MCirba,
Thomas attributes Seaview Bay to Ross, with additions by Wilson-Tillinghast and Robinson. (Page 168)
Kyle,
Joe Bausch and I have done a lot of digging related to Seaview and I think we're still convinced there's more to the story. We know in early 1913 it was reported that Clarence Geist had a few Philadelphians (E.K. Bispham (Head of Green Committee at Philly Country Club), Gil and Ben Nicholls (local pros) down to visit to see the land and get their opinions and had hired William Robinson, a well-known local pro to be his onsite guy to supervise things.
We also believe that same spring of 1913 Harry Colt was onsite with Hugh Wilson.
Is it possible that Thomas was correct and the course was built to an original plan by Donald Ross? Sure, I guess it is although it's not something Ross ever claimed in any of his literature. We do know that Geist had Ross come in 1915 to devise a more difficult bunkering scheme than what was originally anticipated, some of which was done.
By August of 1913 it was reported by an Atlantic City paper that the "course has been laid out by a number of golf experts who have had experience along these lines". We know in the fall of 1913 Wilson was writing Piper & Oakley seeking advice regarding the Seaview project asking for any experts on reclaiming land from salt meadows. In those letters he referred to Clarence Geist as "a friend of mine".
In October of 1913, golf writer William H. Evans of the “Philadelphia Public Ledger” noted, “
Hugh I. Wilson, chairman of the Green Committee at the Merion Cricket Club and who is responsible for the wonderful links on the Main Line, has been Mr. Geist’s right hand man and has laid out the Sea View course. Mr. Wilson some years ago before the new course was constructed visited the most prominent courses here and in Great Britain and has no superior as a golf architect.”
In January of 1914 a large storm meant the abandonment of four seaside holes and the creation of what are today the northern-most four holes, and we do know that Hugh Wilson planned those.
By June of 1914, other local papers were crediting Hugh Wilson and William Robinson for the course that was already being played several months before an official opening seven months later, audaciously in January 1915. At the opening, Hugh Wilson was in attendance and four months later played in a widely publicized golf match partnering with Frances Ouimet against Geist and Wilfrid Reid, who Geist had just hired as pro.
I guess the point of all of this is to show how often these early courses were collaborative efforts. I think it's human nature to want to assign primary responsibility, to assign authorship, although I think in many of these early cases they were simply golf friends with time for these endeavors and they worked collaboratively, thus blurring and sometimes frustrating our modern day attempts to understand the complete picture through the framework of our modern understandings of how these things transpire today.
**ADDED** Regarding Kittansett, there is evidently a 1924 "Boston Evening Transcript" article by famed golf-writer A. Linde Fowler that was published either 10/11/1924 or 11/11/1924 that credited Wilson and Flynn, referring to the "scientific architecture" they implemented and which they learned at Merion. I'm trying to find a copy, but it's not a paper widely available.