Did the Golden Age 'Jump the Shark' with the Lido?

[George_Bahto]

Patrick, you're right - to stop the financial bleeding - or else they were going to lose the whole thing.

The developers that came later were there for the $$$. At this point when they sold off the ocean-side holes - the course was wrecked so they were there for the bucks.

The hotel was apparently doing OK - although that is hard to believe this is the same bunch that belonged to Shinny and NGLA, although that was sort of summer-stuff out there in the Hamptons - they were the sames bunch that belonged to Piping Rock, Creek and Nassau.

Like the founding of Creek, the Links and Piping Rock, those clubs and Lido were places they could play during the week.   This was the Roaring Twenties guys - it would never end - hah.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Through research, there maybe the possibility of the new owner being somewhat of an organized crime figure in regards to the sale of the homes and the eventual piece by piece sell-off/development of the site. This same under-world figure was rumored to have something to do with the remodeling of the facilties and the Navy had always questioned the security of the entire installation.

The reason why the duney-beachfront property is still intact at Lido is that it was a Nike anti-aircraft missle site. While that program has long been defunct, the rectangular silos or bunkers still exist, somewhere right in the area of the 8th green.

Sean, Could you check and see if Caro mentions anything about this.

[ChipRoyce]

Let's put it this way... the "jump the shark" moment any time couldn't have been too far later than RTJ's first "accomplished" courses were laid out

[ChipRoyce]

Tommy;

That's a wild bit of research / theory. If memory serves me correct, the philosophy behind a Nike missle was to detonate a nuclear warhead in the air, just far enough away from the intended target to destroy the incoming missle.

For the moment, let's not even think about how much sense this defense strategy made...

Would be funny to think live warheads were sitting in the middle of one of new york's busiest sea-side communities.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Chip Royce,

The early Nike and Nike Zeus programs were anti-aircraft not anti-missile programs.  There might have been a Nike-Ajax program as well.

These bases ringed the Metropolitan New York area, with one overlooking my club in NJ.

There is an old Nike base within the old WWII fortifications just northwest of the Golden Gate Bridge.  It provides a rather neat contrast, with huge concrete and steel gun turrets/mounts dug into the side of the mountains, and the Nike missile launchers sitting in the open in a sort of valley.

Later, these missiles were armed with Nuclear warheads to wipe out entire formations of Russian Bombers and to allow for mis-hits to be highly effective.

In fifty plus years, not one nuclear warhead has ever detonated accidentally, even when the aircraft, missiles and ships carrying them have blown up   Let's hope that the trend continues.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Chip,
The Nike program wasn't just based-off of the small nuclear warhead project that supposedly never got built, it was designed mostly to bring down Cold War enemies aircraft with standard ordinance. I myself live about five miles from some of these types of silos that rest up in the hills and are now filled with broken-up pieces of concrete and dirt.  I have actually toured a Nike bunker in Sylmar, and minus missles--you talk about scary!

Another fact that isn't being mentioned here is that in the 1920's, Long Island and what seems a lot of New York experienced a few hurricane years, and this did much damage to the area of Long Beach and more specifically Lido Beach. This is undoubtedly what Charlie B. saw in his visit to Lido where he walked away disgusted about how it had evolved, as well as probably answering Sean's question of why Lido may not have played to its fullest potential--Here is an image of what happens to the coastline during one of those hurricanes--mind you that this picture is from Long Beach, NY, and the thought of what the oceanside 8th went through during one of those events at the nearby Lido, San Remo Beach Club.

[TEPaul]

SPDB asked;

"Tom;
Do you know why the hitters didn't just sell the hotel and non-golf course property to the developers, while keeping the spectacular golf course for themselves?"

Sean:

Yes, I do, definitely. Frankly, it's all right there in C.B. Macdonald's book "Scotland's Gift Golf". There really can hardly be a better source for what led to the eventually demise of The Lido golf course than Macdonald's book (other than perhaps letters or diaries and such of someone like Roger Winthrop or those other principals).

