Jim,
Mike's theory is nonsense, as I explained to him in the NGLA thread. the boundaries were set according to the needs of the golf course.
1. Part of the Johnson property west of the course wasn't needed, and the boundary was change accordingly.
2. The Francis land swap area was not originally offered, but it was added.
3. The entire Dallas estate was added AFTER the offer for land was initially made, strongly suggesting that the reason that this land was purchased was that it was required for the course.
4. The RR property land behind the clubhouse was not offered either, but was added to the golf course at M&W's insistence.
5. Even the shape of the former Dallas Estate was altered to best suit the golf course.
So Mike, you can see that the borders of the course were not predetermined at all, but were determined according to the needs of the golf course.
The only boundary that remained for sure was PART of the eastern boundary, except for the RR property, and perhaps the southern boundary, but this is far from certain.
Sully,
Let me try this again.
Please look at the plots of land on the following map from 1908, pre-Merion, pre-HDC.
In it, please look at the land south of Ardmore Avenue. It contains the southern portion of the Johnson Farm, and just adjacent to the southwest is the Dallas Estate.
WIth me so far?
Ok, now here's the Merion Land Plan from 1910. Please again see the land selected for the course south of Ardmore Avenue.
The land selected for holes 2 through the first half of the original #12 is all in the same dimensions as the original estates that they purchased.
They didn't buy some special areas of land for the already routed golf course. They bought land, and then routed the golf course.
Now, look again at the first map north of Ardmore Avenue.
Keep in mind that Merion wanted 1) To have the golf course adjacent to the railroad, and 2) to use the existing farmhouse as a clubhouse, and 3) use the quarry and creek.
So, what did they do?
They took the divided up the northern part of the Johnson Farm that ran from Ardmore to College Ave, creating an "approximate" boundary that they'd figure out later, but which was intended to divide the HDC land (which included the Johnson Farm and a few other plots) into 117 acres for golf and 221 for real estate.
So, once again, the lines are just drawn approximate and arbitrary, but the locating of those parcels had NOTHING to do with a routing existing. They simply had to do with drawing out a section of HDC's holdings (the southern and eastern-most parts) for golf, and the rest (all that west and north) for real estate.
They land they selected and purchased was not based on some existing routing that was somehow meant to maximize the best golf ground out of HDC's holdings.
If that were the case, don't you think they would have used some areas in the middle, perhaps, and that the course would be much more randomly placed than in the neat existing boundaries of land plots owned by HDC?
To David's response, 1) conceded...so what...the northern part of the Johnson property was split into eastern and western sections as I described above.
2) Conceded, but it wasn't the "triangle land" as David contends.
3) The Dallas Estate was added because what they were originally offered wasn't enough land for a golf course and M&W strongly suggested that. Barker was the only one who routed a golf course without that land and it had to be a futile, asinine, one-day effort on his part.
4) Conceded, but adding that land by the clubhouse would make sense and be obvious to anyone...after all, it gives you more width to work with where the L intersects, and it does have that lovely creek to work with.
5) Untrue. Any adjustment to that boundary happened well after the land was purchased.
David's 5 points are a smokescreen designed to hide the FACT that Merion simply bought ALL of the southern part of the Johnson Farm, the eastern Half (roughly) of the northern part of the Johnson Farm, ALL of the Dallas Estate, and those were the basic boundaries of the original course, and mostly still are today. They most assuredly did not buy some land neatly configured to a routing...they routed the course within those predetermined boundaries, with the exception of the additional land they had to get in the Francis Swap.