I really like the direction this discussion is taking.  I could start a new thread, but this seems just as good a place as any to continue the discussions.  This is getting interesting.  

Bradley,

I guess it is possible that Raynor's tools were limited compared to other architects of the natural-looking school.  I don't think so.  Given the clients, budgets and other factors, I cannot imagine that he was constrained in any way other than his design principles.  They built Lido for gosh sakes!

I think a litlle historical perspective is also important. In my opinion, the time period of the Golden Age of Golf Architecture was marked by man conquering nature, man imposing his will over nature, NOT lman earning to live in harmony with it, (as we have been are trying to in the past 20 years or so.)

A child born in 1900 had a life expectancy of 47 years; huberculosis and pneumonia were the leading causes of death. Modern medicine would overcome these diseases.

The automobile has just been invented, and the Model T made it affordable or the majority of Americans, so we could begin to conquer man's mobility limitations. The America highway system would begin in the 20's a major change to the landscape.

Thousands of bridges were built, spanning the smallest streams and our mightiest rivers. The Hudson River bridge opened in 1928.

New homes built in the era were advertised with modern amenities such as plumbing, heating and electricity.

Man was conquering nature, it was a progression. I  dont find it odd that  group of golf course designers would have no problem imposing their concepts on the land.

By sticking to the knitting, Raynor provided a product that his clients appreciated, and he also kept up with his obligations to his own associates and workers.

But to strike off in a different style might have put all of that at risk. He may have even thought that this whole golf thing was just a fad that the rich would tire of eventually? He wasn't coming at this with any historical perspective. He was in history, and making history.

In my minds eye I see several iron behemoths spewing out black smoke on a Raynor construction site, verses dozens of horse teams working up and down slopes, like so many busy ants, on a Ross or a Flynn site.

Your mind's eye is wrong. Perhaps you've been drinking too much of Wayne's cool-aid    

Raynor certainly used horses and many men working by hand. I have a scratchy 8MM (?) movie of Hackensack GC being built in 1928, Banks' first effort after Raynor died, right after he finished up Fishers Island (so we can assue he used the same construction techniques.) The movie shows teams of men building the greens by hand, and a man working behind a horse as the ground is prepared.  

I am not going to argue that Raynor and Banks left the ground with a different appearance than Ross and Tiily and Flynn, but let's not go crazy and assume that this was due to Raynor and Banks using crude, bulky, tools like steam shovels while Flynn hand crafted everything, ok?

While it's good to have a more in depth discussion of the reasons why the so-called "National" School stuck with a more manufactured look so long while others were more interested in developing the look of natural existing lines and shapes in architecture, in my opinion too much is being made of things like construction techniques as a reason.

Macdonald brought a new look in architecture to America, and he did it by basically imitating the types of holes he knew on the other side which were famous and respected.

For us to really understand why the National School architecture looked as it did, at least originally, we need to understand what those famous holes on the other side looked like, at least parts of them, and why!

The fact is some of them (Road Hole) or parts of them (Redan et al) had distinctly manufactured lines and style. Why was that? Probably because in that early time in architecture on the other side architecture and architects, for a variety of reasons, had not gotten to that point of even concerning themselves with going the extra mile to naturalize some of their basic lines and formations in the things they made.

Macdonald just copied a lot of that and to him that was "classical" simply because those holes were famous and respected. In a sense they'd passed the "test of time" around 1900 or they wouldn't have won in that magazine competition that was conducted.

There came a time in America (around the beginning of the teens) when America architects felt they no longer needed to learn at the knee of architects from the other side or even from the likes of a Macdonald who brought that model and style from the other side.

Tillinghast wrote about just this very thing and in detail in the teens and he was not exactly dreaming----eg he and a number of others over here were looking to create styles in architecture that looked more naturally occurring than anything that'd come before it with the possible exception of some of the early INLAND heathland courses.

So why didn't Macdonald and Raynor and the National School go with that new developing style and look more than they did?

Well, for starters, why would they if their style (NGLA and the "National" School) had been considered so wonderful, so advanced over here and so accepted by so many compared to what'd come before it (pretty rudimentary steeplechase or shocking geometric architecture)?

Was Macdonald, Raynor and Banks et al smart to stick with what they'd popularized? Of course!

