History and Importance
Boathouse Row hosts several major rowing regattas, including the Aberdeen Dad Vail Regatta, Stotesbury Cup Regatta, the Navy Day Regatta, the Independence Day Regatta, and the Head of the Schuylkill.
The boathouses are seen as centers of the rowing community around the United States. Rowers from the boathouses compete at every level, including local clubs, high schools, colleges, summer racing programs, and international-level athletics.
In 1979, lights designed by architectural lighting designer Ray Grenald were installed to outline each of the boathouses, giving them a nightly Christmas-like gingerbread house appearance and reflecting in the Schuylkill River. He proposed the lights after hearing talk of destroying the decaying Victorian boathouses. Lights on the buildings at night would serve to make them more noticed and appreciated. In 2005, after two refurbishings, the houses were outfitted with computerized LEDs that can light up in various colors, depending on the event or season.
Boathouse Row is a National Historic Landmark and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.
Local universities including Drexel, Penn, and La Salle row out of houses on Boathouse Row. Temple, Villanova, and Saint Joseph's row out of other boathouses along the Schuylkill that are not part of the Row.
Read more about this topic: Boathouse Row
Famous quotes containing the words history and/or importance:
“Don’t you realize that this is a new empire? Why, folks, there’s never been anything like this since creation. Creation, huh, that took six days, this was done in one. History made in an hour. Why it’s a miracle out of the Old Testament!”
—Howard Estabrook (1884–1978)
“Kitsch is the daily art of our time, as the vase or the hymn was for earlier generations. For the sensibility it has that arbitrariness and importance which works take on when they are no longer noticeable elements of the environment. In America kitsch is Nature. The Rocky Mountains have resembled fake art for a century.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)