Again, The Lido Corporation built the golf course and the hotel as a combined development. The Lido Corporation was the same principals that expected to turn the golf course into a club (that obviously could've been used by hotel patrons) but that simply never happened. Those very same principals had planned to excercise an option from THIER Lido Corporation to lease THIEIR golf course for the expected "Club" of the Lido golf course. That never happened.

The golf course to be leased by them from their own corporation was valued at $750,000 of a total expenditure to build the entire facility of almost $1.5 million. That, firstly, is a lot of money for those times--actually more than had ever been spent on a golf course (land acquisition cost plus construction cost of the 115 acre golf course portion of the 200 total Lido Corporation acres) and certainly more money than a few principals who were not able to generate a sufficient amount of members to make the club go (even with the hotel) were willing to carry, no matter how rich they were.

The Lido was different than a straight startup private club which those type of people did quite a lot. The hotel entity was something else and obviously the entire project was somewhat different for them---it was expected to be a combined club and profit arrangement--unlike their other clubs. Those men were businessmen who obviously could recognize what poor timing and real long-term financial bleeding was all about.

So they dumped the whole Lido Corporation (including the golf course) early on. Obviously they could've tried to just sell the hotel and tried to keep the golf course but for all the reasons I've given that just was not a logical thing to do in their opinions!

But again, it had nothing to do with lack of quality of the Lido golf course--it was what it was but they felt they had to let it go anyway and very early on.

I say these things merely because I think historical truth should be known and not some type of revisionist history about the course. This thread is an attempt at revisionist history regarding a question of the quality of the Lido golf course. Again, the reason the Lido G.C. failed had nothing whatsoever to do with some lack of quality of the course or its architcture.

I grew up on the North Shore of Long Island from the mid-1940s until I left about 1976. My Dad belonged to Piping and The Links club and many of these people who were those principals were friends of my grandparents and their next generation were very close friends of my own parents.

I never saw The Lido but occasionally those people from Piping and the Links, NGLA, Creek etc talked about it. One should understand that whether or not the memberships of those clubs were all the same ALL these people basically knew each other which happened to include my maternal grandparents and parents!

This included R. Winthrops, C. Vanderbilt, R Goelet (who lived across Valentine Lane from us), Otto Kahn (whose kitchen table I have in my own house as I type), Cravath who owned the estate The Creek club is now on who was one of NYC's premier lawyers and a close friend of my maternal grandparents. Stillman I don't know much about but my mother does.

The point here of going into all this is only to reinforce the historical fact that The Lido golf course did not fail because it's course and architecture was over-rated. There's little question the course and its architecture was every bit in the same league as PVGC, Merion, NGLA etc.

And there's also no question that the Lido golf course did not sell out some principle or inherent values of the American Golden Age of golf architecture which frankly had not really come into its own at the time those principals sold out the entire Lido Corporation including the Lido golf course from which the course never recovered!

[ForkaB]

SPBD

I'll take a wild guess and say that Tom Paul is right (on this occasion....) and that the movers and shakers behind Lido had no real inherent interest in playing at an extremely difficult golf course, located miles away on the wrong side of the tracks (or Island), and without any sort of pukka Club attached to it, even if it was extremely well designed.

[DMoriarty]

Okay, so we all agree then?   The Golden Age jumped the Shark with the Lido.   Good . . .  now lets get back to talking about the ratings . . .
 
I can see by everyone's reaction that I bumbled my initial posts, which were carelessly written and not well thought out.  Obviously I should have better heeded Mr. Klein's advice . . .  But before I concede the match, let me try to hack it out and salvage something.   Here is what I am NOT saying:
 -- I am not saying that the Lido was anything but an exceptional golfing experience.  In fact, with MacDonald at the helm, I'd be very surprised if it was anything but excellent.  
-- I am not saying that there was any sort of causal link (direct or indirect) between the Lido and the demise of the Golden Age.  Nor am I saying that the Lido was the last Golden Age Course.  Nor am I saying that the Lido caused WWI or II.  I am talking in a symbolic sense only.
-- I am not assuming or defining specific values of Golden Age architects. I did used the word values above, but probably should not have.  [I do think that 'procedural' values are involved but that is likely to tangential to get into, I think.]  
--  I am not trying to equate Golden Age golf with Socialism, Minimalism, or any other sort of -ism.  
 
