Georgetown University Announces Long Awaited Boathouse

Yesterday, Georgetown University and the city announced a land swap deal that will enable the school to build its own boathouse for the first time. The deal has been literally decades in the making, and still has a few hurdles to jump (or maybe bouys to pass?) before it will come to fruition. But it’s still a milestone day for the school and the greater DC rowing community.

The school published this page giving some details of the deal. But in short, the proposal is this: the school will relinquish a parcel of land it owns along the Capital Crescent Trail. In exchange, the school will be allowed to build a new boathouse on the parcel of land currently occupied by the Key Bridge Boathouse. The public will have access by way of the boat house to a dock to put in with canoes, kayaks, etc. Key Bridge Boathouse will move its public rental services just up the river to the grassy area just past the old Aqueduct abutment.

I’ve seen renderings of the proposed boathouse, and it is impressive. It is approximately the size of the historic Potomac Boat Club just up the shore. It has a granite facade, in line with the school’s buildings on campus.

By building its own facilities, GU will now be able to vacate Thompson’s Boat House, which will create much needed space for the high school and college programs that also use Thompson’s.

To get a sense for the challenges that GU had to get through to reach this point, as well as some of the challenges that may remain, check out this excellent article by the Hoya twenty years ago.

Given my bend towards history the bit I’ll add is to give some images of the school’s former make-shift boathouses. As described in GU’s announcement, the rowing team operated out of a former athletic club around 1900. That was the Columbia Athletic Club, which once stood at the foot of 32nd St. (which is now Wisconsin Ave.):

Here it is seen from up 32nd St:

According to an exhibit at GU on its rowing history:

The boathouse, located at the foot of 32nd Street on government property, was purchased from the Columbia Athletic Club in the spring of 1901. According to the College Journal, it consisted of three rooms – the boat room, ball room and locker room. The boat room had ample space for the six eight-oared, five four-oared, one centipede, four out-riggers, two four-oared, and two gunwale boats, together with a fifty-foot ten oared barge. Georgetown used this boathouse until July 1904 when it was razed.

The GU website also discusses how the team temporarily used a floating boathouse. I covered this oddity in 2020, but this is what it looked like:

The boathouse was actually originally used by an inventor who was trying to beat the Wright Bros. at being the first to flight. He lost out and as a result the barge ended up with the Georgetown rowing team instead of the Smithsonian. Sadly it sunk a year later.

Hopefully GU’s new boathouse will not be similarly cursed!