The Creation of NGLA in Chronological, Contemporaneous News Articles

[JESII]

Mike,

Is there any chance the verbal agreement between CBM and the land owners to buy 205 acres predated the contractual option to buy the land?

That big paragraph on page 187 here certainly implies they were two different events. I say this because it's wholly apparent that they staked out the land they wanted prior to executing the option, would you disagree?

[Mike Cirba]

Jim,

Here's the quote for you below;

As regards Max Behr, I think his whole article is simply about the process of finding enough acreage of the right configuration.

He suggests that National had it right because by definition, they purchased way more land than the roughly 110 or so that is generally needed for the golf course, and because by definition, an out and back routing is most efficient in terms of non-wasted space.

However, his mention of the steps and timing of the specific project steps is second-hand at best, as he wasn't there when it was routed, he wasn't a founding member, and he was writing his article that tangentially mentioned National ten years after the fact.

December 15th, 1906

[Mike Cirba]

Jim,

That is specifically where I believe we disagree.

ALL of the articles written after CBM executed the option tell us that the 205 acres were undetermined, and that latitude would be given to him to locate it as best as served his purposes for the golf course.

So, it was a contract of intent...to buy 205 acres, not 205 specific acres.

It's even possible...very probable actually, that the land was still unsurveyed at that point, so it would have been impossible to execute a contract with specific metes and bounds.

That was to be determined later, and would be written into the final purchase agreement that was executed months later in the spring of 1907.

Is it possible they were two different events, as you suggest?

Yes, it's possible, but that extends the timeline for doing the routing even further back.  

For instance, let's say they got some informal "agreement" to sell them 205 acres at $200 an acre back in October after looking at the site the first time.

Why then would they still need to sign a contract to "secure" some 'undetermined" 205 acres two months later, before then proceeding to spend the next five months doing what??  prior to signing an actual purchase contract in Spring of 1907?

[JESII]

Mike,

Do we know the dates of the horseback rides?

Wouldn't that have been the natural starting point of the routing process? I'm not sure where you're going with the comment about moving back the starting point to October.

[Mike Cirba]

Jim,

All we know about the horseback rides is;

1) It was 2 or 3 days
2) They had to take horses because the property was unwalkable due to overgrowth of brambles and bogs.
3) They studied the contours of the land and presumably the soil types
4) They decided that it was what they wanted if they could get a fair price
5) Afterwards the Company "agreed" to sell them an unspecified 205 acres out of the 450 available and they could locate it to best serve their purposes for the course.

AFTER that agreement, CBM tell us;

"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.

CBM, writing 20 years after the fact, boils down the whole years-long effort into a couple of sentences/paragraphs, but this last sentence is important because nowhere does CBM tell us how long this took and we know it happened AFTER he got agreement from the company to sell them 205 unspecified acres.

My contention, and I believe the contemporaneous materials including CBM's own quote at the time support this, is that his work happened AFTER December 1910, and the staking out of the land preceded the actual purchase in the spring of 1907.

[Mike Cirba]

Jeff,

Sometimes a picture is worth...

Taking David's aerial, I've made some changes that I think illustrate our differences.

In light green I've roughly approximated the location of the entire 450 acre tract that CBM was considering.

In purple in the lower right corner I've drawn a blob meant to indicate the location of the Shinneock Inn.

Circled in purples heading northwest is the area we know CBM wanted to build his Eden and Cape, along the little inlet from Bulls Head Bay, so by definition we know he had to somehow get from his proposed clubhouse to there during the routing.

Heading slightly southwest from there, I've encircled the location of the Alps hill and the adjoining site for the Redan.

In December 1906, those were ALL the natural features mentioned by CBM that he found and wanted to include.

We can also presume that he wanted to head over to Peconic Bay for at least some of the routing.

We also know he needed to get back to the clubhouse.

That's it.

I believe this is what he knew when he optioned the 205 undetermined acres, it's what he told us in both is book and in news accounts, and he figured out the rest later over the next several months as he told us he was going to do, with final staking of the holes, the property, and the final purchase taking place by Spring 1907.

