Shelter Island Yacht Club - A Centennial History

The Shelter Island Yacht Club

A Centennial History

1886-1986
A book written in 1986 to commemorate
the 100th anniversary of the founding of the club.

Chapter 4 - The Club Finds a Mooring

For the first six years of its very active existence the S.I. Y.C. had no home of its own. Or, as one reporter cutely phrased it, "The Shelter Island Yacht Club had no shelter".

A reasonably good argument could be advanced that none was needed. During the summer months the trustees had a regular meeting place in the Heights Association office. They could just as well have used someone's living room and maybe, occasionally, they did. Large social gatherings, including the annual meetings, could easily be accommodated at the Prospect House which served as a community center. Actually, the annual meeting rarely drew more than a dozen people.

During the balance of the year the trustees met in the New York City area at convenient spots such as the Montauk Club in Brooklyn or the Lotus Club in Manhattan, or in somebody's office. Spring dinners, an early custom, were held at places like the New York Athletic Club in 1901, the Columbia Yacht Club in 1906 or the Hamilton Club in 1910 and 1911.

From the very beginning, nevertheless, there was pressure to have a clubhouse of one's own. All other yacht clubs had one and more were being built. Eager members envisaged a focal point for their seagoing fellowship, for business meetings and social activities, for dockage, for the reception of visiting clubs and not least as a showcase for accumulating trophies. Some members probably dragged their feet but others persisted. The fact that the nearby hotel could continue to supply - and probably counted on supplying - the requisite facilities to satisfy most demands was not good enough. Only after the hotel burned down in 1942 would the Club be thrown completely on its own, although it began to exhibit some independence in the 1930's.

Home at Last

The first mention of a "plan for a clubhouse and for raising money to build same" is found in the minutes of the third and final meeting of the 1886 season. Only ten members were present. No action followed. The next summer came and went without further reference to the matter. Races were run as usual from the balcony of the Pavilion. But early in the summer of 1888 a committee was appointed "to devise a plan for a clubhouse next season". It consisted of Messrs. Hoagland, Schroeder and Aspinwall. . . that is, two bankers and a clergyman. They have already been introduced.

Chequit Point was selected and proposed by the committee as the most logical site for a clubhouse but nothing was done to implement the recommendation. The Point at that time was a barren, low-lying, sandy spit just off a narrow lane leading to a small dock and an auxiliary ferry ramp. It belonged to the Association, of course. All three gentlemen had cottages within a three minute walk. It was a natural and eminently suitable location.

Finally, in 1890 under the leadership of Schroeder as chairman of the trustees and William H. Nichols as commodore of the Club, a committee consisting of John Aspinwall and T. A. Howell was appointed to act. Nichols, incidentally, joined the Club in 1888 but disappears from the roster after 1892. Nothing further is known about him except that he owned a 36 foot centerboard sloop Daisy.

On two successive occasions the trustees of the two organizations met separately but simultaneously to iron out an agreement to lease Chequit Point to the Club for one hundred dollars per year for a period of five years.

So much for the land. Now the building. Another committee was given authority to issue $2,500 in bonds to cover construction costs estimated at $1,500 to $2,000, just a few hundred dollars more than the N.Y.Y.C. was willing to spend on its newly-approved stations. Membership was growing now and the bonds were soon sold. By September a Mr. Botticher of Newark received the green light to design a suitable structure to be erected by Thomas Burns, a local builder of good repute whose handiwork is to be found all over the Island. Construction started in March and was completed in June, just in time for the 1892 season. The cost was $3,849.43, requiring the sale of additional bonds. Station No.5 of the N.Y.Y.C. was inaugurated that same summer.

Reading Room and Rocking Chairs

The two buildings were very similar in size and appearance. The S.I.Y.C. clubhouse consisted, for all practical purposes, of a large rectangular lounge dominated, at one end, by a massive fireplace. According to a previously quoted article "the interior was furnished in light woods" and equipped with "solid wood furniture". "Handsome Turkish rugs" covered the floor. As a reading room it was well supplied with "yachting literature, club books of other clubs, illustrated weeklies and daily papers from New York, Brooklyn, Boston and Baltimore". The Baltimore papers were, no doubt, a concession to the Brigham family who hailed from there. This room with its fireplace survives intact at the core of the present clubhouse and serves, since 1960, both as a bar and trophy room.

