CSI Chicago Aerial: Expert Forensic Analysis Needed

[Dan Moore]

Gary Sinise and William Petersen are both Chicago actors doing CSI shows in other cities so I came up with our own version of CSI Chicago.  

I posted image one sometime last year.  The original architect of this course is unknown and club records were destroyed in a fire many years ago.  The course opened in 1925.  

Image two is of another Chicago area course with 36 holes which opened in 1928.  Both aerials are from 1938-39.  

I see similarities in the characteristics of both courses.  Did the same architect design both courses?  Can these aerials be used to determine beyond a reasonable doubt if the same architect did or did not design both courses?  

Course One


Course Two

[Phil McDade]

Dan:

I think you can make a general argument that both (the top picture, then the bottom one) are more aggressively bunkered around the greens and greensites than in the fairways.

There is also some interesting "clustering" of greens going on at both of the courses.

[RJ_Daley]

Dan, I'm going to make a guess and say that the top photo may indicate more pronounced pushed up earthworks sort of green platforms, with flatter bunkers surrounding the greens.  The bottom photo looks to me to be more scooped out pit sort of bunkers, cut closer and more level to green complexes.  And, I think there seems to be a little more emphasis on the bottom one to moving FWs in slight doglegs than the top one.  That seems to be more straight away hole corridors.  Possibly, there seems to be more surface drainage on a flatter property in the top photo.  

Phil, that is interesting observation about green clustering.  I wonder if that is a concession to having efficient water lines for quick couplers and hoses prior to actual inground sprinkler heads.  

All just guesses...

[wsmorrison]

Dan,

I would talk to Craig Disher if I were you.  He's the best I know at studying aerial photographs.  In my experience, there is very little that you can conclusively say from an aerial photograph as regards architectural attribution.  A photograph might be helpful within the context of additional information, or lead you in a certain direction, but that is all.

[Craig Disher]

Pay the man, Shirley...

Dan,
Scale helps a lot. These photos don't show much ground contour, especially on the greens. These, as others taken for the Soil Conservation Service in the 1930s and 40s, are about 1:20000. These are also a couple steps removed from the original negatives which reduces detail even more. At 1:20000 scale and sun directly overhead elevation changes are almost entirely flattened out. What you're left with are bunker positions and shapes which sometimes are giveaways, especially for some architects. Green shapes may be misleading because by the late 30s they may have shrunk.

However, I've seem some SCS photos where it's possible to see very good detail - relative bunker depth, mounds, ridges and internal contours on greens. Other sources - the Dept. of Defense photo archive for example, often have photos taken at a much lower altitude - I've seen some taken at 1:2500.

For example, I had one photo taken of a course in NY that I could not identify. I knew the area but since I couldn't find an existing course that matched, I assumed it was NLE. The detail was excellent and I showed it to Ron Forse - he quickly guessed that it was a Ross design - based on the green contours and bunker positioning. He was right, the course was Hudson River CC located north of Yonkers.

[Mike Lacey]

First post from a long-time observer of this site.

Many of the old SCS and DOD aerial photographs were flown with overlap on each successive image along the flight lines.  This allows viewing of these images in 3D through the use of a stereoscope.  

With some additional equipment in the hands of a semi-skilled photogramatrist, topographic maps can be created from these historic images.  The acheivable detail is a function of the scale of the photos.  The scale of much of this old imagery would likely preclude the creation of precise topos, but re-creation of the general feel for the flow of a piece of land is probably achievable in many cases.  

It is a bit of a dying art since all of this work is now done digitally.  

[Tim_Cronin]

Amazing how course 2, designed by a relatively busy part-time architect in his time, was once well out in the sticks and now is surrounded by civilization. Course 1 was even farther out, but was a town club, so not as isolated.
And course 2 has had some major changes re: clubhouse site, range installation. Has a great deal happened with course 1? (And I have no clue who was responsible for the original design.)

