wouldn't surprise me given who some of the membership of that club was and their enormous power and participation in the American horse breeding and horse-racing world (note the Phipps and their control within The Jockey Club or the organization that ran American thoroughbred racing).
I've always assumed if there was a race track at Piping Rock it probably encircled the polo fields and I've always been aware of what you are calling abruptments, and the vestiges of them that seem to encircle some of that area. In the old days it took a pretty good drive to get it over the drop-down that crosses the 7th fairway. I suppose one could track as it swings left and creates some of the fall off on the right side of the 6th, as well as its prominence as you mentioned to the right of the 10th. If a track encircled that area (as I've always assumed it did) it might have been a mile or a mile and a quarter which would have made sense if it was a full-blown thoroughbred race horse track.
Let's say a race track did encircle that area once (around the polo fields along the 10th, behind the 9th, across the 8th, 7th, turning left down the beginning of the 6th and along the 2nd and 1st, that might have been a mile or a mile and a quarter. If horses were started in front of the clubhouse it might make it a mile or even a mile and a half to get back to where that building (or whatever it is or appears to be). That would make sense given a traditional thorughbred horserace around a mile and a bit above and below the mile mark, to a mile and a quarter and even including the famous ultra long mile and a half of the Belmont (last leg of the Triple Crown) and the jewel in the NEW YORK metropolitan area horseracing scene that very much was the purview of the Phipps and Whitneys and Woodwards and such who were all in and around Piping Rock Club back in those days.
If that building is not a mini-grandstand it might be a really large transportable series of gates but it looks a bit large for that, even at Belmont.
The point is that golf course very much looks to be in play in that photo and that structure is very much there in a line between the old original tee and the right side of that fairway which is obsoleted today but nevertheless looked to be the ideal angle to approach the length of that green. For a few semi-famous and well known reasons that particular "Road Hole" of Macdonald's was very short----eg around 350-360 yards.
My point is if that structure was not movable somehow it would not surprise me if Macdonald used it just as the old railroad sheds were once used on the Road Hole at TOC.
All this would probably not be hard to figure out today by checking the early history of Piping as well as some of the people from the old New York thoroughbred horse racing world.
To me that structure in that area in that old photo was a pretty big surprise but just as big a surprise to me is how much all that fairway on the right was obsoleted years ago. To me that building and that obsoleted rightside fairway very much tie together to mimic TOC's Road Hole drive and one of that old hole's most interesting high risk, high reward strategies!
When I grew up at Piping in that general area they had planted trees but one didn't drive over them because by that time all that fairway on the right was gone too.