[TEPaul]

Question:

1. Who were the most significant architects who dropped out before their time?
2. When and why did they drop out?
3. Did they do it because of personal problems or some disallusionment with what was going on in architecture (or something else)?
4. Would things have been different if they hadn't dropped out when they did or even why they did?


Tops on my list are Macdonald and then maybe George Thomas (even if he didn't live more than about five years after he apparently totally dropped out of golf architecture). I'm also wondering about Harry Colt or even Max Behr.

[TEPaul]

I posted this thread because I think this late-life letter from Macdonald to Perry Maxwell is both haunting and possibly telling."

"Young man, you have the idea of a real golf course, and I am sorry I can't encourage your enthusiasm by going to see what is undoubedly a most wonderful and ideal location, but I can't. I tell you I am through. I wouldn't walk around the block to see it for I don't want to get interested in another golf project, however fine. But I wish you the best of luck."

[Bob_Huntley]

I posted this thread because I think this late-life letter from Macdonald to Perry Maxwell is both haunting and possibly telling."

"Young man, you have the idea of a real golf course, and I am sorry I can't encourage your enthusiasm by going to see what is undoubedly a most wonderful and ideal location, but I can't. I tell you I am through. I wouldn't walk around the block to see it for I don't want to get interested in another golf project, however fine. But I wish you the best of luck."

Tom,

Don't you think that ennui catches up with all of us, but at different times of our lives?

bob

[Bill_McBride]

I posted this thread because I think this late-life letter from Macdonald to Perry Maxwell is both haunting and possibly telling."

"Young man, you have the idea of a real golf course, and I am sorry I can't encourage your enthusiasm by going to see what is undoubedly a most wonderful and ideal location, but I can't. I tell you I am through. I wouldn't walk around the block to see it for I don't want to get interested in another golf project, however fine. But I wish you the best of luck."

Tom,

Don't you think that ennui catches up with all of us, but at different times of our lives?

bob

Wouldn't something new be a cure for ennui?  Not sure when that letter was written, but wonder if there was any rivalry between Mackenzie (and by extension his associate Maxwell) and Macdonald.   CBM was pretty fed up with golf life in general when he was in his major feud with the USGA he helped to found.

"Scotland's Gift" and "The Evangelist of Golf" are such great complementary books.  CBM was a fascinating guy.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom P:

I would have assumed that a lot of architects dropped out before their time because of the Depression.  Surely Tillinghast falls into that category; I would have supposed Flynn, Tom Simpson, and others as well, but I really haven't looked at it that carefully.  [And maybe I should, given the current world economy and more spare time than usual.]

Macdonald and Thomas (and Crump and Fownes and Leeds) were different in that they were independently wealthy and none of them except Thomas made any money off golf architecture.  For them, I would think they dropped out because they had achieved what they wanted to.  Macdonald surely became disillusioned with the business as your quote suggests ... perhaps for him it was just the recognition that none of his later projects approached The National in terms of personal satisfaction.

[TEPaul]

"Tom,
Don't you think that ennui catches up with all of us, but at different times of our lives?
bob"



Bob:

Perhaps, but I think there is more to this subject than just that.

With that I give you a letter between C. Piper and A. Wilson in the early 1920s when A. Wilson asked C. Piper if Macdonald tried to take his head off when he visited him at NGLA. C. Piper wrote A. Wilson that Macdonald did not try to take his head off but he did allow as Macdonald told him he thought everyone was an idiot.

THAT, Bob, was about seventeen years before Charlie went to see his maker. I think the man dedicatedly dropped out early, even very early, and I think the reasons why were a whole lot more than ennui! And this is not to even mention what happened at The Creek Club in 1926.

Here's another slant. I just wrote an article for the Walker Cup program and I was researching Macdonald's tenure with the USGA board. He practically recommended the USGA's founding and he was the VP from 1895-1899 and then he apparently wasn't even on the board anymore even if he seemed to serve on some of their committees for close to another twenty years.

If any man early on should have run that organization and been its president, or perhaps even been the "Father" of all American golf, it seems like Macdonald should have been that man (at least from our perspective), but he never was. Why not? I think there is a story there that reflects on early American golf, on early American golf course architecture, AND C.B. Macdonald.

[TEPaul]

"perhaps for him it was just the recognition that none of his later projects approached The National in terms of personal satisfaction."


TomD:

Maybe that's true but if so why was that?

[Adam Clayman]

Working it backwards, seeing how the modern architect has typically been treated, perhaps the trend to hire the GCA as just another service personnel was uber frustrating to CBM? That would explain him calling everyone idiots. Wouldn't it?

I'd speculate that the "Game mind" was at the root of his objections to how the grounds were being transformed from his learned ideal to the iterations that became an American style Golf course.

