Merion's Early Timeline

[Patrick_Mucci]

I've still no clue to the following. Why did Merion secure 117 acres, send a plan to their members with 124 acres and build a course on 120.

They secured 117 acres because they initially felt that amount of land was adequate.
If they only owned 117-120 acres any plan sent to the members reflecting 124 acres would have to be an error.
The built on 120 because they secured more land to improve the golf course.

Mucci if you think they had this thing routed,

I do.
The parcel is too contrived and the acreage too arbitrary/limited, given the amount of land available to them.

I'm going nuts on that one given the differences in the numbers. 

Hopefully, I've cured your insanity.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Patrick is just wishin', and hopin', and praying that there is some way he can get someone, anyone, to credit CB Macdonald for Merion, even without a single shard of proof and a timeline that flies in the face of it.   

I've never advocated crediting Macdonald for Merion, that's your defense at it's extreme.

The absence of a single shard of proof and timeline flies in the face of crediting Wilson with the routing of Merion.


It's way past ridiculous at this point, and really cluttering these threads with nonsense, frankly.

I understand your reluctance at continuing to research this topic.
You want to dismiss any efforts to research this topic because you're so heavily invested in Wilson.

I don't know who routed Merion, but, I'd like to find out.

You don't know who routed Merion, but, you want to give credit to Wilson and end any further research in this area.

Ask yourself, which position is the more reasonable position ?
Which position seeks the truth and which position maintains the status quo despite not having hard evidence to prove your case.

TEPaul should publish the entirety of the Cuyler letter and Lesley report.
That MAY add some clarity to this issue. 



 

[Mike_Cirba]

Patrick,

What Lesley report are you referring to?

[paul cowley]

I'm sorry guys....but this is just land planning 101....circa 1910.

[Mike_Cirba]

I'm sorry guys....but this is just land planning 101....circa 1910.

Paul,

I think I agree, but can you expand on what you're saying here?

I've long contended that the 1910 "Land Plan" is nothing more than the type of crappy prospectus most of us have seen at Real Estate promotions, with a fake boundary drawn symmetrically through to delineate an approximate border between real estate and golf course and there was no more planned and routed golf course depicted on that map or on the ground than the man on the moon.

Unfortunately, there are those who believe they've sited a UFO somewhere there and believe the burden of proof should be on everyone else to prove to them that they never saw it.   

What do you think?

[paul cowley]

I agree with you.

[Mike_Cirba]

I agree with you.

Hallelujah, Brother Cowley.   You've restored my faith in mankind.

And a very good evening to you, sir.  

[paul cowley]

....sleep well and get some rest!

[Tony_Chapman]

I've still no clue to the following. Why did Merion secure 117 acres, send a plan to their members with 124 acres and build a course on 120.

They secured 117 acres because they initially felt that amount of land was adequate.
If they only owned 117-120 acres any plan sent to the members reflecting 124 acres would have to be an error.
The built on 120 because they secured more land to improve the golf course.

Mucci if you think they had this thing routed,

I do.
The parcel is too contrived and the acreage too arbitrary/limited, given the amount of land available to them.

I'm going nuts on that one given the differences in the numbers. 

Hopefully, I've cured your insanity.

I'll play along for fun. Patrick if they had the thing routed -- like you just said -- why didn't they put the road where it ended up being? And, why did they want golf course all the way up to College Ave. when they knew they weren't going up there? Humor me.

[John_Cullum]

John -- Jeff is correct on this. The deed that placed the golf course boundary for the 120.01 acres was in July 1911.

I've still no clue to the following. Why did Merion secure 117 acres, send a plan to their members with 124 acres and build a course on 120. Mucci if you think they had this thing routed, I'm going nuts on that one given the differences in the numbers. 

Quit going nuts. They golf course was the core of the real estate development. It wound up taking 120 acres +/- to build it. And like Cirba says above, the November land plan everybody obsesses over was just a marketing brochure. The whole deal got ironed out in around 1 year. They probably couldn't pull that off today

[Bryan Izatt]

Bryan,

Narrow Guage roads! I love it.....PA did have a lot of narrow guage railroads at the time. Of course, the most likely explanation is that roads and ROW's generally get wider all the time.  If minor roads are 50' today, I can imagine them being 35' in 1910.

