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An Old Boathouse in Spuyten Duyvil

Flipping through an old book called ‘Magical City: Intimate Sketches of New York’, I came upon this sketch of the Gould Boathouse of Columbia University on the Harlem River by Spuyten Duyvil. I had never come across this little building before and had significant doubts as to whether it was still there, but to my pleasant surprise it does. I’m afraid I don’t know much about the boathouse nor its history, but here follows a number of photos and images of it, and of various Columbia boathouses of the past.

A sketch of Spuyten Duyvil, the body of water separating the very top of Manhattan from the mainland, taken from the same book. Spuyten Duyvil’s old Dutch name – ‘the Devil’s whirlpool’ – is derived from its choppy waters. Washington Irving, however, claimed the name harked back to an old Dutch trumpeter who vowed to cross the body of water ‘in spite of the devil’, and fell to a watery grave. (Here’s what Spuyten Duyvil looks like today).

Two photographs of the boathouse in use in the 1930’s.

The old Gould Boathouse has since been replaced by the Class of 1929 Boathouse built alongside it.

This aerial photo shows the tennis courts (with their white bubble for winter use) and a bit of the track of Baker Field, all part of Columbia’s athletic campus on the northern tip of Manhattan.

I don’t know whether these two images (above and below) are of a previous boathouse on the same spot, or conjectural images of what the Gould Boathouse would have looked like before the Columbia University Boat Club settled upon a different design.

Finally, an earlier Columbia boathouse on the Hudson River.

Elsewhere: Rowing in New York – A History, from New York University Crew.

Published at 10:47 am on Monday 17 July 2006. Categories: Architecture New York Tags: , , , .
Comments

The Spuyten Duyvil bar in Brooklyn is one of the finest in the US–lots of great cask ales and other things to drool over…..worth the trip sir….

— matt 19 Jul 2006 4:40 am

The Gould Boathoure is still the Columbia boathouse. The so called new boathouse is actually the new boat shed that replaces the old one on the other side of the Gould Boathouse The oldboat shed has been torn down.

— Arthur L. Thomas 5 Sep 2007 2:02 pm

I dig the old sketches. One of them is actually of the boathouse formerly on the Hudson at 115th Street. This link from the New York Public Library adds a little context.

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=690558&imageID=801238&total=37755&num=140&word=div_id:PC&s=1&notword=&d=&c=&f=&k=0&lWord=&lField=&sScope=images&sLevel=&sLabel=Picture%20Collection&imgs=20&pos=160&e=w

— Cole 7 May 2009 3:07 am

Louis Coffin (my grandfather) of the firm Polhemus & Coffin was the architect of the 1930’s vintage Columbia boathouse shown. He previously graduated from Columbia.

— Barclay Leib 24 Jun 2009 12:10 am

See https://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/25141344409/
for details regarding the old Gould boathouse at 115th and Riverside.
It burned down in 1927.

— Art 7 Mar 2016 9:05 pm
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