David Moriarty's excellent The Missing Faces of Merion is now posted under IMO

[TEPaul]

""The most difficult problem you have to contend with is to get in eighteen holes that will be first class in the acreage you propose buying."

MikeC:

Now that we have Macdonald's June 29, 1910 letter to the search committee we should take his words for what they say and not make more out of them than they say. Macdonald did say to them "....in the acreage YOU propose buying. He didn't say any acreage he recommended.

You also said:

"....and less the land they didn't own ....."

Don't forget, in June 1910 MCC did not OWN any of that land in Ardmore, even though at that point Horatio Gates Lloyd and some of his MCC investors who clearly seemed to be facilitating the move for MCC through the mechanism of their creation of HDC or their purchase of a significant percentage of that 338 acre HDC track or through their purchase of a significant percentage of HDC as a corporate entity may've had some control over it or over Connell et al at that point. It seems clear that at some point in 1910 Lloyd essentially underwrote HDC into a stock subcription offering. That's pretty much what Lloyd and his fellow partners at Drexel & Co did.

[Mike_Cirba]

That's a great point, Tom.   I hope you don't mind but I bolded that.

ALso, can you give me a call?

[DMoriarty]

Mike, look at the dates.

June 29, 1910, M&W send their report.
July 1, 1910, the Site committee recommends purchase of "nearly 120 acres."

What about the letter leads you to conclude that M&W inspected anything less than 120 acres?  Do you think that in the days between the M&W visit and the Site committee report that the site committee changed course and added 21 acres to their plan.

Your explanation you offer above makes no sense.  Surely you can see this.
__________________________

I had suggested that he came up with the idea for adding the Dallas Estate and the RR land.   But it looks like they were already considering the Dallas Estate. 

[Mike_Cirba]

Mike, look at the dates.

June 29, 1910, M&W send their report.
July 1, 1910, the Site committee recommends purchase of "nearly 120 acres."

What about the letter leads you to conclude that M&W inspected anything less than 120 acres?  Do you think that in the days between the M&W visit and the Site committee report that the site committee changed course and added 21 acres to their plan.

Your explanation you offer above makes no sense.  Surely you can see this.
__________________________

I had suggested that he came up with the idea for adding the Dallas Estate and the RR land.   But it looks like they were already considering the Dallas Estate. 

David,

I edited my post towards the bottom.

I do think we agree on this point.

[DMoriarty]

I don't know what else Wayne found, but this letter just does not do what you guys wish it did. 

Yes, it establishes that there was no routing in the first letter.  But it also establishes that on June 29, 1910, Merion was a contour map away from an M&W routing. 

Without a doubt, there is more to this story than has been told thus far.

_________________________

And that in Macdonald's mind at this point, his letter was probably ALL the involvement he would have with Merion.  The generous sign off and the lack of any mention of possible FOLLOW-UP is striking.

But we know there was follow-up.   The question is how much, and in what form. 

[Mike_Cirba]

Yes, it establishes that there was no routing in the first letter.  But it also establishes that on June 29, 1910, Merion was a contour map away from an M&W routing. 

David,

It does no such thing.   There is not the slightest hint in Macdonald's letter of anything but the most general, generic type of polite feedback and consultation and to suggest that he was ready to produce a course routing, or was wanting a long-term stake in this project, much less responsibility for ownership is not only ludicrous, it is ultimately blind to what else was going on with Maconald at the time, as well as totally contrary to the language and tone of that letter. 

He had bigger fish to fry and larger agronomic issues of his own that he was still resolving at NGLA in 1910.   

[DMoriarty]

Yes, it establishes that there was no routing in the first letter.  But it also establishes that on June 29, 1910, Merion was a contour map away from an M&W routing. 

David,

It does no such thing.   There is not the slightest hint in Macdonald's letter of anything but the most general, generic type of polite feedback and consultation and to suggest that he was ready to produce a course routing, or was wanting a long-term stake in this project, much less responsibility for ownership is not only ludicrous, it is ultimately blind to what else was going on with Maconald at the time, as well as totally contrary to the language and tone of that letter.