Under a sloping roof upstairs were "lockers and storage rooms and a special room for a secretary". There was also a small balcony, similar to the one at the Pavilion, for the supervision of races. An open veranda, called a piazza, girdled the building on all four sides. Like the indispensably popular hotel porches of the day, which were also called piazzas, the veranda was liberally supplied with rocking chairs which occasionally strayed out onto the lawn.

Another newspaperman, in describing the new clubhouse for his Brooklyn readers, said that the building "isn't quite as pretentious" as others which were being erected elsewhere, although he made a point of referring to the members as being "fabulously rich". As indeed some of them evidently were. However, the next year a concert was held in the Music Hall of the hotel, the proceeds to be split between the Chapel's organ fund and "the interior decoration of the yacht club".

Repairs and further improvements to the original structure during the first twenty-five years or more were minimal. In 1906 an acetylene gas plant was installed for illumination. Telephone service was added the following year, also a cement walk to the front door. The donation of the Heather's winning Bermuda Cup raised the vexatious question of a larger mantelpiece or display case, but no decision was arrived at and all trophies remained in a vault at the Lincoln Bank.

"Social Recreation"

Apparently the little building served its social purposes quite adequately, thus fulfilling the second objective of the Club's charter. In 1899 a proposal to have an annual tea or reception had been formally adopted. Obviously this involved ladies and the event soon came to be capitalized on the yearly "schedule of events" as the Ladies' Reception, but it was not until 1904 that the rules were revised to admit women to membership.

"Ladies may be admitted as members of the Club and enjoy all its privileges except the right to vote or hold office, upon payment of an amount equal to that of the year's dues."

Despite this formal action, rosters of ensuing years reveal the names of only a select few female members. The first one seems to have been Mrs. Oscar Weber in 1906. Then in 1908, shortly after the death of Commodore Weir, the name of Mrs. James Weir appears as an honorary member at the very top of the roster. Among the small handful of other women admitted to regular membership in those early years were notably Miss Cornelia Horsford of Sylvester Manor and Mrs. Knowlton Ames of Chicago.

* Miss Horsford, by the way, was not only lady of the manor and therewith the first lady of Shelter Island but also the daughter of Prof. Eben Horsford, donor of the Club's premier trophy, the Columbus Cup. Mrs. Ames was the daughter of the Hon. Frederick Schroeder, former mayor of Brooklyn and de facto mayor of Shelter Island Heights.

* N.B. In 1980 for the very first time a woman has been added to the Board of Trustees. The honor belongs to Miss Sally Helme.

All in all, the Club was clearly a male-run organization but it was not misogynistic. One of the first events in 1892 was a Ladies Day Race which stipulated one woman per boat or for each six feet of boat! Larger craft could, therefore, carry several ladies. Furthermore, the men sincerely appreciated the woman's touch around the clubhouse and welcomed their presence, except when they were accompanied by children under the age of twelve. The time came when the trustees laid down a rule about that! For years the trustees paid grateful tribute to Mrs. Weir who continued to attend to the flower boxes and floral arrangements both indoors and out. Later the ladies of the Garden Club of Shelter Island held their meetings in the clubhouse and shouldered this responsibility.

Gradually, so far as existing records go, social activities multiplied. In 1906 a clambake at Paradise Point drew one hundred and forty-three picnickers and became a yearly event. Then there were whist evenings, which later gave way to bridge.

By 1910 the Club sponsored a full schedule of bridge, clambake, Ladies Reception, and Water Sports. But 1910 was the year that began badly when a January blizzard severely damaged all bulkheads and "knocked everything scalawag". On the heels of a very bad financial panic in 1909 it was also the year in which the Manhanset House burned down for good, depriving the resort of its most elegant hostelry and leading to the dissolution of the New York Yacht Club Station. This multiple disaster affected the S.I.Y.c. also. Membership which had been growing steadily began to shrink, as did the roster of yachts. Shelter Island began to lose a little of its cachet as a glamour spot.