[JESII]

It's amazing how much debate can follow on the back of so little real information.

As with the Merion debates, I find it amazing that the guiding forces of these projects, with no financial constraints and more or less unlimited land opportunity (I know what the Merion guys said about land being bought up, but don't buy it...) would agree to purchase a piece of land just barely large enough for their purposes without knowing full well what they were going to do with it.

I guess that's all I have to say about it...for now...

[Mike Cirba]

Jim,

How is 205 acres barely enough for their purposes when CBM thought his golf course would take 110 acres?

I don't understand that at all...he had plenty of land at his disposal when he signed an OPTION on an undetermined 205 acres out of  a much larger available parcel.

An OPTION wasn't a final sales contract, in either the case of NGLA or Merion.

It didn't include metes and bounds.

[JESII]

Mike,

Regarding your analysis of the aerial I think it''s vital to note the direction each of those features would be approached from. This goes another step towards the routing "laying itself out"...

[JESII]

Jim,

An OPTION wasn't a final sales contract, in either the case of NGLA or Merion.

It didn't include metes and bounds.

Whether or not it included the metes and bounds, doesn't the option contract need to represent the specific asset to be purchased? I would imagine there could be a side agreement which allows for flexibility within reason and at no charge.

[Mike Cirba]

Jim,

In gross terms, yes...I'm sure the contract said something about the undeveloped, unsurveyed Sebonac Neck property in the original agreement securing 205 undetermined acres of the 450 available.

But if the land hadn't been surveyed prior, how would the contract possibly indicate a specific section that was being secured?

You have to recall that this was wasteland...no one thought it had value and it had never been surveyed by the owner or anyone else.

[JESII]

You have to recall that this was wasteland...no one thought it had value and it had never been surveyed by the owner or anyone else.

Prior to the horseride...which may have happened as early as June, correct?

[JESII]

The main thing is, do you think a formal option can be executed without the metes and bounds? I don't know for sure, but would not expect it could. Assuming it cannot, then we know it was surveyed by November.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Jim,

Patrick has contended that an option needs a specific parcel, but I see no reason that it would have to, if the thing that needs to be studied is a boundary within a boundary. Not a lawyer, could be wrong.

I disagree with you on two points-

That Alps hill might have been approached from two different directions, maybe more with similar results, and that would be determined by how the holes before and after worked out.  It didn't route itself.

Also, I think there were financial constraints at both NGLA and Merion.  CBM didn't have the money for the clubhouse, and thus had to persuade the Realty Co to build a hotel that would double as his clubhouse. Merion had a budget for land purchase, which they had to stay within, but eventually went over by three acres, costing them, I think, $85K, much more than the origina 120 acres they had agreed to.  Just because some of the members were wealthy, MCC had to consider costs for all members, and its clear from the subscription agreement that CBM wasn't going to front his dream project with his own money!  Rich folks rarely do.....

And, as I mentioned to your similar comments on the Merion thread, of the 50 courses I have designed, I may have had parcel flexibility on 4.  Both these courses were lucky and ideal in the fact that they built in some flexibility with the landowners.  That Behr devotes an entire 1915 article to that ideal suggests that many courses back in those days didn't consider parcel size and shape before hiring the gca or forming the committee either, doesn't it?

[Mike Cirba]

I think one of two things is true here;
 
Either CBM had a loose option without metes and bounds by December and did the surveying/routing/clearing of the property in the months after that as was reported contemporaneously, or;
 
If indeed an "Option" by definition (as Patrick contends and Jim seems to support) was for a very specific piece of land, down to metes and bounds, then;
 
A whole bunch of things including the horse ride, the hiring of Seth Raynor, and the surveying, mapping, and routing of the property all had to happen in the months prior to December, sometime after June 1906.
 
But then..
 
Why would he have to wait another five months til Spring 1907 to actually complete the purchase when we know his subscriber monies were all lined up?   And, what was he doing during that time?