He had bigger fish to fry and larger agronomic issues of his own that he was still resolving at NGLA in 1910.   

 

Agronomy issues?  He punted all the agronomy issues. 

Why do you throw things in like "a responsibility for ownership" or "a long term stake."   No one ever suggested any of that. 

Had they a contour map, they'd know for sure if the holes fit.  How do you suppose that would work??

[Mike_Cirba]

David,

Please stop misquoting the letter.

Your reference to "the holes" as if Macdonald had particular holes in mind for the property but wasn't sure they'd all fit is complete and utter BS and isn't what he said at all and you absolutely know it.

He said,

"The most difficult problem you have to contend with is to get in eighteen holes that will be first class in the acreage you propose buying."
 
There are NO holes contended or conceived in anyone's mind, much less on paper, at this point.   He is clearly talking about any eighteen holes making up the appropriate length for a "championship course" which is what Merion was clearly looking for, and how they might be pushing it a bit given the limited property.

There are no "The Holes".   

There is only the conception based on their experience of what an 18 hole championship course required.

Your own essay makes that point;

"It has been widely assumed that Merion bought the land before Merion East was planned.  To the contrary, Merion bought the land upon which their golf course had already been envisioned.   Macdonald and Whigham had chosen the land for NGLA in a similar fashion.  They first inspected the land and found the golf holes they wanted to build, and then they purchased that land.  In Chapter 10 of Scotland’s Gift, Macdonald explained that he had chosen the best land for golf from a much larger 405-acre parcel.  "

"The company agreed to sell us 205 acres, and we were permitted to locate it as to best serve our purpose.  Again, we studied the contours earnestly; selecting those that would fit in naturally with the various classical holes I had in mind, after which we staked out the land we wanted."

So, you now assert that Macdonald needed 205 acres for his "championship course", but was ready at the easel to build another one using his "classical holes" on the 100 acres that he viewed at Merion?

Have you noticed even Patrick and Shiv have jumped off this rapidly sinking Titanic of a whopper?

[DMoriarty]

Mike,

120 acres.  Not 100.  Didn't we just go through this?

I didn't misquote the letter.  I didnt quote the letter at all.   

But I will now, just for you:

The most difficult problem you have to contend with is to get in eighteen holes that will be first class in the acreage you propose buying.  So far as we can judge, without a contour map before us, we are of the opinion that it can be done, provided you get a little more land near where you propose making your Club House.

Seems like M&W thought that they'd need a contour map to know for sure if 18 first class holes would fit.

What do you suppose would have happened at this point if Merion sent them a contour map?   

Not saying that Merion did, but what do you suppose would have happened?

Do you think M&W could have told them if the holes would fit?   If so, how?

[TEPaul]

"What do you suppose would have happened at this point if Merion sent them a contour map?   
Not saying that Merion did, but what do you suppose would have happened?"


David:

What I suppose would have happened if Merion sent Macdonald a contour map and he actually did a routing and design for Merion East and mailed it back to them and the course was built that way Merion almost definitely would have profusely thanked him for that and THAT would've been recorded in their architectural history from the very beginning.

The problem with your seeming continuing endeavor is that has never remotely been the recorded history of Merion that includes what Macdonald did for them.

Perhaps one could entertain such an idea if they were considering the architectural history of Merion East in a complete vacuum but the architectural history of the original creation of Merion is by no means a vacuum----we do have those reports of the Wilsons and other indicative source assets of what happened.

[Jim Nugent]

David, you use Tillie in your essay to support the idea that Merion was constructed (emphasis on constructed) by Wilson.  But Tillie also says Wilson designed the course.  Why is Tillie right about the constructing part, but wrong about designing the course?