So what am I saying?
1.  As I understand it, prior to and after the Lido, all of the Golden Age architects worked within the constraints of the natural terrain.  Sure they moved dirt and drained water, but they didnt move mountains or create continents.  They were faced with the challenges of a particular topography, and they solved problems, reacted, dealt with adversity, improvised, invented.   Much like a golfer, they pretty much played the ball as it lay.
 
2.  With the Lido, MacDonald took a decidedly different approach.  As Mr. Bahto explains it, he took on the project only because it offered him the chance to design with no one looking over his shoulder.  He was given freedom to design and build what he wanted.  But he wasnt just free from the constraints of the developers, he was also free from the constraints of nature itself.  As MacDonald put it:  "To me it was like a dream.  The more I thought it over the more it fascinated me. It really made me feel like a creator."  The Lido gave MacDonald the chance to play God, and he took it.  
 
3.  So where does the Golden Age fit in to all this?   Well one could argue that MacDonald started the Golden Age by building NGLA in an attempt to to import strategic gca to America.  As Ran notes, architects were routing courses and shaping land to create strategic interest.  But, nature  still presented a large part of the challenge-- to both the golfer and the architect.   Architecture complimented nature, to bring out its best points and to hide its weak points.  A make-over, if you will.  
   The Lido was not a make-over,  It was a from scratch creation.  Contrived purely in the mind of C.B. MacDonald.  George Bahto describes this as "the reverse of the usual process."  Nature is no longer guiding man.  Man is guiding nature.  So the the process is running in reverse.  In this way, if no other, the Lido is antithetical to the rest of Golden Age architecture.  
 
Put it another way.  MacDonald may have given us the substance of Golden Age architecture with NGLA, but with the Lido, he abandoned the proven procedure which in the past had produced the substance he so loved.
 
Query:  Why did MacDonald build MacKenzie's prize winning hole, while, as far as I know, MacKenzie never did?    My guess is that MacKenzie never did because he never found land suitable to build it.  MacKenzie apparently accepted this, and went on designing holes with the natural conditions as his general guide.  Unlike MacDonald, MacKenzie chose not to play God.

[ForkaB]

David

You've been on this site long enough to know full well that MacKenzie didn't have to "play" God, he was and is God.

[DMoriarty]

David

You've been on this site long enough to know full well that MacKenzie didn't have to "play" God, he was and is God.

That explains it.  MacKenzie wouldnt try to completely dominate nature into submission, doing so would have been some form of weird self-S&M.

[TEPaul]

DavidM:

The truth of what you seem to be inferring or trying to infer on this thread regarding the Lido and what kind of "symbolism" it may have produced is basically only one of economics and timing.

The fact is Macdonald/Raynor were given a completely free hand and a massive budget with the Lido golf course (far larger than anything in history that preceded it in golf architecture).

And the fact is that Macdonald/Raynor really did create a silk purse (The Lido golf course) out of a sow's ear (the incredibly UNpotential (for golf) natural site!!).

Could that be considered "Jumping the shark" (doing something that could be considered symbolically dangerous to the future of golf architecture in some sense?)?

I don't necessarily think the Lido could or should be considered doing something dangerous or even symbolically divergent of golf architectural principles of the Golden Age or any other age with the exception of a simple fact of business life of almost any time. That being if you're going to do anything it should be economically self-sustaining if it is to be expected to survive.

The fact remains, despite the undeniable quality of the Lido golf coure it was built in the wrong time in the wrong place and it cost way too much money to sustain itself!

I realize you're probably trying to uncover some symoblic reason that it's not a good idea to mess with Nature itself in the sense of some man-made dream involving massive amounts of earth moving, earth filling etc.

I just don't think that case can be made in a strict architectural sense unless you factor in the reality of cost and that any entity like the Lido needs to take that into consideration FIRST to be able to sustain itself in the future.

If you're trying to make some point that what happened at the Lido architecturally was in some way analagous to building a magnificent sand castle at low tide and for that reason the mysterious moods and ways of Nature refused to let it survive I really don't think that point or case can be made with the Lido golf course.