My reasons for speculating this? I've seen too many examples were the game mind is the initial default mode of almost every golfer. Many of those that try to become more involved, dream about building a course, or getting onto the greens committee, often don't give the necessary time to think around, and learn, the subject. They likely assume there's not much more to learn beyond what they think from their experiences.

Ergo, ego.

[Emil Weber]

Of the modern architects - maybe Mike Strantz?

[Alfonso Erhardt]

Tom,

Simpson retired in early 1949 when he left Spain for his UK home. He was 72 at the time. Would you consider this early?

Regards,

[Phil_the_Author]

Tom,

You mentioned that, "I would have assumed that a lot of architects dropped out before their time because of the Depression.  Surely Tillinghast falls into that category..."

I don't know what bearing this may have on your thinking, but consider what Tilly wrote to Donald Ross less than a year before he died in 1941:

"I was brought here last April and we have been living with the family of my eldest daughter ever since, while recovery has been slow and I am still confined to my room. As against my old normal weight of around 185 I just manage to move the scale beam at 134. However, while recovery has been discouragingly slow, absolute rest is restoring me, but that is what is in store for me from now on – quiet and rest. It’s hard enough to give it all up – that is the golf. When I will be east again is a matter of conjecture. Before the bad weather settled on us, my daughter used to drive me around the country quite a bit. Quite a few golf courses but as far as I was able to observe, only one good one, old Inverness, which is much the same as ever. And it is good to find something in the game that suggests the good old days. So much has changed to the new tempo as to be a bit startling, even to the playing of the game…"

The Depression certainly brought a tremendous slowing down to Tilly's design activities, but look at some of what he was able to do from 1929 till 1935:

Metropolis CC (R&A)
Ridgewood CC (27 holes) (OD)
Inverness Club (R)
Saxon Woods (OD)
Aldecress CC (Alpine) (OD)
Wykagyl CC (R&A)
Gus Wortham GC (FKA Houston CC) (R)
Bethpage State Park, Green course (R), Blue, Red & Black courses (OD)
Swope Memorial GC (OD)

After Tilly finished the PGA Service Tour in August 1937, 25 months that was an extremely concentrated time of golf architectural work, he went into partnership with Billy Bell. They didn't get much work, but together they even went up into Washington state where they are supposed to have done a new original design together. I haven't been able to find out anything about it other than Tilly's mentioning it briefly in a Pacific Coast Golfer article. That same year, 1939, Tilly drove across the country to do his last work on the east coast at the CC of Fairfield. Just 8 months after that he suffered the massive heart attack that left him a shell of a man yet before he died less than two years later, still, as wrote to Ross above, he had his daughter drive him all over the countryside in Ohio so that he could simply look at golf courses through his car window.

I don't think Tilly ever left off being an architect, even when dying...

[Anthony Gray]

I posted this thread because I think this late-life letter from Macdonald to Perry Maxwell is both haunting and possibly telling."

"Young man, you have the idea of a real golf course, and I am sorry I can't encourage your enthusiasm by going to see what is undoubedly a most wonderful and ideal location, but I can't. I tell you I am through. I wouldn't walk around the block to see it for I don't want to get interested in another golf project, however fine. But I wish you the best of luck."

  What location were they talking about?

  Anthony

[Tom MacWood]

If you include his early course in the 1890s CBM had pretty long run, thirty plus years. Twenty-five plus years for Tilly is a long career too. Colt? He had one of the longest careers in golf architecture history.

Dick Wilson, HH Barker, James McKenna, Ramsey Hunter, CK Hutchison and SV Hotchkin. I might add George O'Neil too.

[Tom MacWood]

I should have also named Mike Strantz. Herbert Strong was the Strantz of his day, but his career, although relatively short, might be too long for this exercise. Willie Campbell died when he was 39.

[Anthony Gray]

I should have also named Mike Strantz. Herbert Strong was the Strantz of his day, but his career, although relatively short, might be too long for this exercise. Willie Campbell died when he was 39.

  Tom,

  Who designed the original Groove Park Inn course?

  Anthony

[Kalen Braley]

I'm not sure if Stranz would count because I didn't really see him as dropping out, he was forced out.

And I'm sure many were forced out during the Depression too, but Mike's case seems different due to his battle with mortality as opposed to a battle over lack of work!!

Either way, I wish he was still around building courses!!   

[Tom_Doak]

Dying before one's time is not the same as quitting, which I thought was the emphasis of this thread.

Alphonso:  I had no idea Tom Simpson continued to work through the 1930's and 40's.  I am not surprised that he did; as Pete Dye said to me once, why would an architect retire?  You just get more valuable as you age.  And in general, dreamers are not the sort of people who quit dreaming, which is why this is an interesting topic.

Phil:  That's a beautiful letter.  Hopefully when I am old and frail, my son will drive me around to look at golf courses.

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