It’s good to see we’ve reached a point where it seems evident that there was ongoing communications and coordination to some degree between the Real Estate Developer and Macdonald. I’ll be very interested to see what Bryan’s source is able to reveal as relates to their correspondence. The Goddard book “Colonizing Southampton” certainly alludes to their collaboration regarding the site of the new Shinnecock Inn, which would need to be close to available transportation;
”A new site for the hotel was selected a little to the east of the Hills depot and at the southern tip of the projected National Golf Links. This was no doubt deliberate. In 1907, Charles Macdonald had no immediate plans for a club house, and it would have made eminent sense to Redfield that the many well-heeled golfers expected to descend on the National would need a place to stay.”
“As it turned out, he and the railroad also thought to move the Golf Grounds Station farther to the west and closer to the hotel (and thus to the National) but was stopped by the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, or, rather, by its combustible president, Judge Horace Russell. Russell, a self-described old railroad man himself who knew what it meant “to submit to the whimsical caprices of residents along the line of the road,” wrote to the LIRR’s president that “it would not serve anybody’s convenience, so far as the golf club is concerned, if it were to be moved to the west end of the golf club property; the Railroad Company might just was well discontinue the station altogether.” That ended that, but one might well wonder if Redfield threw in the removal of the depot to sweeten the deal with Macdonald. We will never know. But the hotel went up in 1907 and was open for business that summer.”
Again, I think this is important to keep in mind as one considers the chain of events. I’m certainly open to changing my opinion as any new evidence warrants but this is what it seems like to me;
1904 – CBM drafts an Agreement which he sends to subscribers asking them to become Founding members of his club. Included in the Agreement is this language;
” Assuming that we buy 200 acres, it would take about 110 acres to lay out the golf course proper, and five acres for a clubhouse and accessories. We would give to each subscriber an acre and a half of ground in fee simple. The ground in itself should be worth $500 an acre in the vicinity of a golf course of this character.”
It should be noted that CBM is estimating exact numbers as he says “about 110 acres”, but it’s clear the implication is that whatever is left over after the golf course is completed will be split between the Founders. His mention of the value of the land once the course is built is clearly meant as financial enticement, as an investment.
Macdonald also told us that he had 60 subscribers signed up at the time he made offers on land so it’s clear all involved bought into this “Agreement”.
1905/06 – CBM offers the Real Estate Developer $200 an acre for 120 acres of land near the Shinnecock Canal but the owner refuses. That area is right smack dab where the developer is having Olmsted & Vaux survey and sub-divide 1320 acres of recently purchased land into lots ranging in size from 3 acres to 5 acres.
Clearly at that time Macdonald thought he could build his Ideal course on 120 acres of land. There would be no need for a housing component because he would have been aware of the Developers plans for creating housing plots on the land in that area. At that price they could have probably also built a clubhouse from the get-go.
Since CBM thought he could fit his course on that 120 acres, what was so special or different about that land versus the Sebonac Neck site where he suddenly supposedly felt he needed 67% more acreage for his golf course? Did he survey that 120 acre site first prior to making his offer? Did he clear the land prior to making an offer? Did he route a golf course on the 120 acres prior? I sense no. I think he looked at the land for the type of soils and terrain he wanted and in his own words, “Having the material in hand to work upon, the completion of an ideal course becomes a matter of experience, gardening, and mathematics.”
1906 - CBM considers 450 acres of land up in Sebonac Neck, which was overgrown, insect-infested, had never been surveyed for housing, and CBM tells us ”every one thought it more or less worthless”. It was simply outside of the Developers plans and there were no plans to create housing lots “adjacent” to the course as David suggested, beyond a single plot or two adjacent to today’s 9th green at the southern boundary of the course. In fact, almost all of the land adjacent to the golf course is today holes on the Shinnecock Hills and Sebonack golf courses!
What’s more, the proposed lots that CBM had in mind would be sized based on whatever was left over after the golf course was routed and divided accordingly to a maximum of 1.5 acre lots or smaller. I’m not sure how these would have been seen “in competition” with the 3 to 5 acre luxury sites the Developer intended on land they were already surveying?
Complicating factors of the Sebonac Neck site included accessibility, lodging, but I’m sure the developer would have told him about plans for the Shinnecock Inn, as Goddard suggests.