What happened to the Lido ultimately had everything to do with timing, location and that unattractive reality of man known as the "filthy lucre"!

[Ramon T. Hernandez]

"I grew up on the North Shore of Long Island from the mid-1940s until I left about 1976. My Dad belonged to Piping and The Links club and many of these people who were those principals were friends of my grandparents and their next generation were very close friends of my own parents.

I never saw The Lido but occasionally those people from Piping and the Links, NGLA, Creek etc talked about it. One should understand that whether or not the memberships of those clubs were all the same ALL these people basically knew each other which happened to include my maternal grandparents and parents!

This included R. Winthrops, C. Vanderbilt, R Goelet (who lived across Valentine Lane from us), Otto Kahn (whose kitchen table I have in my own house as I type), Cravath who owned the estate The Creek club is now on who was one of NYC's premier lawyers and a close friend of my maternal grandparents. Stillman I don't know much about but my mother does."

Boy, I thought that I was lucky growing up across the street from Milky the Clown.

[Jim_Kennedy]

DMoriarty,(The Lance Armstrong of backpedaling)  
Fess up, you lost the match. You might have a slim chance to win a press if your hypothesis can prove that  Macdonald  "abandoned the proven procedure which in the past had produced the substance he so loved" but even if you do I'd ask what do you hope to achieve by winning?  

[TEPaul]

Ramon:

I sort of felt when I wrote that I probably shouldn't have but I did it anyway because I thought on this thread about this particular subject which I disagree with the premise on in the initial thread it might lend some personal (although indirect through the generations) knowledge of a club of interest long ago. It did occur to me that some might think what I said was sounding elitist or something but that wasn't the intention for sure. I can't really help that Robert Goelet lived across the street from me when I was growing up any more than you can help that Milky the Clown was living across the street from you when you were growing up!  

PS;

Actually when I was a young teenage radical I did try to sell my parents and my entire life one time but unfortunately it didn't look like I could get enough for them or it so I ended up just forgetting about it!

[Ramon T. Hernandez]

Mr. Paul...to quote my favorite singer/songwriter-John Prine, "You are what you are and you ain't what you ain't".

I was certainly the source of envy of many, living across from Milky and I was on the TV show and picked from the audience to participate...you don't think that just happened do you? It is all relative. Unfortunately, Milky wasn't a lover of golf cuz who knows where we might have played...

[Tim_Weiman]

David Moriarty:

I want to compliment you on creating an interesting thread. We haven't seen many better in terms of taking on one of GCA's "sacred cows" and intelligently blending architecture and soocial/economic/political issues.

Perhaps as a footnote, I wish someone could convert the economics George Bahto cites in The Evangelist to 2003 dollars.

George reports that constructing a course on a rock free site cost roughly $50,000 with the cost of building on "problematic terrain" more like $150,000-200,000.

Goerge goes on to say the Lido project cost $1.43 million with construction alone $800,000.

Does anyone know the formula to convert this?

[Craig Disher]

Is it known why the Lido founders selected the Lido beach site if it was so unsuitable for golf? One reason must have been proximity to NY. Another might be price. If the site was a mudflat, it must have been a bargain.

Which leads to this - if CBM had been given a better site, would the cost have been as high?  Sure, the Lido was one of the most expensive golf courses ever built, but wasn't most of that expense due to the extensive dredging and pumping that had to be done to make the site buildable? And maybe that high cost was close to what the founders would have had to pay for a more suitable piece of property equally distant from NYC.

My point is that the expense really doesn't indicate that the design was excessive or that it violated classic principles. If the founders wanted a grand design near NYC, on the ocean, it was going to cost a bundle - either by purchasing a good site and having fewer expenses in site preparation, or by purchasing a poor one, and spending a lot preparing it. The architecture seems beside the point.

Just speculation.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Tim,
Other factors, like wages, construction methods, materials etc., have grown at various other rates but CPI data for dollars says the ratio is 14 to 1, therefore 800k then is 11.2mil today.