Also, Findlay says Wilson & committee did “for Pennsylvania what Herbert C. Leeds and committee did for Massachusetts—built the two nicest courses in their respective States.”  I assume Findlay means Myopia Hunt.  Leeds designed Myopia Hunt as well as built it.  It seems to me Findlay is drawing a parallel between the two men.  If Wilson only built Merion, why would Findlay say he did the same thing as Leeds?  Was building considered the huge achievement back then, more important than the design?  

BTW, according to Ran's profile of Myopia Hunt, Leeds had zero architecture experience when he designed/built MH.  CBM was not there to guide him.  Yet he created "one of the few landmark masterpieces of golf course architecture in the United States."  Which shows fantastic courses can be designed by first-time architects.  

Findlay praised Merion's builder.  He praised its greenkeeper.  He did not say a word about Macdonald.  CBM was the nation's most famous golf architect.  If he designed Merion, why didn't Findlay say that?  Instead, he equated Wilson with Leeds.  Designer and builder of one of the nation's great courses.  

[Mike_Cirba]

David,

Yes, and Hugh Wilson may have come down in a spaceship from the planet Xenon in January 1911 and after stunning Charley Macdonald with a laser blast, got him to disavow all further previous and future involvement with Merion, put a mind-meld onto Robert W. Lesley and Committee, and singlehandedly made it appear as though it was all his idea.

Yes...yes...anything's possible.   There are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 other possibilities, aren't there?

Why should we even begin to listen to the men who were there and documented the real story like Tillinghast?

Let's just keep typing nonsense at each other for the rest of our lives, shall we? 

And that US Mail Service must have been really something back in 1910, don't you think?  David wrote;

"Mike, look at the dates.

June 29, 1910, M&W send their report.
July 1, 1910, the Site committee recommends purchase of "nearly 120 acres.""

So, sometime on June 29th Macdonald writes the letter and gets it in the mailbox.   The very act of doing so sets various magical acts in motion, including apparently the creation of the first supersonic train to pick it up, and deliver it in Philadelphia in the next 15 minutes. 

It arrives in Philadelphia instantly, giving the Committee enough time to read and study it, confer on its meaning, and then write their own Site Committee report all in less than 48 hours.

Man...things have gone downhill.   Mister, we could use a man like Charley Macdonald again...

[Mike_Cirba]

Guys,

Your attempts to create doubt and cast wiggle room and suggest other meanings on these meaningless details cannot remove the two indisputable facts that we now KNOW.

1) AW Tillinghast told us not once, but twice, who actually designed and planned and constructed and developed Merion, and he had actually seen the plans prior to construction in April 1911.  If Alan Wilson's words weren't believable, on what grounds do you think Tillinghast was either lying or misinformed?

2) Macdonald did not suggest the property, suggest the routing, or build a routing in his initial visit and ONLY written communication with the club, in June 1910. 

Everything else is simply superfluous attempts to create smoke where there isn't even a hint of fire.

[Willie_Dow]

I always wondered why lawyers charged at a rate of " by the hour", and I now know WHY !

[Mike_Cirba]

I love those dates;

WHY would Merion's site Committee have recommended purchase of the property to their membership on July 1  if they were still waiting on some mythical routing from Macdonald that was going to show the world that some great course could be built there?   

He didn't recommend a championship course like they wanted, and what they built.   He recommended a sporty, "first class" course of a whopping 6000 yards...maybe.

[Rich Goodale]

Yes, Bill, and I know now why Tom Paul never became a lawyer--nobody could ever afford to hire him!

[Patrick_Mucci]

He had bigger fish to fry and larger agronomic issues of his own that he was still resolving at NGLA in 1910.   

Mike,

That's untrue.

In 1910, Horace Hutchinson wrote the following in an article in the "Metropolitan Magazine"

"There will be NO trouble at all about the turf.  It is good already both on the putting greens and through the green"[/color]

[TEPaul]

"Yes, Bill, and I know now why Tom Paul never became a lawyer--nobody could ever afford to hire him!"

