History of the Clubhouse

                                                  

The OGYC Clubhouse

Joe Powers, Club Historian

            The clubhouse at the end of the Greenwich Point Town dock has been a focus for club activities almost since the club's inception. The present day clubhouse bears little resemblance to the original structure. The building was constructed as a boathouse for the deep water dock that ran towards Sand Island. Only a few stumps visible at low water remain to mark location of the deep water mooring. The boathouse was later modified to provide a machine shop and garage for automobiles.

When the town acquired the Tod estate in 1945, the present clubhouse building was referred to as a “three car garage.” It had double doors and in the interior there was a pit over which a car could be driven for servicing the undercarriage. A coal fired boiler was used to supply hot water heat to base board radiators. The boiler located where the weather station is today was in a three foot pit and was walled off from the rest of the building . The walls were wainscoted. The shed on the left side and the porch are later additions to the original structure. There were no docks. The original dock was destroyed in the 1938 hurricane. The present town dock was constructed in 1949 by a charter member of the Old Greenwich Boating Association. Boats were pulled on shore and tied to pipes driven in the sand. Larger boats were moored in the cove. A policy of Laissez Faire prevailed. Town regulation was nonexistent. People drove pipes and dropped moorings wherever they fancied. The use of cinder blocks or old automobile engines as anchors however was not recommended even though occasionally done.

            Walter Pendleton, the first Commodore, wrote to Town Hall on March 25, 1945 requesting permission to use the Chimes building as a meeting place for the Old Greenwich Boating Association. Evidently permission was granted for use of a building because an Association meeting was held on September 25, 1945 in the present day clubhouse (no mention of the chimes building was in the meeting report).

            An indication of the clubhouse condition in the early days is the observation that club row boats were stored and worked on in the club house during the Winter months. Another was the prohibition against the cleaning of fish or the storing of bait in the club house. Also, the club house was not to be used to change from wet bathing suits to dry clothes.