Were the more natural schools of architecture smart or right to try to develop a far more natural look than the National School? Of course they were, why not, that's what art forms that aren't somehow pretty limited in expression generally do.

So who was right in the end, even up to today with these different styles and look?

I say they both were, that's what art forms and their evolutions are all about----it's a Big World and there are all kinds of tastes and preferences amongst golfers! Probably always will be, or at least I hope there always will be! It makes the art form of golf architecture richer in my opinion!

Wayne:

If the observers on here don't notice any difference in look and style between those Heathland holes you posted and the look and style of the National School holes (when you post them) they're just either blind or unwilling for some reason to admit the obvious. Not that one is necessarily better or worse than the other---it's just that they're quite different looking!

But the real question becomes WHY did Park's (and the other heathland architects who followed him) look and style in the heathland depart as it did from what came before it??

That's the real question here?

Park's own style and look in the heathland departed from most of what he (and his father and the other peripatetic early linksland architects) had done before, particularly INLAND.

Why was that? What were the various reasons that were coming together at that time around 1900 in the heathlands.

Was it mostly just the influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement (a dedicated movement towards naturalism in look and style and craftsmanship) that was basically into things like building architecture and arts and crafts and gardens and such?

I think not. It certainly may've had some influence just not one of primary influence on golf course architecture. I think there were many more and fundamental reasons behind the style and look change in golf architecture at that time than just that.

Wayne, I've been rereading Cornish's "Eighteen Stakes on a Sunday Afternoon" and in my opinion he basically just nails the fundamental reasons things changed in those places during that time. I think anyone would be very hard pressed to disprove the accuracy of his explanations of that time and the reasons for various changes in architectural look and style.

There is always the desire, particularly on here, to come up with other reasons, even fundamental reasons, why things changed. Despite that, any and all of us really do need to consider that others before us have basically explained really well these eras and the reasons for their changes and the overall evolution of it all.

If we try to overanalyze this stuff and consequently revise it due to overanalysis, I think we run the risk of just getting into basic revisionism which tends toward historical inaccuracies and falsehoods.

Willie Park, Jr. said,

The laying out of a golf course is by no means a simple task...Great skill and judgement and a thorough acquaintance with the game are absolutely necessary to determine the best position for the respective holes and teeing grounds and the situation of the hazards.[/i]

Heathland Courses

Sunningdale Old (1901) Willie Park, Jr.








Walton Heath (1904) W. Herbert Fowler







Coombe Hill (1908) JF Abercromby



Swinley Forest (1910) HS Colt





To follow: steeplechase golf, early American golf, National School, Natural-looking School (the Nature Fakers)

Sorry, guys.  I reordered the photographic posting.  I moved the Heathland courses behind the early links courses to be consistent with the timeline of activity.

The older photos of Dornoch indicate that changes made over time can be quite dramatic.

Wayne:

I think a very important thing for us to concentrate on with those early black and white photos you posted is just how natural a good deal of those holes really was (because it really wasn't altered by man) but how rudimentary and man-made some of the features were on some of those holes at that time that were made or altered by man.

The fact that the linksland in the latter part of the 19th century had both, and in spades, is what we need to understand and appreciate more.

It seems like Macdonald may not have appreciated that distinction or cared about it as much as some of the early heathland architects and their counterparts in the later American Golden Age.

"I think a very important thing for us to concentrate on with those early black and white photos you posted is just how natural a good deal of those holes really was (because it really wasn't altered by man) but how rudimentary and man-made some of the features were on some of those holes at that time that were made or altered by man."

That's exactly right, Tom.  These photographs illustrate that point very well.  In the earliest days (once again your point about stripping away our perspective of today looking back and considering the contemporary perspective of the period being studied) the links were simply laid out on existing ground with existing features.  When man started to intervene and create features, they were remarkably rudimentary and unnatural in appearance.  In the B&W photos, where it is apparent that little if anything was man-made, the courses seem much more appealing to our 21st century eyes.

Meyrick GC in Bournemouth (1894)



Perhaps the designers didn't care to make things look natural, perhaps they were constrained by time, money, materials and machinery to build naturally.  It took a number of years before the natural aesthetic took hold.

You know Wayne, we should give those Meyrick GC guys some credit. As rudimentary as that cross hazard looks it really is an improvement over a typical steeplechase jump (which it looks something like anyway).

