Bendelow and Alison in Port Huron: The Book

[Anthony Gholz]

    To All:
I've finally finished my three year effort regarding the history of the golf course(s) of my home club in Port Huron, Michigan.  Some of you may have read my IMO piece on Bendelow and Alison in PH.  This is the ultimate extension of that synopsis with all the Alison and C&A drawings, prints, letters, etc reproduced. The book is a print on demand effort that's available now.  For Bendelow and C&A aficionados I suggest its a must, if only for the original items discovered in our clubhouse basement and published here for the first time.
For those that find it "pricey" at least take a look at the pages available gratis by hitting the preview button.  I will "bump" this thread during the week with a couple pages not shown on the preview that may be of more interest to gca'ers.
Many on this site have been helpful in this lengthy process.  I hope you are not disappointed in the final result.
Enjoy!
Anthony "Tony" Gholz, retired architect, 11.4 index, amateur golf course architecture historian, expert on two golf courses in Port Huron


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Website for book purchase: www.blurb.com type in book title or Anthony C. Gholz Jr.


[/size]One Hundred Fifteen Years of Golf in Port Huron                                                                  [size=78%]The History of the Port Huron Golf Club: Its Architects and Playing Fields[/b]
Begun in 1899 with 9-holes on the south side of town, the Port Huron (Michigan) Golf Club moved to the Lake Huron shore in 1912.  Tom Bendelow, America’s most prolific architect, designed the first 9-holes, at 3,290 yards the longest in Michigan.  Captain Charles Hugh Alison, of the famed English firm of Colt & Alison, came to Detroit in 1920 to oversee their new American headquarters.  Within weeks of his arrival he was in Port Huron to route a new 18-hole course over the ancient sand ridges.  He returned in 1921 to design the course’s architectural features.  The C&A firm was also on site during the mid and late twenties to design new greens and other course features, the last coming in 1928.  After WWII the county built a road through Alison’s first and eighteenth holes, the first of several blows to the course.  However, in 2001 the club retained David Pandel Savic to renovate the greens, returning them to their Golden Age roots.  Recent tree removal and a new master plan by Savic in 2014 point to a brighter future for this sterling example of Alison’s use of the site’s natural sand ridges to form a timeless necklace of fairways and greens “along the shores of Lake Huron.”
This history of a classic Golden Age course, designed by one of the international giants of the architectural world, is told using original Alison drawings, C&A drawings and letters, aerial photos, scorecards and club files dating back to 1908, period news articles, and publications from the turn of the last century.  The book starts with a discussion of the founders of the club and the original two courses on Griswold Street, and ends with a discussion of the course today and the recently completed master plan.  In between, photos and drawings of the course and surrounding lakeshore make this early twentieth century Lake Huron beach resort area come alive. 
This 192-page book comes hardcover in a large format (12”x12”) with high quality paper and dust jacket.   Issued at cost, the author receives no mark-up or profit.  The publisher of this print-on-demand book was selected for the high quality of their product and first rate shipping process.  All of the historical Alison sketches, Colt & Alison drawings, and other historical items are well reproduced.
Anthony “Tony” Gholz    agholz@aol.com   
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[Anthony Gholz]

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[/size][size=78%]This double page covers Newcomb's 1981 bunkering revisions on the lower left and on the right Alison's 15th and 18th holes.  These are the only pictures left of those two.  A unique aspect though is that the 1921 18th green still exists in a member's backyard a block away.  Or more accurately  215 yards away.  The green contours and bunker locations are still visible.  The upper left photo is a recent view of a piece of the only "natural" dune bunker still existing on [/size][/size]the course.  It gives a feel of what more of the landscape was like in the teens and twenties.[size=78%]

[Anthony Gholz]

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This double page from the book appendices shows three C&A drawings (prints) and one of their letters from the fall of 1928.  C&A with Lavis in charge  designed three new greens.  These greens replaced three Bendelow greens reused by Alison in his 1921 effort. All three of these greens exist today, although they are renumbered because of the loss of two holes to the County Road Commission in 1950.

[Joe Bausch]

Beautiful, man!

[Russ Arbuthnot]

Tony, Congrats on finishing the book! It looks great.

What's your next project?

[BCowan]

Tony, Congrats on finishing the book! It looks great.

What's your next project?

He most likely will go to be the founder and president of thee Colt and Alison Society of the US 

[Anthony Gholz]

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Because The Country Club of Detroit was a prime reason for C&A's North American headquarters being in Detroit (1920-31) it received a good deal of my attention researching C&A in NA to put Port Huron GC in the context of their NA work.  One of the items from my youth (50s and 60s) that bothered me was the CCD indicating in the 60s and 70s that Trent Jones was their architect.  In the past 20-30 years they listed HS Colt and, as of two years ago, their scorecard read Harry S. Colt - Charles H. Alison as Original Design 1914/1927 and Robert Trent Jones 1951 Reconstruction.  Pretty specific and relatively accurate for a club scorecard. Often in print, for course listings in the Golf Association of Michigan, it reads H.S. Colt alone.


Based on the NY Sun's diagram published for the 1915 US Amateur (posted by Joe Bausch on gca), an early course history from the USGA Library (1946), and comparing it with historical (1937-49) and current aerial photos, I've concluded that today's course is Alison's routing alone.  The attached double page from the Notes covers my basic research.  It concludes that, with the possible exception of today's third hole corridor including a piece of Colt's 4th fairway and the location of today's practice green being the location of Colt's 18th green, the course is all Alison.


This gives the CCD the unique status of having both a Colt solo course (1911-1926) that held the US Amateur (1915) and an Alison solo course (1927-today) that held the US Amateur (1954).  That's special!


Anyway here is the page from the book: