The fact that many examples come from across the pond illustrates a greater disposition to accept bunkerless greens/holes. Perhaps several things conspired to give many Yanks a negative connotation. During the Depression and thereafter, the War years, many courses eliminated bunkers as a cost cutting strategy. This put a "we can't afford it" stigma on no bunkers. Also, our lush fairways don't react to the ground game as well as F&F fescue. Plus around here in Chicago, we have fairly flat terrain so big, interesting, undulating landforms are not common and to produce them would be unnatural.
That said, there are courses both old and new here that have a bunkerless green (or 2). I was 1st introduced to one caddying at Onwensia. Since they had more money than God, the lack of a bunker on the long par 4 18th green was by design, not economy. Not only bunkerless, it was also at fairway grade (hence my term "fairway green"). Since most player came at it with a fairway wood, getting it to stop on the green surface was the trick. A pair of huge Oak flanked the green (the one on the left pretty close) and more on a 10'-15' hillside behind created the visual.
We always tried to get one on our designs (like the bunkerless 12th at Kemper Lakes) or at Foxford Hills, I have 2 bunkerless holes and 3 bunkerless greens. And we did a bunkerless green #16 and bukerless hole #11 on the Starboard course at Harborside. My latest is the bunkerless 13th green at Effingham CC where annual flooding required the green to be elevated (benched into a hillside) so any fore bunkering would have been washed away and rear bunkeing wasn't needed due to the long length of the hole and we were able to carve up the hillside to add topographic relief.