Bill -
The official R&A history has BHB down as the designer of the New, OTM and others are credited with building it.
Might there be reasons to think that BHB was more involved with early modern golf architecture than is usually appreciated? Below is taken from Henry Leach's 1917 BHB eulogy:
"Mr. Hall Blyth was sixty-eight years of age, and a life member of the Royal and Ancient Club. Being an engineer by profession he could not help applying some of his engineering and constructional instincts to golf courses. Probably he was the first real golf course designer. Until he turned his attention to the business, which is now pursued ardently and thoroughly by many persons, golf holes were to a large extent made themselves, as it might be said. Nature, the lie of the land, suggested the places where putting greens should be made, the places for teeing, and the main route to the hole. In course of time it might happen that a number of persons who were agreed upon the point, such as the committee of a club or society that played upon the ground, would dig a hole for a bunker at a spot where it was considered there should be some punishment waiting, but this sort of thing was very sparsely done, for it was considered and generally found that Nature made quite enough trouble for the golfer. It was more or less in this way that most of the famous holes on the old courses came to be made, such as those of St. Andrews, North Berwick and other places, though in latter times bunkers were added according to carefully arranged schemes. But Mr. Hall Blyth considered that fine holes might be made without waiting for the slow evolution from Nature, and he set himself about the design and construction of such holes at St. Andrews itself, North Berwick, Muirfield and Gullane, and on these famous greens there endure testimonies to his fine imagination, great golfing judgment, and skill as a designer."
While BHB was still alive Horace Hutchinson described him as follows:
"The tall and handsome figure of Mr. B. Hall Blyih, C.E., is assuredly known to golfers on many greens of the country, perhaps, however, not so much to-day as it was wont to be. At North Berwick, Gullane, Muirfield, St. Andrews, Hoylake and Sandwich Mr. Hall Blyth's stately presence has often been seen among the players on the links. But his name is most prominently associated with the development of East Lothian golf, for his efforts, as well as those of the late Mr. Edward Blyth, justly entitle the two distinguished relatives to be described certainly as the pioneers of East Lothian course extensions…He was also one of the designers of the Muirfield Club and course, and he helped to persuade the Corporation of Edinburgh to buy the Braid Hills as a municipal course; so that his long golfing career is very intimately connected alike with the popularity and spread of the game throughout the United Kingdom."
Most people today associate BHB with the development of uniform rules and the political battles he waged in getting them promulgated. It is striking, however, that two of BHB's contemporaries (prominent ones at that) make no mention of his work on the rules committee. They associate him with golf architecture.
Bob