Hi Ed,
How's things?
I put these two together and was hoping someone could perhaps add the aerial of the old 12th at Garden City as examples of some fairly bizarrely unusual greensites built by some of our early heroes.
In the case of the top picture, the greensite on the left is the one I was focusing on, but the greensite on the right is illustrative only in showing what a "one-off" greensite the left-hand green is, because every other green on the course was more of a low-profile, lay-of-the-land, limited bunkering, extension of the fairway green, and yet you have this clearly manufactured, harshly symmetrical, albeit kinda cool green in their midst. All of the greens were created at the same time, in 1915, opening in 1916.
The hole to the left-hand green is a short par four of only 297 yards, but it is blind from the tee and rises 50 feet from tee to green, most of it in the first 150 yards. From the look of things, I'm not sure how much green surface would be visible to the approach, and that's the case today, with sand buildup creating a higher lip than appears in the old photo.
Today, the "wings" to the side have been lost, the greensite has shrunk, the green has been flattened, but both the front and rear bunkers remain, but the high "backboard" to the rear bunker is similarly gone.
The second picture is of the old 10th at Merion, and the subject of so much heated discussion here a while back.
If anyone has an aerial of the old 12th at Garden City they can add here, it would be greatly appreciated.