From Mike Cirba:
All,
I guess I can understand David refusing to answer my questions as I'm not a member of this Discussion Group, and that's ok. Frankly, I'm really beginning to see some progress here on this thread and I really don't think our positions on the whole question of how Merion East was originally designed are that far off any longer...only by degrees in fact, if I'm interpreting him correctly.
Overall, I'm very glad that David now has access to the MCC Minutes, because I think the evidence has caused him to evolve his thinking in a number of areas.
For instance, I'm not sure he'd state it here given some of the acrimonious history, but it does seem he's backed off his original premise that the golf course was fully routed by November 1910. If you recall, one of the cornerstones of his essay was that because it would appear without close inspection that the 130x190 "triangle" of land referred to by Richard Francis already seemingly was indicated on the November 1910 Land Plan (which Francis told us was the final piece of the routing), then the routing must have been completed before the formation of Hugh Wilson's Construction Committee (and Wilson's involvement at any level), which Wilson stated was in "early 1911".
If I might surmise, I think David originally took that, along with accompanying documentation from H.G. Lloyd found in the Sayres Scrapbook that the land in question was bought largely based on the recommendation of CBM and Whigam, as well as his discovery that Wilson went abroad in 1912, not 1910, as strong evidence that Hugh WIlson was not responsible for the design routing of Merion East Golf Club, and I can certainly appreciate how he may have come to that conclusion. Given the documented visit by CBM in June of 1910, and Lloyd's statement, as well as noting a previous communications from the Real Estate company (Joseph Connell) indicating that HH Barker had done a routing somewhere on their holdings in anticipation of the sale to MCC, also in June of that year, David's essay argues that probably CBM and Whigham were the ones responsible for that routing sometime between June and November of 1910, perhaps with some Barker thrown in for good measure.
However, at the time he wrote his essay he didn't have the actual contents of the letter that CBM wrote to Lloyd after his visit, nor did he have the other MCC Minutes that make a number of things clearer. For instance, here again is the letter CBM wrote after his one day visit in June 1910, which Lloyd referred to in his November 1910 recommendation letter to the Board. It is important to note that the June visit and followup letter is the only documented communications between CBM and anyone at Merion until the following year, 1911.
New York, June 29, 1910
Horatio G. Lloyd, Esq.
c/o Messrs. Drexel and Co.
Philadelphia, Pa
Dear Mr. Lloyd:
Mr. Whigham and I discussed the various merits of the land you propose buying, and we think it has some very desirable features. The quarry and the brooks can be made much of. What it lacks in abrupt mounds can be largely rectified.
We both think that your soil will produce a firm and durable turf through the fair green quickly. The putting greens of course will need special treatment, as the grasses are much finer.
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. The opinion that a long course is always the best course has been exploded. A 6000 yd. course can be made really first class, and to my mind it is more desirable than a 6300 or a 6400 yd. course, particularly where the roll of the ball will not be long, because you cannot help with the soil you have on that property having heavy turf. Of course it would be very fast when the summer baked it well.
The following is my idea of a 6000 yard course:
One 130 yard hole
One 160 "
One 190 "
One 220 yard to 240 yard hole,
One 500 yard hole,
Six 300 to 340 yard holes,
Five 360 to 420 "
Two 440 to 480 "
As regards drainage and treatment of soil, I think it would be wise for your Committee to confer with the Baltusrol Committee. They had a very difficult drainage problem. You have a very simple one. Their drainage opinions will be valuable to you. Further, I think their soil is very similar to yours, and it might be wise to learn from them the grasses that have proved most satisfactory though the fair green.
In the meantime, it will do no harm to cut a sod or two and send it to Washington for analysis of the natural grasses, those indigenous to the soil.
We enjoyed our trip to Philadelphia very much, and were very pleased to meet your Committee.
With kindest regards to you all, believe me,
Yours very truly,
(signed) Charles B. Macdonald
In soil analysis have the expert note particularly amount of carbonate of lime. Besides this letter, there were a number of other factors unknown to David at the time of his essay. For instance, although the Land Plan shared with the Merion membership in 1915 appeared to have the 130x190 parcel of land mentioned by Francis indicated in the north portion, I doubt David realized at the time that the map was professionally drawn to scale and that the triangle at the top of the page hardly fit the dimensions described by Francis. What's more, if a routing had already been done as of that date then it certainly would have been shared with the membership to garner support and interest in the new course. As everyone knows, the Land Plan is blank.
Further, at the time David was unaware of a correspondence noted in the MCC Minutes from Merion's counsel, Mr. Cuyler, who advised Merion in December 1910 that HG Lloyd should purchase the land in question (117 acres secured in November) because the dimensions of the golf course were not yet determined. In late December, Lloyd purchased the entire properties formerly known as the Johnson Farm and Dallas Estates, ensuring that Merion could have the flexibility they needed in routing and determining their golf course.
