In doing Cobb's Creek research, I recently came across some online archival holding descriptions which I shared with Joe Bausch. As he tends to do, Joe dug in and within a few days was in receipt of what seems to be at least one additional, earlier version of the routing for Cobb's Creek Golf Course in Philadelphia.
Although the shape of the property dictated that some of it was similar to later versions, I was struck by the fact that nearly every hole was different on the earlier plan(s) than what was eventually approved and built. Even many of the greensites were different from what was constructed.
As a refresher, Cobb's Creek was designed and routed during 1914/1915 by a Golf Association of Philadelphia (GAP) Committee appointed by President Robert Lesley and included;
Hugh Wilson (Merion)
George Crump (Pine Valley)
Dr. Simon Carr (Pine Valley)
Ab Smith (Huntingdon Valley)
George Klauder (Aronimink)
J. Franklin Meehan (North Hills)
All of these men had previous design and construction expertise and once construction commenced in the spring of 1915 William Flynn, Superintendent of Merion was brought over to do the shaping of greens and bunkers under the direction of Wilson, Smith, and Klauder.
Beyond that history, and beyond our excitement at locating another important artifact I began to wonder;
How many of the early architects drew up multiple routing plans for a single site? I'm not talking something that was in basic form and simply evolved through additional tweaks and compromises. The plan Joe now has is about 75% different overall than the course that was built. I do recall in history of some courses reading about "different plans" that were developed for consideration, but was this something that was common or rare?
Here's an edge of one of the plans in question. "CCP" stands for "Cobb's Creek Park".