In Macdonald’s words, “So Jim Whigham and myself spent two or three days riding over it, studying the contours of the ground. Finally we determined it was what we wanted, providing we could get it reasonably…the company agreed to sell us 205 acres and we were permitted to locate it as best to serve our purpose”
That contract securing the land was signed on Friday, December 14, 1906, again at $200 per acre. That weekend multiple newspapers reported that the land deal for Founders usage was part of the Agreement. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle probably had the best information at that time, at least casting a bit of doubt when they wrote, "While the matter is not settled it is likely that the bordering land not required for the links will be set apart in individual parcels for the founders who may eventually build summer cottages thereon."
If indeed the Real Estate Developer had been concerned about real estate competition on land they considered worthless, can you imagine how they would have freaked when every major New York City newspaper ran with the story of CBM providing 60 building lots? If indeed this wasn’t still part of Macdonald’s Agreement plan with the well-heeled Founders in late 1906 can you imagine how CBM would have freaked when that was reported?
After that 1906 agreement was reached, CBM tells us the next steps; “Again, we studied the contours earnestly; selecting those that would fit in naturally with the various classical holes I had in mind, after which we staked out the land we wanted.”
That is consistent with the December 1906 newspaper articles where Macdonald is quoted as saying the next several months would be devoted to selecting the holes and planning the course in detail, after which the boundaries would be staked out and plaster models would be created to guide the builders.
Obviously, the course that was then routed and built took up much more land than Macdonald’s original projections. But even with that he addressed the issue of “Surplus Land” again in his 1912 letter to the membership where he referred to the Original Agreement as follows;
“You will note in the original subscription it was stated that there would be some acres of land which would not be required for the golf course proper. This has proved to be true, and this land is at the disposal of the Founders, but you will note in the minutes of the Founders' meeting of December 20th, 1911, that no action was taken in the matter, it being left to the wishes of the Founders, to be expressed at some future time.”
Macdonald wrote, again in 1912;
Some six years ago the idea was formulated of establishing a classic golf course in America, one which would be designed after and eventually compared favorably with the championship links abroad and serve as an incentive to the elevation of the game in the United States...There is attached a copy of the original agreement, the spirit of which has been carried out as closely as has been consistent with the object which the Founders had in view.
Frankly, I think Macdonald really didn’t care much to provide a housing component as time went on and clearly his first priority was the excellence of the golf course. But to say he had already scrapped his plans for housing by the time he inked the agreement in December 1906 is baseless, frankly, and if there is any hard evidence to the contrary I’d ask that we finally get to see it here.
I think perhaps Bryan Izatt had the best summation a few days back when he wrote;
It was said multiple times that the intention was to build the course on 110 acres with 5 acres for the club-house and ancillary buildings and 90 acres for land for the founders. It was also said that they needed to buy 200 or more acres. Curious that they didn't do the math and say 205 or more acres.
When do you suppose in the process that CBM determined that he couldn't actually fit his ideal course on 110 acres? Would it have been after the course was designed and he had the site surveyed? Were CBM or the others experts on estimating acreage; 110 or 205 acres covers a lot of ground? I doubt that most people could guesstimate areas that large.
If we take CBM's simplistic description of the property as a rectangle 2 miles long by 4 acres wide that most likely meant the rectangle was 280 yards wide. If you ascribe a 100 yard wide corridor going out and another 100 yard wide corridor coming back in, that leaves a corridor of say 40 yards on either side. Given that site was 2 miles long in the simplistic description, the exterior corridors could support close to 60 lots. Now, I don't believe for a moment that the site was actually a rectangle. I think CBM simplified it that way for the press and potential members. But, in simplistic mathematical terms I can see how he thought there would be enough rooms on a 205 acre site.
Of course, that would all go awry in a real world routing on a real world topographical site. Perhaps he knew the course wan't going to work on a 110 acre site when he finished the routing. Or, maybe it only became clear when he had the site surveyed afterwards. Or, maybe the 1.5 acre plots were just a come-on for the investors and were never intended to be real. Given that he made an early offer on the 120 acre site near the canal suggests to me that initially he may not have understood that his ideal course of template holes using some existing natural features wasn't going to fit on that small a plot, although, I guess, Merion subsequently managed to get a pretty good, although tightly constrained, course on 120 acres.
I just thought I would take one last opportunity to clear up how I think things happened. Again, I’m open to change my opinion if people have any actual facts or hard evidence indicating differently rather than just stating their own opinions repeatedly. Thanks.