If I were a steeplechaser back then I'd attack that jump in a pretty strategic way because if you look carefully it does have some interesting options to sneak your horse through it through a couple of little crevices on the right and the left.

Those golf architects at Meyrick were advancing BOY---they were really thinking their way through this evolution!!

US Steeple Chase Golf (UK to follow)

Philadelphia Country Club (1896)

The steeple chase element is easily seen in this drawing



Play was directly over a stone wall, this was the Stone Wall Hole



Huntingdon Valley (1899)



Huntingdon Valley (1909)





Shinnecock Hills (1894)

Macdonald’s contributions:
1.   The notion of “schools”
2.   The notion of golf course design as architecture
3.   The Classical School of golf architecture – here “schools” in the larger architectural tradition; i.e., Classical architecture (not simply classical golf architecture)

What is Classical?  I don’t think Macdonald provides a formal definition but probably the closest he comes is to call it the opposite of “novelty and innovation.”  He quotes a Humphrey Repton passage that mentions “old established principles.”

Classical does not mean unnatural.  “Unnatural” doesn’t really fit into the concept of architecture.  “Inharmonious,” “poorly sited,” and “incongruent” are the architectural analogies.  A golf hole should fit its surrounds, it should sit harmoniously in those surrounds.

Macdonald certainly abhorred those geometric patterns of early architecture – note here the intent of “architecture” as in Wayne’s pictures of early architecture: those squared-off greens are manmade formalism.  As a proponent (founder?) of golf course design as architecture (as opposed to "scupture" or analogous) he was more concerned with the conceptual as opposed to the perceptual.  I would argue the big difference between Macdonald’s angular forms and those seen in many of Wayne’s pictures is that Macdonald’s are harmonious, or at least reasonably harmonious, with the environment.

Let’s take the infamous description of Sleepy Hollow’s 16th as a plate of green Flan.  Many decry this as “unnatural.”  Well of course: it’s manmade.  Macdonald, in studying the site, reached into his memory for a hole, manmade, whose architecture would be “in harmony” with, would fit into, the surrounding environment, even as it was a manmade thing.



And so: the sand is to the Hudson River as the green is to the Palisades on the opposite bank.  The Palisades run along the West Bank of the Lower Hudson, an imposing angular ridge whose sandstone furnished the materials of brownstone townhouses so distinctive to Murray Hill, the Upper West Side, Prospect Park, Brooklyn Heights and other neighborhoods of New York City.

It’s not natural, but Macdonald would have seen it as congruent, as harmonious, with its surrounds.
Or, as Ran writes in the caption to the above picture: “Good architecture adds to, not subtracts from, its environment.”  I like Ran's choice of “adds to:” that phrase rather than “lies hidden in,” “is indistinguishable from,” or “is one and the same with.”

Macdonald’s conception of “golf architecture,” founded on the closest thing to universal principles of architecture he could find – the “tried and true” – yet bounded by nature, in harmony with nature, provided what may be the most aspirational view in the recorded history of golf course design: to elevate its practice from the local and specific of the game of golf to the universal of true, legitimate “architecture.”

This helped, and helps, legitimize the profession.  It's also a call for golf course "architects" to do a better job conceptualizing, framing, and positioning their craft: to aim higher, and locate their profession away from the specific and towards the universal.

Personally, I have issues calling golf course design “architecture.”  Architecture to me is about not only the manmade and the structured but the materials involved, too.  But thinking out loud maybe my issue stems from the triumph of the Obscurantists.  I am looking back at Macdonald, as well as the concept of "architecture," through that frame, rather than through the one provided by The Neanderthal of Golf.

I read a golf article not long since in which the writer called a “fetish” the copying of holes from the classical courses of Great Britain, holes which have the testimony of all the great golfers for more than a century or two past as being expressive of the best and noblest phases of the game.

Architecture is one of the five fine arts.  If the critic’s contention is true, then architecture must be a “fetish,” as the basis of it is the copying of Greek and Roman architecture, Romanesque and Gothic, and in our own times among other forms, Georgian and Colonial architecture.  One must have the gift of imagination to successfully apply the original to new situations.  Surely there is nothing “fetish” about this.

-- Charles Blair Macdonald, “Scotland’s Gift: Golf,” p. 250.

Mark