Richard the Magnificent:

You're fairly right about that. To get me to practice as a lawyer it would take more money than almost anyone could afford.

One thing I'm beginning to seriously wonder about is if Macdonald and Whigam were asked by the "Special Search Committee" (Lesley, Felton, Bodine Baily, Griscom and Lloyd) to come to Merion in June of 1910 to talk about ANYTHING OTHER (such as a real routing and hole plan) than the general suitablility of a SITE for a golf course and golf CLUB why are we assuming they were the ONLY ONES talking to Macdonald and Whigam at that time? Other than Lloyd not a single one of those men on the "Special Search Committee" would have anything to do with creating the actual course.

Why would the members of the "Special Search Committee", who we are told by both Wilsons and the Merion history book were only looking for possible sites for a move, be talking to Macdonald about the real specifics of a course at that point? If Merion's search committee had considered the Ardmore site as their choice seriously enough, at that point, to be talking about the specifics of a course on that site one would think Macdonald and Whigam must have also been talking to some of the men who would built it, certainly including Hugh Wilson.

To think the "Special Search Committee" could have been talking in specific detail about the design of their future course with Macdonald and then just wait six months to tap the people who would ACTUALLY DO IT seems pretty ass-backwards to me.

I don't know, to consider that the search committee were the only ones who got involved in discussing specifics of the routing and design of a course in June 1910 and then just dropped out and turned it all over to five guys who'd had nothing to say about it at all who would actually do it seems pretty odd.

If any specifics of a routing or holes were discussed or generated in June 1910 I bet Wilson was very much out there to discuss it too. Failing that, it would seem that nothing specific about a routing or design was discussed as seems very likely from the actual words of Macdonald's letter of June 1910.

It seem to me if Macdonald/Whigam had anything remotely to do with an actual specfc routing and design, that too MUST have happened beginning in 1911 when Wilson's committee was appointed. Maybe January 1911 and that visit of the "Construction Committee" to NGLA is the key here but in Hugh Wilson's report he did speak pretty specifically about what they did there for two days and getting a real routing and design for the course from Macdonald and Whigam was definitely not one of the things he mentioned.

I think it's more likely than ever that a lot more of what they were all discussing with Macdonald throughout was how to grow grass. I've thought that for years now---hence those massive files of agronomy letters from both Wilsons and precious little about architecture.

It would make sense from Macdonald's perspective too as in 1910 he was in the middle of experiencing one massive agronomic grow-in failure at NGLA causing him to delay the formal opening of NGLA for a year.

This suspicion would seem to be confirmed by Macdonald's prescient remark when he first visited Crump's Pine Valley: "This could be one of the great courses if they could grow grass on it." 

Interestingly Crump site's soil was almost identical to Macdonald's and both were about as opposite of Merion's as they could get soil-wise.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Do not ask Patrick about Merion's quarry. I doubt Pat even knows what a quarry is.

Of course I do.

Living a few blocks from Tony Soprano, I know and everybody in Northern New Jersey knows that a quarry is your PREY.

It's that which we hunt, be it women or other elusive game. [/color]

[TEPaul]

Having just read Macdonald's letter one more time it just struck me that about 3/4 of what he talks about in that letter is basically about grass, not golf course architecture!

Almost everywhere you turn with the actual source material from the men involved in some of those early great courses---ex, NGLA, Merion, Pine Valley, the one leading it always seems to be talking about grass, grass, grass, and how the hell to grow it successfully.

Maybe instead of labeling this era "The Golden Age of Golf Architecture" (Or MacWood's suggested name of "Arts and Crafts Golf" ), we should relabel it; "The Golden Age of Golf Agronomy."

[Jeff_Brauer]

TePaul,

Well, growing grass was a far less sure thing in those days than it is now and it is still no sure thing on a new course.

What struck me about the actual letter was this:

Following it would have changed golf history as I doubt later, or perhaps any US Opens would have been played on a sporty 6000 yard course.  If this letter had been written 15 years ago, we could have substituted 6800 and 7100 yards and perhaps had the same debate on a new cousre!