Mike Lacey, part of a high school science course (decades ago) involved studying stereoscopic photos. Maybe they were training us to be photo recon experts. Alas, none were golf courses.

[Craig Disher]

Mike,
Welcome to the site and thanks for mentioning 3D viewing.

Whenever there is sufficient overlap, I've created stereoscopic views but just like the photos themselves, there is a wide range of quality. The best results are when the angle of photography is greatest - by that I mean that the course is at the edge of the photo while the camera is going, say N - S, and at the same edge when the plane is going back over the same area S-N. This creates an exaggerated 3D view but helps bring out details. If the overlap is too close, the 3D effect is minimized.

A practical difficulty is that often the overlaps were run at different altitudes. This creates a slightly different scale for each photo and without the magic of Photoshop, I doubt if I could have constructed most of the 3D images.

[Rich Goodale]

Mike and Craig

To see what can be done with high-res carefully flown aerials and modern stereoscopic techniques, take a look at www.optimizegolf.com.

Rich

[Phil_the_Author]

Anyone care to name the two places?

[Jeff_Brauer]

As Dan says, image one was ID'd here earlier. I just can't recall it!

Image 2 strikes me as White Pines in Bensenville, although I don't know why, other than vague recollections of its general layout from the scorecard!

I just want to say, keep the old aerials coming. I love Chicago ones, but would even love to have someone else start threads from some other area I didn't grow up in.

[Adam Clayman]

Itasca was a given knowing Shivas' pedigree. No?

White Pines. Is that the course with the bucket pins in the winter? A 36 hole facility? Memory is fading...assist please?

Has anyone played the new nine hole Muni in Bensenville? The one with the German Velvet?

[Dan Moore]

Image one is Itasca Country Club architect unknown

Image two is White Pines a muni in Bensenville designed by Jack Daray who was the pro at Olympia Fields and co-designed a number of courses with Flossmoor's Harry Collis.  I believe Daray had a rather large hand in the 1940's reconfiguration of courses at Olympia Fields when two courses were sold and parts of the three courses were combined to make the current South Course.

Of all the Chicago aerials I have looked at (and I have many more than the 35 or so I have posted over the last year).  In some cases its easy to tell who the architect is in most its hard to be sure. Architects with distinct styles such as Raynor or Langford are relatively easy.  Others like Ross are also pretty distinctive.  

White Pines is the closest match to Itasca in terms of the general look of the courses and its bunker sizes and placement.  The greens are similar in size although those at Itasca seem to have more bean shapes and those at White OPines are more rounded.  

Jeff Brauer any opinion as to whther Itasca and White Pines have the same daddy?  
 

[Dan Moore]

Shivas,

Assuming you have played both, any thoughts on whether both could have had the same architect?  

Given the similarities in how they look and their proximity in location (within a few miles of each other) and time (within a few years of each other), it seems at least possible they had the same architect.  

[Jeff_Brauer]

Dan,

I meant to reply earlier, but I don't see a lot of photo similarity.  Preusmably, Shiv is basing his analysis on the ground observations.

I even spent a bit of time on the net at lunch trying to dig up an Itasca attribution through different sources.  I did that because I noticed the street layout - typical of 1920's Olmstead inspired subdivisions, and I wondered if perhaps an LA firm did both together.

When I did some work at Woodmar in Hammond, IN under the KN banner, that course had actually been designed by a landscape architecture firm out of Chicago, with three names (perhaps one was Greene?) and I snooped around a bit, and they had done a handful of other courses in CHI.  I can't remember which ones, but it makes sense to me that they might do one connected with a subdivision.

All of this is just a guess, but I really don't think they are the same designers.

[Tim_Cronin]

Shivas,
Thanks for the scoop on Itasca. It's one of those courses you don't hear much about. I didn't know Harris had barged in. I have Langford dropping by in 1953, but can't recall my source on that.

[Jeff Doerr]

At first glance I was struck by the evidence of a tree planting program in full force!