What reason or reasons would they have had for choosing Wilson? What were his qualifications?
I think you and David are trying to apply 2009 standards to the early 20th century world. If this was 1925, I could see your point. Reality is there really are no professional architects in 1911? Macdonald never accepted a fee at any of his projects. Even today, there are no real standards today to call yourself a golf architect. If I could afford it, I could appoint myself as architect of a new to be built course.
In 1911, if I had fairly unlimited time and money, access to some of the greatest golf architecture minds of the day in M&W, access to industrialist throughout Philadelphia that are building bridges, infrastructure and factories, and I had a supportive membership, I absolutely believe I could build a great golf course. We have such a person on this Board today in Archie Struthers. Is Twisted Dune world class? No, but he did not have the access, money and support that Hugh Wilson did at the time? No.
Charles Banks states in the Yale Alumni Weekly on April 19, 1929, "Mr.Macdonald was familiar with the plans from the outset, but Mr. Raynor was the real genius of this masterpiece (Yale), who made the layout, designed the greens, and gave the work of construction his supervision from start to finish."
Raynor is dead at the time of the letter and I am guessing that Charlie was still getting request for work that could have gone to Banks. Thus, Banks had every incentive to give more/full credit to Charlie but he did not. There are other passages from "Golf at Yale" that I can send to you (IM me) if you want support that Charlie was very familiar with the site. Who gets credit for the the Yale routing? Unclear to me, but it sounds like a collaboration. Today, most people at Yale agree with the following attribution:
Seth Raynor - Architect
CB Macdonald - Consultant
Still, Charlie writes about Yale along with National, Lido and Mid-Ocean in his book and to my knowledge never writes about Merion a world famous course at a very early age due to its Jones connection. Why did Macdonald not mention Merion, to my knowledge ever?
I believe that Merion has always (and probably more so now!) known and acknowledged Macdonald's involvement at Merion. I did not know about it and have attributed it to David's essay but that is due to my (probably lack of) knowledge about the details of the club's history.
So my question to you and David is, what do you want Merion to do, and please be specific?