I found myself again wondering why they wouldn't include such a brief letter in their notes.  I had figured they were talking about the Dallas Estate and didn't want to drive the price up.  Perhaps dealing with the powerful railroads for 3 acres required a need to be equally, or more secretive.

On the other hand, its possible that they got the impression from CBM that he really didn't have the time to be involved, and/or didn't want it widely known that or assumed that he would come out to offer free advice to clubs and committees.  Hence, they tried to downplay CBM's involvment at his request, even as they later agreed to go to his club, etc.

[Mike_Cirba]

Shivas,

There is only one eyewitness account that we know of who claims to have seen the plans and he also happens to be an expert, unemotional, first-hand witness who provided us with direct, consistent, and indisputable testimony.

If you can't accept that fact, then there really is nothing further to discuss, because red is green and a fish is a popsicle.

All the rest is just smoke.

Oh yes...Alan Wilson was there as well, but you and David have already made him out to be a prejudiced, hostile witness attempting to deflect due credit away from the penultimate greatness that was Macdonald and Whigham.   

Pretty impressive frickin' letter, don't you think?   

Nice bit of expert advice.    

[TEPaul]

JeffB:

I agree with a lot of your sentiments and intuitions in that post, except the part about Merion worrying about 'the all poweful railroads'.

I can absolutely guarantee you and prove it that the railroads, certainly including the great Pennslyvania railroad and the P&W next to Merion definitely DID NOT screw around with and try to hold up a guy like Horatio Gates Lloyd who was the managing partner of Drexel & Co, who was one of the biggest financiers of the American railroads unless the heads of those two railroads suddenly didn't give a damn where the money was coming from to run their railroads.

[Mike_Cirba]

David,

Perhaps we should examine the letter and its value.

Thank God Macdonald offered his advice for free or they could charged him with grand larceny!. 

Personally, I was spellbound.   

[Patrick_Mucci]

And that US Mail Service must have been really something back in 1910, don't you think?  David wrote;

"Mike, look at the dates.

June 29, 1910, M&W send their report.
July 1, 1910, the Site committee recommends purchase of "nearly 120 acres.""

So, sometime on June 29th Macdonald writes the letter and gets it in the mailbox.   

The very act of doing so sets various magical acts in motion, including apparently the creation of the first supersonic train to pick it up, and deliver it in Philadelphia in the next 15 minutes. 

It arrives in Philadelphia instantly, giving the Committee enough time to read and study it, confer on its meaning, and then write their own Site Committee report all in less than 48 hours.

Mike,

I don't think that you can look at the letter as if it exists in a vacuum.

M&W had just been to Merion.
They had discussions with the interested parties at Merion during their site visit.
M&W didn't send their letter to Wilson.

The letter is dated June 29, 1910, a Wednesday, from "New York"

For a letter, traveling from New York to Philadelphia, a distance of 86 miles, getting from NY to Philly in two days or less isn't out of the ordinary, especially with direct rail links and frequent trains between the two cities.

What's puzzling me is the perception that the sole communication between the parties in 1910-1911 is contexted solely in the realm of letters.

The telegraph was operational in the 1850's.
In 1881 the POSTAL Telegraph service went into operation.
We also know that Western Union was an active telegraph service.

One would think, by 1910-1911 that NY and Philly had more than adequate telegraph service.

In addition, in 1877 Telephone service was initiated and as early as 1892 Long Distance Telephone lines had been established between NY and Chicago, and, by 1911 Long Distance Telephone lines had been established between NY and Denver.


Wayno,

Does the June 29,1910 letter bear MacDonald's actual signature, OR does it state: (signed) Charles B MacDonald ?

If it's NOT signed with his actual signature, it was probably sent via the POSTAL Telegraph service, which could be delivered within an hour or so.

If it HAS his actual signature, it was probably sent via the Postal service, via train.

A copy of the actual letter would be a terrific help.