I was once again trying to come up with a definitive explanation.  However, it seems just as likely that the road was simply drawn for ilustrative purposes and that it didn't necessarily have to measure out to the proposed property boundaries, especially since it was known that the road would shift to fit the golf course. 

Jeff,

I agree that the road, being "approximate" was illustrative.  But, I have to believe that it was meant to show 117 acres, or why else would the accompanying letter state that the Board proposes to form a Corporation "which will buy outright, the 117 acres, shown on the plan in green, and marked "Golf Course".  The second page of the letter goes on at length about how they will finance the land purchase and the course development through a mortgage, a lease and bonds.  They even included a form for subscription to the bond issue as part of the letter and asked the members to be liberal in subscribing to the bonds.  Even in the '10's it seems a little loose to be basing this on a misleading plan of property.

In any event, if behind the scenes GHR was understood by all to be a movable boundary dependent on the design of the course, would not the expectation of the membership be that the line may shift shape but the total acreage would remain the same.  After all, they said explicitly that "The Club has secured 117 acres at $726.50 an acre, or $85,000."  All the financial arrangements were based on those numbers.

Now in the end in July 1911 they ended up with 120.01 acres, but still only paid $85,000  (see extract from the July 26, 1911 Indenture transferring the golf course property from Lloyd via Rothwell to MCCGA, below).  Are we to assume that sugar daddy Lloyd just threw in 3 extra acres.

[Mike_Cirba]

Could there be anything to the theory that the road was narrower back then?

I ask because I do believe that the road in question in this pic/painting or whatever is actually Golf House Road.

I think it's just an odd angle and that the road does veer out to the right before reaching the 10th green in the distance.

I also found a picture that comes close to showing the same angle, and if you imagine the original 10th green over near the "turning bunker" on the 1st hole you get some sense of how it all lines up;

[Mike_Cirba]

Here I blew up the area in question a little bit.

[Niall C]

Bryan,

Narrow Guage roads! I love it.....PA did have a lot of narrow guage railroads at the time. Of course, the most likely explanation is that roads and ROW's generally get wider all the time.  If minor roads are 50' today, I can imagine them being 35' in 1910.

I was once again trying to come up with a definitive explanation.  However, it seems just as likely that the road was simply drawn for ilustrative purposes and that it didn't necessarily have to measure out to the proposed property boundaries, especially since it was known that the road would shift to fit the golf course. 

Guys

You've got to ask yourself, who had the whip hand here ? Who was taking the lead ? Surely, the answer to both questions was the development company. They would have decided a general masterplan, or whatever it was called in 1910, that suited there purposes and then offered the land they had designated for the golf course to the golf club. In doing so they would have had to mark some sort of boundary even though it wasn't hard and fast along part. The line of the proposed road just smacks of an architect/desk sitting at his desk coming up with an arbitary boundary without any real reference to the lay of the land. The site area would have been calculated after, hence the odd number in 117 acres.

All conjecture on my part but if everyone else can have a go then why not me.

Niall
Jeff,

I agree that the road, being "approximate" was illustrative.  But, I have to believe that it was meant to show 117 acres, or why else would the accompanying letter state that the Board proposes to form a Corporation "which will buy outright, the 117 acres, shown on the plan in green, and marked "Golf Course".  The second page of the letter goes on at length about how they will finance the land purchase and the course development through a mortgage, a lease and bonds.  They even included a form for subscription to the bond issue as part of the letter and asked the members to be liberal in subscribing to the bonds.  Even in the '10's it seems a little loose to be basing this on a misleading plan of property.

In any event, if behind the scenes GHR was understood by all to be a movable boundary dependent on the design of the course, would not the expectation of the membership be that the line may shift shape but the total acreage would remain the same.  After all, they said explicitly that "The Club has secured 117 acres at $726.50 an acre, or $85,000."  All the financial arrangements were based on those numbers.