In fact, the very first letter from Hugh Wilson to Piper and Oakley in early 1911 refers to the fact that Merion has "purchased 117 acres", indicating that whatever land shift occurred with the routing that created the need to expand to a purchase of 120 acres (with an additional 3 acres of RR land leased for a total of 123 acre golf course) in April referred to in the meeting minutes of April 1911, that specific routing activity took place sometime between February and April of 1911. Of course, when David wrote his essay he also didn't have access to the MCC Minutes of April 19th, 1911, which spoke of the committee laying various courses on the ground, their visit to NGLA, their subsequent creation of 5 "different plans", the requirement to buy an additional three acres to implement the plan recommended by CBM, and that whole sequence of events which really confirm for me the fact that this work was primarily done during that timeframe. I do hope he would concede in the interest of progress and mutual understanding that his assumption that the routing plan had been completed by November based on that misleading Land Plan was an error, understandable though it was.
(I also wish Tom MacWood would reply to my specific and related questions to him in post #100 on this thread, so I can see where we still differ. He seems to me to want the Barker attribution so badly that he's ignoring the mountain of evidence to the contrary, but rather than taking shots at Wilson ("Insurance Salesman", etc), I really don't see much where he explains how this all fits together in his mind, or whether his thinking has evolved on this matter, as it seems David's has, but perhaps he can weigh in.)
Now, we can all offer our interpretations of what those April 1911 Minutes read in terms of apportioning responsibility for the routing activities, and it's clear that there was collaboration. I really don't believe either the Minutes, nor Wilson's account suggest that much of that work took place during the NGLA visit. I think the facts suggest that Merion wanted to build a golf course consistent with the underlying principles under which CBM had built NGLA, using concepts from ideal holes abroad, and the word that keeps coming to my mind as I study this thing is "mentor". I think CBM and Whigham acted as "good and kindly" mentors to an eager Hugh Wilson and Committee, first coming to confirm that the land in question was going to work, putting him in touch with Piper and Oakley, later providing Merion with a primer and probably graduate course all in one evening on the strategic principles of holes abroad, then showing his applied versions of those principles on the ground the next day going over the NGLA course, and then coming down to view their various routing efforts and offering his expert opinion on which of those plans was best.
I may be wrong, and their role may have included suggesting specific holes in specific locations on the property, but I'm not sure there is evidence that they were involved to that level. Instead, like any good teachers, I think they taught their students and then commented critically on their efforts, as opposed to doing their students work for them.
Ironically, I think in some ways that I may differ more with Jim Sullivan than I do with David. Jim has never been able to accept that any of these intelligent men would purchase or secure a parcel of land without first having some routing of a golf course done on it. However, I believe that the historical record shows that this was indeed often the practice in those days, citing Crump's purchase of 184 acres at PV prior to routing, for example. In the case of Merion, they had been told by Connell that HDC was willing to sell them "100 acres or whatever would be needed" for the golf course and I believe that it was CBM who probably told them they needed closer to what he believed at the time was a standard of around 120. Certainly one can't walk around any potential property without seeing potential golf holes and I'm sure that also happened here, but I think once they knew they had an adequate parcel of land with enough interesting natural features, they simply went for it and figured they'd build their course over time. I just think history shows that is the way ti was done at the time. I won't even go into the NGLA example...
My biggest beef with what's been argued here by David, and probably moreso by Tom MacWood, is not the elevation of CBM's role in the Merion story, but the seemingly purposeful minimilazation of Hugh Wilson's role. I believe that belies a lack of historical understanding of what at the time was over a decade's activity by Wilson at the highest levels of the game in Philadelphia and Princeton, and an escalating role within Merion.
For instance, here in 1897, an 18 year old Hugh WIlson finished 2nd to eventual winner Ab Smith.in the Medal round of the first Philadelphia Amateur. At the time, Wilson was the best player in Belmont GC (predecessor to Aronimink) and would be going into Princeton, where he became golf Captain while they were building their new Willie Dunn course.
In 1902, William Smith petitioned GAP to create a committee to rank of the best players in Philadelphia at the time, for purposes of naming a qualified team to play in the Intercity Matches, which would become the Lesley Cup. Wilson was identified as the 8th best, quite an honor for someone who wasn't able to play in a lot of the club competitions as he was matriculating at Princeton. The list also included fellow committeeman Rodman Griscom.
Speaking of Griscom, yesterday we also found evidence where he and two other men routed a proposed public course in Fairmount Park for the city of Philadelphia which was never built. Griscom was also head of the committee that designed the second nine holes at Merion's original course around the same time.
Finally, it's interesting to see who represented Merion at the Annual Golf Association of Philadelphia meetings (along with GAP President Robert Lesley) during the period in question. In January 1910, we see that Merion sent Dr. Toulmin and HG Lloyd, both member's of Wilson's Committee;
The following year, just after Lloyd completed his purchase of the property in December 1910, at the January meeting we see a new name joining Dr. Toulmin;
In 1912, a news report indicated that Wilson and his committee were very busy with the new course and I neglected to photograph the roster for that year, but it didn't include Wilson...if memory serves it was Lloyd and Griscom. However, after the course opened, by 1913 again two of the member of the committee were representing Merion at the annual GAP Meeting. While none of this is dispositive in any way, it does help to increase our modern understanding of how well Wilson was regarded at the time within Merion and within Philadelphia golf circes, even at these early dates;
Thanks,
Mike