And why would all the December 1906 newspaper articles claim that the land was "undetermined" and state that CBM was going to do all of that activity in the next five months?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Jim and Mike,

I believe, but am not really sure about NY law back in those days, that they could secure an option for a specific amount of land.  Perhaps they even had a boundary for a specific 205 acres, but a side agreement that they could swap it to another firm parcel at the time of sale, if agreed to by both parties.

Having been involved in projects that have had friendly land swaps, I am fairly certain that the parties can find a techincality to get around the law, if it says it has to be a specific parcel.

I really think the whole discussion on limitations of options is kind of moot, at least from my experience. Yours may vary.

[JESII]

Jeff,

Considering Gates and the boys bought the land for Merion and then asked who else wanted in, I think we can agree limited money was of little concern. He could have done it a hundred different ways to get a similar result, financially, for the rest of the membership.

At NGLA, sure, the budget was what the budget was, and if he felt a piece of land were going to cost triple what he paid and be worth the expese he could have scrounged up the money. The ultimatum style ending to the subscription letter makes that quite clear. They weren't out begging on street corners to fill the bucket.

I'll concede on the various directions to approach the Alps if you give me the other three...

[JESII]

Jeff,

I would certainly agree that the parties can negotiate any flexibility they want on top of an option, but in the context of CBM saying they agreed to buy 205 acres then staked out the land they wanted then took an option in November I think it's reasonable to think these may have been two agreements: A verbal agreement on 205 acres followed by a formal Option. Page 187 posted above with the paragraph beginning "However" being most important to me.

Any room to budge on this?

[Mike Cirba]

Jim,

Besides simply his reiteration of facts in that section, the other reason I believe that both the "agreement" and "securing" of the property on Page 187 refer essentially to the same Nov/December 1906 event is that the same company rejected a prior offer of CBM's for land near the canal.

Why in the world would CBM go back and first "earnestly" study the contours again, then essentially pick out the land and routing he wanted for this golf course, and then stake out the property if all he had was a handshake "agreement" that wasn't binding on the seller??!?

[JESII]

To make it clear exactly what land he wanted.

I read "stake out" to me boundary stakes, as opposed to staking out the golf holes...agree or no?

What difference does it make that this sae firm declined a previous offer?

[Mike Cirba]

Jim,

Recall that to do what you've just suggested, whether it was golf holes OR just the overall land boundaries, Seth Raynor would have already had to have been hired to survey the property.

Exactly what would they have put in the contract to determine the boundaries of the land without it having been surveyed?

[JESII]

Mike,

When was Seth Raynor hired? I'll admit ignorance.

[Mike Cirba]

Jim,

We don't know, to be honest.

But, we do know that CBM says in Scotland's Gift that he "hired him to survey our Sebonac Neck property", and "had him make a contour map and later gave him my surveyor's maps which I had brought from Scotland and England, telling him that I wanted those holes laid out faithfully to those maps. For three to four years he worked by my side."

and we also know that CBM in 1912 wrote about Raynor;

"In the purchase of our property, in surveying the same, in his influence with the community on our behalf..etc." in thanking him.

 

[Jeff_Brauer]

Jim,

Taking a little lunch break here and had this thought:

Which do we think is more likely?

CBM writing in precise chronological order 22 years later, even knowing that he makes the first and second offer sound consecutive when separated by over a year, jumps back and forth between design, topsoil, design, etc., not to mention only giving us two exact dates?

Or,

The common sense logic of finding generally suitable property, taking an option to determine if it was truly suitable (using lawyers as necessary to make sure the transaction met all legal requirments), finalizing what he wanted, and then finalizing the purchase?  Or in not incurring survey and other expense with Raynor until he had the property secured with an option?

Sometimes, when I read these threads, I am amazed at what convoluted hoops we go through to fit the pieces together, often in strange ways.  I have found , doing similar historic research that the simplest answer is usually the right one.  The twists and turns are more Hollywood plot than historic research and reality.

Just my thoughts.

[Mike Cirba]

Jeff,

Bingo.