Several days ago, I received an email from Jim Rattigan, the superintendent at Schuylkill Country Club in Orwigsburg, PA. He is a fairly frequent kibbutzer here on GCA and he contacted me because we share the home region of Schuylkill County, PA.

He also presented me with a bit of a mystery that I've been working on since...

SCC is fairly well known as a Donald Ross course, as Ross revised the early nine holes and added a new nine in 1945. The greens and bunkering for the most part had been kept in the shape Ross left them with a few exceptions, and except for tree plantings and new tees, the course pretty much is as it was in 1945. The club has brought in Ron Prichard to do some restoration work which is slated to begin in the next month.

Either way, the club has the original nine hole plans from 1922 displayed outside the proshop as well as the Ross plans, and aerials of both iterations of the course showing high detail. However, the original nine hole plans carry no signature of indication of designer, just the date December, 1922.

Here is the original nine hole plan and the aerials right below it (last one being the post-Ross picture):








I stared at this for a bit, and realized it looked awfully similar to the diagram of the original White Course at Penn State as designed by Willie Park, Jr. in September of 1922. Shown here:


The White Course diagram appears to be more of a presentation piece while the SCC diagram appears to be blueprints intended to be followed by construction.

Jim consulted Ron Prichard yesterday with my thoughts and Ron is of the opinion that this is enough evidence to link Willie Park to the orignal design at SCC. Furthermore, Jim has documents refering to a "Mr. James" in regard to the construction work. Could this be Frank James?

As an aside, SCC and the Park holes at the White Course (Holes 12, 17, 11, 8, 9 comprise Holes 7-11 of today's White Course, Hole 7's green is today's Par 4 6th green of the White, Hole 1's green is today's Par 3 12th green of the White, Hole 2, 3 comprise Holes 13 adn 14 of today's White) stand much as they did in 1922. Yesterday, on the "Humps around greens thread" I posted a picture of the tenth green (hole 8 on the old White). Also, note that the old first tee of the white (extreme right side of the picture) was off of present day US Bus. Rt 322 (Atherton Street).



Anyway, Jim reads here pretty regularly, so any thoughts or ideas you have regarding this would be much appreciated by both him and me.

Mike,


Jim mentioned that to me. Part of his evidence is that the sod island behind 2 at Maidstone is similar to the one in the aerials... If you noticed though, it doesn't seem to have survived Ross's revision.

I've only played the front nine on SCC, and what you can see from Rt. 61 is one of the newer Ross nine. (8th green is right along the road there).

Ross integrated the old nine with his nines, and added 2, 3, 4 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 of the present day course.

The old ninth is today's 18th...

KBM,

Wow....

Simply wow...

Jim actually contacted my via email the other day regarding Park, Jr. and I mentioned this to him. Still awaiting the reply.

Tom Paul,

That's probably why, he and Jim have apparently been wrangling this for awhile.

I've always wanted to go down to the Hagley museum, need to find the time though. :/

Tom Paul,

I thought about that after I typed my message.

Still, my guess is that the island in the bunker would probably have been from the original 1922 course, and although Maxwell possibly could have been here then, it's unlikely.  

MikeC:

Actually, islands in bunkers really aren't that uncommon to plently of other architects. We saw an interesting one by Flynn in Virginia recently along with an accompanying photo of it 70 years ago. In person and in that 70 year old photo it was just about identical!

The ninth hole in the 1922 diagram has no bunkers on it, yet in the aerial from 1938, the ninth has several...

Notice the one behind the green, seems to be of a free-form type deal: Tom, you said that his bunkers could look like simple daisies... does the one in the back of nine seem like a reasonable adaptation of that style or is that a bit of a stretch?

Didn't Maxwell also use "clam shell" bunkers?

Tom MacWood,

Couldn't tell you regarding Ross's work in 1945.

Is that a strange year for Ross to be designing in?

If there's some Ross bunkering on that 1947 aerial I can almost guarantee you it'd probably be J.B. McGovern. Those little close sets look a bit like the things he did on a number of Ross courses in this region probably including Aronimink and Jeffersonville and according to Forse and probably Prichard some other courses into New York state that McGovern was know to ply for Ross.

Kyle;

Don't overlook J. Franklyn Meehan, who designed a fair number of Philly area courses right around that timeframe.  

Schuylkill (above Reading) might have been a little out of the way for him, but we've already established that he travelled as far north as Allentown and Pottstown.  

Kyle,

Meehan also did Ashbourne, Paxon Hollow, Brookside (Allentown), the first nine at Spring-Ford, revisions at Shawnee on the Delaware, and the first nine at LuLu, all in the period from about 1912 through 1929

Perhaps others as well?  

 

TEP,
The aerials are ones I produced for Jim Rattigan a few weeks ago.

What I found interesting were the bunkers that disappeared between 1938 and 1947 (e.g. the fairway bunkers on 1 and 2, the back green bunkers on 9). The drawing doesn't show them so perhaps they were added later. The fairway bunkers don't appear to be more than 150 yards from the tee and they are at the edge of the fairway so they're not even top shot bunkers. Did Ross's plans indicate they were to be removed?

MikeC:

Meehan designed the first nine at LuLu? How do you know that? I didn't know even Steve Sayers thought that and he probably knows more about that course than anyone ever has.