Now in the end in July 1911 they ended up with 120.01 acres, but still only paid $85,000  (see extract from the July 26, 1911 Indenture transferring the golf course property from Lloyd via Rothwell to MCCGA, below).  Are we to assume that sugar daddy Lloyd just threw in 3 extra acres.

[JESII]

My issues with the "approximate road" being purely an aesthetic addition (which is the linchpin in Mike Cirba and Tom Paul's theory of a a post 11/10/1910 routing) by someone in the architects laboratory are:

1) how very close it actually ended up being and...
2) how much wasted acreage it results in at the top of the triangle as too narrow for golf...they only had so many acres to use...

My point is that it doesn't seem reasonable to me for the plan to be drawn how it was, with the proposed road being very close to the end result, through the area of the triangle, for the architect to have not received some guidance to provide for it on his map...especially if it means completely disregarding the words of one of the instrumental men involved.




Mike,

You have recently asked Bryan to agree with these metes and bounds results as supporting the date of the SWAP being after 11/10/1910, I'm curious what specifically in his work led you to that conclusion.





I have been hoping to go through and use all the accurate numbers but haven't yet done so...so here's a question for anyone with those numbers handy.

What was the acreage for the area of the souther Johnson Farn and Dallas Estate plus The Johnson Farm (northeastern segment) only up to the southern border of Haverford College? In other words, the Northern part of Bryan's M (not including F) plus th esouthern part of Bryan's JW.

After that, what is the total acreage of the Rectangle above that from which the triangle eventually came out of?

And, do we agree the triangle was 4.8 acres?

[Mike_Cirba]

Jim,

The land area you're asking about measures out to 108.5 acres...much larger than the 100 acres David was hoping for.

The entire rectangle above the Haverford College boundary is 10.5 acres, with 4.8 acres used as 'the triangle" you mentioned.

You say "how very close it actually ended up being..", but it's really not as I'll show shortly.

Back on that Land Plan it was about 100 yards x 327 yards wide.   Today it is 130 yards by 190 yards.   That is not close.

To your other question...

I believe the swap clearly happened after that 1910 Land Plan was drawn and the fact that the boundary on that western side up to and including the triangle land changed so much between the time the Land Plan was drawn and what got eventually built virtually proves it had to have happened later.

All,

Please allow me to illustrate further.

After asking the question last night about the parallel, "doppelganger" road drawn through the Real Estate Portion of land on that 1912 map, and asking if that also was based on some supposed existing golf course routing, I went back and read what Francis wrote again and was struck by a number of things.

First, he says that "the Land now covered in fine homes along Golf House Road was exchanged for land about 130 yards wide by 190 yards long...".

I got to wondering what he is talking about because the entire stretch along Golf House Road from Ardmore to College Avenue is covered with "fine homes".   So, that got me thinking....what did that property look like in 1950 when Francis spoke?

Unfortunately, no luck...the length of the road was pretty developed then, as well.  

But something else kept bugging me.    If they already had a surveyor with Pugh and Hubbard who drew thiese Land Plans, then why would they need Richard Francis on the Comimittee?

Or put better, if Francis was already out there surveying before the November 1910 Land Plan, why didn't they just use HIS maps?

More importantly, the "doppelganger road" kept troubling me, as well, so I wanted to go back and see if THAT road got built to the initial spec as drawn on the 1910 Land Plan.

Alas, it was off, as well.

Here is the 1910 Land Plan showing both proposed "approximate" roads followed by a 1948 Railroad Map of the same terrirory showing the roads as they were actually built.




Now, here's the "as built" in 1948.




Finally, let me try to draw something that creates the original intended "doppelganger" effect...




I really think we're looking at the Francis Land Swap right here.

[JESII]

Yep, you keep thinking Butch...that's what you're good at...

[JESII]

Mike,

I was saying the road was close, not the width of triangle...you used the dimensions of the triangle while the long side of the triangle is still 327 yards...going all the way up to College...so is 130 X 327 really all that much different that 100 X 327?

[JESII]

Mike,

It's not 108 acres, I want to include the part of JW below the base of the triangle...you know..."the area with fine homes along golf house road..."

