"Tom,
Any idea why Lloyd took chairmanship of the committee for those two months?"
My recollection is that the minutes only mentioned that he did and not why he did.
I suppose one might assume that Lloyd and the rest felt that Hugh Wilson may be better at chairing and leading the committee of "amateur/sportsmen" members charged with designing and creating the new East course. If not one sure does wonder why Hugh Wilson was appointed to such a thing.
As for Lloyd, I have never really understood what kind of golfer he was or what he knew of golf course architecture before, then or later. But I do know he did have a fairly active interest in agronomy and obviously plants and such because there is correspondence some years later that reports Lloyd went to the US Dept of Agriculture with Hugh and Alan Wilson to meet Piper and Oakley. But that might have had something to do with the USGA's inclination to raise a $1 million dollar fund to run the USGA Green Section. And of course, Lloyd's place on nearby Cooperstown Rd, Allgates, had become one of the best known gardens in America for various types of plants such as apparently water lillies or some such and Mrs Lloyd was the president of The Garden Club of America.
Also, another interesting little irony that touches on GOLFCLUBATLAS.com and one of its participants, Tom MacWood, and one of his interests and essays, was that the architecture of Lloyd's house at Allgates, was also one of the most interesting and important examples of well known building architect, Wilson Eyre's American "Arts and Crafts" style. I drove my wife right through the front of it about 10 days ago. Her only remark was; "It looks pretty dark and depressing to me."
I have also proposed to Merion as an interesting semi-subject is a full-blown essay on the part Horatio Gates Lloyd played in this move to Ardmore with both the course, the corporation for it, and the corporate roll he played with HDC and the residential community that was created to the west between Merion East and Allgates. In a real way the members of Merion were never assessed much more than a playing fee for all this and consequently it just may be that Lloyd played the roll at that time of perhaps the biggest angel a club like that ever had. He did not appear to seek any real recognition for any of it which seems to have been the way men like him back then tended to do things and wanted to do things.
Was that some kind of ethos of that culture back then, and certainly more so back then than today? Yes, I think it was and the evidence to prove it may still be hiding in musty attics and perhaps libraries here and there. I would like to find more of it, and so I will become a formal, full-blown, card-carrying SEARCHER! And for it I hope some day Tom MacWood will become proud of me! Frankly, nothing in life would make me happier other than perhaps going to the WaWa in my Mini Cooper S at near 100MPH for a cup of large chicken soup with about 5-6 packets of crackers, a bottle of spicy V8 juice, and a carton of Winstons!
