Behind The Scenes Tours: Detroit Boat Club

The Detroit Boat Club Crew was founded 175 years ago in 1839, making them the oldest continually operating rowing club in North America. Commemorate this historic Detroit organization with a tour of their home since 1902, the Detroit Boat Club! Since 1996, the non-profit Friends of Detroit Rowing has been modestly refurbishing it in order to maintain the stability of a structure so entrenched in the history of Detroit. After several earlier wooden boathouses had burned to the ground, the Club asked Alpheus W. Chittenden, an architect born in Detroit, to build a structure that could withstand fire. When the current boathouse was dedicated on August 4, 1902, it was the first reinforced concrete structure in the United States.