[Mike_Cirba]

Mike,

It's not 108 acres, I want to include the part of JW below the base of the triangle...you know..."the area with fine homes along golf house road..."

Jim,

I know, you're still trying to work from David's drawing and his area encircled in Blue, correct?





It's 108.4 acres.

If we add in the 21.1 acres of the Dallas Estate per David's theory we end up with 129.5 acres (132.5 if you add in the Railroad Land) that they were supposedly originally considering, when we know that as far back as July 1910 they thought they required almost 120 acres, we know they secured 117 in December 1910, and we know they eventually purchased 120.1 in July 1911 and also leased 3 acres of Rairoad Land for the final course.

[Mike_Cirba]

Jim,

Put another way, if you're still believing they swapped for the 4.8 acres of land of the triangle they used, the problem is that there is 9.3 acres of unused property that was Johnson Farmland south of Haverford College Boundary and west of Golf House Road.

That's the difference, and the total overestimation associated with David's theory.  

He was hoping that those segments of the Johnson Farm and the Dallas Estate would add up to the "required 120 acres" the July 1910 Board Request referenced.

They didn't....they added up to 129.5 + 3 acres railroad property for 132.5.

Wrong answer.

[JESII]

Those numbers help Mike, thanks...no, I am not trying to fit into any box David might have hypothesized, I'm trying to find some semblance of logic in all of this.

How does any of this guarantee that the SWAP coudn't have occurred prior to 11/10/1910, I forget.

[Mike_Cirba]

Jim,

Very simple.

If the Land Swap was all done and the routing finished and the lower 13 holes settled and now the top five accommodated and the land sale finalized and the Francis Swap was indeed the addition of that whole triangle all took place before Nov 1910 then I know you wouldn't be seeing all of this activity and real change after that time.

I know you only want to consider the width of that stretch and not the length difference but even in width you're talking 30 yards or 25 pct!

The length difference is HUGE.

[Bryan Izatt]

...........................

"are we also in agreement that this HAD to have happened after Nov 1910"  Are you referring to the final location of GHR?  No, I can't reach that conclusion yet.  Are we in agreement that the plan of property and the Board's letter to the members are at odds about the 117 acres?  Which is right?  What was going on in the back rooms about the size of the "Golf Course" property and consequently the location of GHR?

Bryan, I'm surprised you're still hedging on this one.   It's clear that the approximate road drawn on the November 15, 1910 Land Plan is markedly different than the road that was built and shaped according to the final routing and hole dimensions as indicated by the metes and bounds on the July 1911 deed..   It's also clear that the road changed based on adding width where necessary along 14 & 15 and giving back where it wasn't needed, and all of that clearly took place during the time period between November 1910 and July 1911.

.................................

Mike,

If the "approximate" road is just illustrative and was casually drawn on the map, then why did the letter say it showed 117 acres.  If you accept that they didn't really mean that it did, and that it was an aesthetic illustrative artifact, then how can you say that the land added or subtracted between it and the as-built road has any meaning.  How do you know that that means the adjustments took place between November 1910 and July 1911, since you don't know in  November 1910 where they thought the road was going to be?

[Bryan Izatt]

We also know that Hugh Wilson and Committee would have later been working with an actual TOPO with a boundary that may or may not have looked precisely like that 1910 Land Plan. 

In any case, whatever they were working with clearly wasn't wide enough and we know that the boundaries of the roadway changed to support the golf course they needed, and I believe it's painfully visually obvious.  EVEN the 1910 Land Plan, which shows MORE ACRES than what was built, SHOWS CLEARLY THAT WHAT THEY WERE CONSIDERING FOR THE FINAL FIVE HOLES WAS NOT WIDE ENOUGH.   Tongue Wink

Mike,

How do you know that Wilson, et al had a topo with a boundary on it.  I presume that you mean between January and July 1911?  When do you suppose that the actual location of GHR was locked in?

Since we don't know what you think Wilson was working with, how can you say that the area wasn't wide enough?  It wasn't wide enough if the "approximate" road was seen as a real rather than illustrative boundary.  But, then you think that it was illustrative.