Boathouse Row

The Schuylkill Navy, an association of boating clubs organized in 1858, held its first official regatta for the Centennial of 1876. From the 1850s onward, the clubs had built permanent boathouses along the river north of Fairmount Water Works, creating the quaint cluster known as Boathouse Row. none of the first generation of boathouses has survived.

The City allowed the erection of the present boat houses beginning in 1860. They sit on public land, but are privately owned and provide a well recognized recreational use of the river. The fifteen boathouses that now stand on the east bank of the Schuylkill River exhibit a wide variety of styles, Gothic Revival and Italianate styles first marked the site. Most of the houses erected in the 1870s and early 1880s exhibited an ornamental Victorian Gothic style associated with the Philadelphia Centennial buildings elsewhere in Fairmount Park and then considered the proper style for park buildings. Lloyd Hall, the only new boat house since 1904, opened in 1998.