Control and Competition: The Architecture of Boathouse Row

Twenty-first-century Philadelphians know Boathouse Row as the idiosyncratic collection of boathouses that dot the shoreline of the Schuylkill River (fig. 1). But the unique architectural character and definition of the row is no accident of history; rather, it is the result of one of the earliest attempts to exert municipal control over private structures, initiated in response to a confluence of cultural and historic trends sweeping through Philadelphia and parts of America in the late nineteenth century. This paper investigates how the architecture of Boathouse Row developed in three distinct phases: first, under city ordinances influenced by prominent individuals who oversaw the founding and growth of Fairmount Park; then, as an aesthetic competition developed between the boat clubs within the constraints determined by the city; and finally as municipal control over the design of the boathouses declined as the Fairmount Park Commission shifted its attention elsewhere and as prominent architects took the stage and a rise of architectural eclecticism led to a profusion of new styles.	1
Fig. 1. Boathouse Row. Frontispiece of Louis Heiland, comp., The Schuylkill Navy of Philadelphia, vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1938). Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The boathouses from left to right are: Undine, West Phildelphia, College, Vesper and Malta, University, Bachelors, Crescent and Pennsylvania, and Quaker and Fairmount.
The boathouses are located in Fairmount Park, founded in 1855. Though the city had acquired the land in 1844, it did not begin to exert municipal control over the site with its first ordinances until 1860. With the establishment of the Fairmount Park Commission in 1867, figures such as Frederic Graff Jr., chief engineer of the Fairmount Waterworks, and Hermann Schwarzmann, a park engineer and later designer of the Centennial Exhibition, joined forces with city leaders to give authority to park rules that subsequently controlled the development of Boathouse Row.	2
The regulations pertaining specifically to Boathouse Row joined other rules governing the park that restricted commerce, encouraged leisure, and promoted standards of decorum. Because rowing was viewed as an appropriately rigorous activity for the emerging leisure class, the city allowed the private boathouses that existed before the founding of the park to remain. At the same time, since the rules that governed the clubs also reinforced or exceeded those for the park, their members served as visible examples of the social standards for park visitors to this section of the park. The clubs, which restricted use of the boathouses to club members, readily agreed to governance by the city because they wanted to remain on the Schuylkill, enhanced for rowing by the construction of a dam for the Fairmount Waterworks in 1821.	3
Despite these shared interests, city leaders, influenced by such architects as Andrew Jackson Downing and Samuel Sloan who had promoted the connection between architecture and morality in their popular architectural treatises, wanted to change the architecture of the boathouses to reflect the ideals of moral vigor embodied in the sport. To establish this architectural transformation, the city required existing clubs to demolish their boathouses and rebuild in an appropriate style. Due to the competitive nature of the clubs, these constraints did not produce a uniform set of boathouses, but rather each boat club balanced its desire for more intricate irregular structures containing boat storage, dressing rooms, and porches with the Park Commission's stipulations for specific material requirements and regulated spacing between the clubs.	. . .