Tennis Anyone?

Despite these untoward events, the social life centered on the clubhouse does not seem to have been too seriously affected. There was, to be sure, some doubt as to whether the demand for ginger ale was sufficiently profitable, but it was finally decided to continue stocking the beverage for another year. A much more important proposal involved the construction of a tennis court on the premises. The matter was first raised at a meeting of the trustees in July 1912, voted down by the membership in August as "not practicable", and a month later voted in when it was revealed that the sum of $452 was already available to the purpose. The trustees agreed in November that the idea was "feasible".

The Association's tennis courts were probably preempted by hotel guests. The sport was becoming increasingly popular and the men's and women's tournaments now became a regular feature of Club activities and it wasn't long before the possibility of playing on Sunday was raised. Permission was granted but limited to members and their guests only. By 1917, however, the condition of the court was reportedly" not so good" and worse yet in 1919, evidently a casualty of wartime neglect. Finally, in 1924, the court was abandoned as being too difficult to maintain owing to frequent winds, periodic flooding and, complained the players, too much glare from the water.

Meanwhile there was a growing demand for dancing. As early as 1913 it was suggested that the porch be extended for this purpose, but apparently nothing came of it. When fifty dollars was donated for the purchase of a victrola at the start of the next season, permission for dancing was granted by the trustees provided that neither the big table nor the rug be moved. An even more ambitious proposal for the enlargement of the clubhouse was seriously discussed in 1915 and a $5,000 price tag was set on the project, but by that time the war was becoming serious, at least in Europe. Only necessary repairs were authorized.

Spies Here Too

In September 1917 a festive dinner drew one hundred twenty-eight guests to the Manhanset Casino which was a sort of successor to the defunct Manhanset House. But only sixteen presumably able-bodied men showed up for the annual meeting at which it was reluctantly decided to dispense with one of the two clubhouse caretakers. Even the Ladies Reception was forfeit to the Great War. On the eve of u.s. entry into the conflict, one event is said to have occurred which is definitely worth recounting here, namely, the apprehension of two "spies" on the Prospect House piazza.

The Greenport shipyards, of course, were again busily building warships, including some for our Russian ally. An American army lieutenant on sick leave called the attention of his Heights friends to the likelihood that the Prospect House -rather than a Greenport hotel - would be an ideal vantage point for foreign agents intent on observing shipyard activity. Sure enough, two men who were sitting on the verandah one evening failed to rise when the national anthem was played at the conclusion of a band concert. With their backs to everyone else, they had not noticed the others getting to their feet. British intelligence in New York was alerted and soon arrived to take custody of the suspects. That, at any rate, is the story which was printed in the Shelter Island News twenty years after the event.

No sooner had this writer uncovered that story in a yellowed newspaper than he received from an unimpeachable witness a true-life account of the Island's own Mata Hari, in this case a German governess. She had particularly sought a position on the eastern end of Long Island, took her charge - later one of the charter members of the Junior Y.C. - on unusually long walks all over the Island, was seen climbing Divinity Hill late at night to signal with a light and, upon returning to New York at the end of summer, was finally arrested as a foreign agent.

After the United States entered the war the U. S. Navy asked Club members for donations of binoculars, sextants and quadrants. The trustees slashed the Club's budgetno ice, no magazines, no telephone - and turned the clubhouse over to the Red Cross ladies from two to five o'clock Monday through Friday. All special events were cancelled for the season, excepting only the annual chapel service.

The end of the war did not bring immediate relief to the Club. Recovery was slow. Membership in 1919 was "estimated" at sixty-five to seventy. Annual dues had been reduced to ten dollars, but there were delinquencies even then. The float was in bad shape and the tennis court was sadly in need of repair. Presumably the wartime work of the Red Cross ladies had come to an end but what, if any, social activities were resumed is not known. In a total reversal of the action taken in the previous year, it was now proposed to omit the annual Yacht Club Sunday service, which was already scheduled, and "similar dates in the future". The explanation of this abrupt volte face is unavailable. Could it be because the war had been won?

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