[Tim_Weiman]

Jim Kennedy:

Thanks. The tricky thing with golf courses is to know what formula - if any - can be used to compare costs between different era. For instance, George Bahto claims the average course circa 1915 cost about $50K. That puts Lido at 16 times the average cost.

What figure would we use for average cost today? What would that imply for Lido, if anything?

[SPDB]

I don't mean to stir up the pot any further, and Rich's post essentially encompasses what i am thinking, but...

I am finding it hard to reconcile the "carte blanche" MacD and Raynor were given on an unworkable plot of only 115 acres!!

 

[George Pazin]

Sean -

115 probably was thought sufficient due to the shorter length back then, plus the fact that there were no environmental or other types of restrictions. There are several big name courses that aren't built on a lot of ground - Merion's one, and I think one of Ross's NE courses (Wannamoisett?).

If I am remembering the layout from Daniel Wexler's book correctly, at least a couple of holes had shared fairways.

P.S. Dave M starts great threads all the time - it's not his fault the rest of us derail them!

[Dan Grossman]

Thanks to Dave M for starting a thread which is
actually interesting to read.  

Whether you agree with David or not, it is a learning
experience to ponder and think about his question.

[T_MacWood]

David
I think one of the mistakes we make (and I am as guilty as anyone) is to look at the Golden Age as a well coordinated architectural movement. No doubt these men had many similar beliefs and shared a number of design principals, but there really was no golden age (or Philadelphia school or Heathland school)...at least as they knew it...I suspect they would have thought of themselves as modern architects (in contrast to the Victorian fellows they enjoyed ripping).

And because it was not a recognized or organized movment, there was no set of commandments that they all adhered to. Some were pro-protype (Macdonald and company) some were anti-prototype (Colt and Fowler). Some leaned toward the penal, some more strategic. Some preferred a formulaic approach (Braid) others did not (Hutchinson). Some produced an engineered result, others more naturalistic. And so on...

Also Modern golf architecture was in its infancy, and because it was just beginning it was a time of experimentation. Lido wasn't the first great earth moving experiment...that would have been Mid Surrey (interesting Peter Lees was involved with both). The difference being Mid Surrey's artificial dunes were created outside London, Lido's seaside. The Mid Surrey experiment ultimately didn't catch on.

John Low experiemented with central hazards. Colt with naturalistic inland bunkers that emulated the seaside type. Simpson with sparse bunkering. MacKenzie with mounding and undulating greens (Bayside, Jockey and ANGC) in lieu of bunkers. The point is they were all trying to push the envelope while observing a small set of common principals.

It would seem to me that Lido would have been a natural progression for Macdonald...seeing that he was focused upon replicating a number of famous holes. His desire to recreate these holes must have been somewhat frustrating when the land was not quite right. At Lido he was given a blank canvas.

MacKenzie did reproduce his prize winning hole at Sharp Park on land reclaimed from the sea a la Lido.

[DMoriarty]

DMoriarty,(The Lance Armstrong of backpedaling)  
Fess up, you lost the match. You might have a slim chance to win a press if your hypothesis can prove that  Macdonald  "abandoned the proven procedure which in the past had produced the substance he so loved" but even if you do I'd ask what do you hope to achieve by winning?  

I am pretty sure my original posts said most of the same things (symbolic, not about time-lines, arrogance of man, etc.), just not very coherently.  I like the Lance Armstrong line, although it does sound familiar . . .

Shivas . . . You've got more stories than Sears Tower . . . You are the Lance Armstrong of backpeddling . . .

Do you disagree that "Macdonald abandoned the proven procedure which in the past had produced the substance he so loved?"  This seems pretty apparent to me.  On all other projects he started with a topography then routed his holes through it, moving some dirt as need be. While he did kick dirt around, for the most part the topography dictated which holes would work where.   The land was the most immutable force, and all else had to at least bend to its will.    At the lido, the opposite is true.  MacDonald's will came first, and the land was created to comform to his will.  No compromise necessary.   The process in reverse.  

Please tell me where my description falls short and I will try to prove it.  

What do I want to achieve by winning?  I very seldom ever want to achieve anything by winning.  While I definitely like to win, I mostly just enjoy and learn from the game.