David,
I'm sitting here crafting a response to your questions and couldn't help but see your latest post. I really do wish you'd stop mis-staing my position and I'd ask you to point out where I wrote that CBM was only involved in the planning process for a single day?
In fact, as I re-read your personal attacks in the insulting post above from yesterday I question my own sanity in trying to dialogue with you David, because respectfully, you've been unnecessarily argumentative and pointlessly aggressive since my return. In fact, most folks whose opinions I respect tell me to just continue ignoring you and see your posts as ad hominen, as well as rephrasing inaccurately what I previously wrote to counter in a specious manner against straw men of your own creation.
That being said, I'm hopeful that such continued animosity is really not necessary here and if it continues, I'll just continue to ignore your posts.
I had wanted to write something a bit more expansive because truth be told, our respective positions on the creation of NGLA based on what you wrote yesterday are truthfully not too far apart, and honestly, we're much closer in agreement than either of us seem to be with Patrick's take on events. No matter. Instead, I'll just simply answer your questions and if we can have a civil discussion I'd appreciate that and if not, please don't ask me anything further expecting me to answer.
Here are your questions again;
1. You've repeatedly claimed that in December 1906, CBM was "quoted as saying that there is room for houses on the property he acquired." Can you produce any of these quotations?
2. You claim that as of December 1906, CBM was planning to fit 90 acres residential lots on the NGLA property described in the articles. How were these 90 acres of lots going to fit on this property with the golf course, given the aspects of the golf course that CBM had already described? To answer #1, I'll refer again to the December 15, 1906 article segment I previously posted. Macdonald talks extensively about the attributes of the property selected and is quoted,
"There are sites available for houses, and yachts may approach through Great Peconic Bay." For reference, I'll post it here again below.
In answer to #2, I didn't claim that CBM was planning to fit 90 acres residential on the NGLA property by December of 1915. What I did say is that it seemed his plan to share that 200 acres in some combination of golf course and housing lots for the Founders still seemed alive at that point. I say that because I seriously doubt that multiple New York newspapers in separate stories would all somehow be in possession of the 1904 letter he sent to prospective Founders if it still wasn't part of the December 1906 press release. At that juncture Macdonald may have already been questioning exactly how much would be still available, or where it might be located, but he also made clear that laying out the course and staking out of the property would occur over the next several months so I assume there'd be time to figure that out.
Further, even your quote from Max Behr speaks to Macdonald's intent when he wrote,
"Even so a considerable part of the 205 acres is not touched by the course and is available for other purposes.Finally, as I noted earlier, Macdonald again refers to the "Surplus Land" originally proposed for housing in 1904 again in his follow-up letter of 1912 to the membership stating that no determination had yet been made as to how to use the land.
Somewhere along the line his plans for housing on the property changed, but I don't believe it was by December of 1906. If you have additional contemporaneous materials indicating when that may have happened I'd be happy to change my view if proven incorrect. Thanks.