Steve Lang:
You said:
“It appears to me you're "Merionizing" this discussion. Please take a time-out and reconsider the history and what may have been, in lieu of what may be proved or inferred by induction.”
What do you mean by that? What I’m trying to do is get to Dan Hermann’s original question as he started this thread and after three pages that doesn’t seem to be very easy to do. Here it is.
“With that in mind, what WAS "pre-modern" or "pre-scientific" design? Was it steeplechase golf or something different?”
And here is the type of response Melvyn offered:
“Pre Modern, Scientific or call it what you want, the real point, I believe has been missed, as with everything there is a learning curve. We must look to our past with open eyes, to seek the actual truth not in the hope that it may fit this or that agenda.”
And,
“I believe the biggest damage to the real history of golf course architecture came from the like of those mentioned in TEPaul’s post. Their interest was clearly in themselves and promotion of self. They sprout comments that if actually investigated is quite frankly a total load of old rubbish, they failed to actually check out the full story.”
In my opinion, the fact is a number or significant architects and architectural critics who were there to observe that early (late 19th century) architecture had a number of things to say about it and what they had to say seems to have been pretty consistent----eg they termed it “Steeplechase” and “Victorian.”
And we know that the terms “Scientific” and “Modern” were terms used by various significant architects beginning around the teens, such architects and writers as A.W. Tillinghast.
So apparently these men back then meant something by it and they apparently meant something by the way they described what came before it----eg as Dan Hermann asked, “….what WAS “pre-modern” or “pre-scientific” design?
It seems to me there was more to this than simply self-promotion and “old rubbish” as Melvyn Morrow has termed the subject of this thread.
So, what was it? That is the question. We can probably develop some opinion of what it was by considering what those men I quoted said about it and what they felt about it and perhaps even why, in there opinions, architecture needed to change, particularly INLAND architecture and rather dramatically as I think most of us can see.
I can’t post photographs of that late 19th century architecture but others can, and if they do we can consider it and compare it to what came later. I don’t think that’s too much to ask and I don’t think that is “Merionizing” this thread. All we really need to do is get to Dan Hermann's question and stop diverting it and dismissing it with some other point such as those early architects and their architecture was not as it was described to be but simply attempts at self promotion by later architects.
One way of looking at this question is to try to determine what some of the first good INLAND architecture really was, where and when. I’ve always felt that was thought to be in the English healthlands such as Sunningdale. A number of others architectural analysts over the years appear to confirm that.
If this thread and subject is going to go anywhere interesting we probably need to stop talking about whether or not some architects were only denigrating earlier architects in some attempt at self promotion. We need to put that aside for now and just look at that earlier architecture inland in the latter part of the 19th century that was commonly referred to as “Steeplechase” and “Victorian.”
In other words it would be nice to try to answer Dan Hermann’s original question for a change.
