Wooden CanoeIssue 177, June 2013 Volume 36 No. 3

Top. The Dayton Canoe Club on the Miami River, 2012.Above. A program from the 50th DCC regatta. Right. Canoe sailing has a long tradition at the club.

continued page 13

The Dayton Canoe Club:THE FIRST HUNdred Years

by Rich BealsThe Setting

The Dayton Canoe Club was founded in 1913, only fifty years after the end of the Civil War. Many of the founders

had been born during or just after that terrible war. They knew veterans who had served and the devastation the war had caused. Radio was in its infancy. People had more leisure time, and sports and fitness were the rage. Some athletic endeavors like football, however, were sometimes lethal. Canoeing, on the other hand, was grace-

ful and romantic and could be quite competitive. Life on the Great Miami River reflected its popularity. In a short stretch of the river, four separate facilities housed one of the largest concentrations of canoes in the United States: the YMCA, Beeghly’s (a private livery), White City Amuse-ment Park, and the Stillwater Canoe Club. River traffic was heavy, and it wasn’t unusual on a weekend afternoon to see fifty or more canoes at anchor listening to a band concert.

The Vision

Shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, forward-looking members of the lovely Stillwater Canoe Club

Issue 177 June 2013 13

Below. The founding members wanted the DCC to be a social club as well. Families were welcome and dances were an important activity. This 1924 card reminded club members about proper behavior on the dance floor.Below, right. Charles Kettering founder of Delco was an early member of the DCC.

Oliver Rizert’s rendering of proposed additions to the DCC from 1915, two years after it opened. The Stillwater Club is seen at right. The drawing still hangs above the fireplace in the DCC.Below, left. The club as it appeared at its opening in 1913. Below, right. The club today seen from the river. The architect’s vision for the club was never fully realized, but the club’s vision has continued for one hundred years.

(established in 1886) hatched an idea for a new club that would better meet their needs. The Stillwater Club was too small for dances, had little storage, and was saddled with an unsustainable membership policy. So on the Stillwater Club’s

high porch that cantilevered over the water, the vision for a new club was put to ink. The planners agreed that unlike at the Stillwater, the new canoe club would accept new members constantly renewing and sustaining the club. There would be inside lockers for canoes and large rooms for meetings, snooker and pool, and dining and dancing. There would be a social component to the club as well to attract women and families. The crowning jewel of the new building would be a veranda that would also cantilever over the river. The found-

ers’ vision was true.Charles Schaffer, the club’s founder,

was backed by a formidable crew of fourteen prominent Daytonians.

Charles Kettering, who invented the elec-tric starter motor and founder of Delco,

was an early member. It was mighty handy that another founder, George Noland, had

a concrete company. The club they founded was to be a service/athletic club, reflecting the

Midwestern can-do attitude and ethics. That vision remains the club’s inspiration today.

Dayton Canoe Club continued from page 2

The club room, circa . Note the model canoe on the wall.

14 Wooden Canoe

The planners found a site inside the levee just next to the Stillwater Club and leased it from the City of Dayton. A plan was drawn and the club was chartered. In the first year, ninety-six shares of stock were issued at $50 each. With financing complete, construction began in 1913. The design was for an upper social area and forty-two canoe lockers on the lower level. That original space was about 80 feet by 30 feet inside with a well-appointed club room, a ballroom, restrooms, a kitchen, and a veranda that extended over the river.

The club prospered, and by 1915 Oliver Rizert, a young, twenty-five-year-old architect, was employed to design a new addition to the lodge. Ritzert’s design was influenced primar-ily by the Craftsman and Prairie style of the era. As built in 1915, the 9,000-square-foot building had a low hipped roof that rose only slightly above the levee with only a third of it visible from street level. To see it all, one had to be on the river. With the new construction, the levee was heavily dug out and a concrete foundation poured to the river’s edge to allow for one hundred additional lockers on the lower level. Members could hitch their horses or park their automobiles in front of

the club, but most lived in the Riverdale neighborhood and just walked in.

A wall of windows lit the upper area above the locker room. There were three main spaces on the upper level. Facing east over the river was an 8-foot by 65-foot veranda. The veranda’s walls were clapboard, as is the whole outside. The windows could be opened to catch the breezes or removed late in the season. The veranda was connected to the ballroom by sets of glass doors, which allowed natural light and superb ventilation. The ballroom was designed with three walls of windows—one facing the river, one facing the street and one facing south—under a 10-foot vaulted ceiling. The floor was hard maple. Except for the veranda walls, all other walls and ceilings of the upstairs were built with longleaf pine, matchstick tongue-and-groove wood. The result was an intimate space warmed from the tung oil finish.

The third space was the clubroom, which had a gas fireplace with a tenoned design element. Furniture was from Stickley Brothers; two billiard tables and two snooker tables shared the space. Today, most of the furniture, but only one of the original Brunswick tables remain. There was trophy case that would eventually hold the many national trophies for canoe sailing and medals from regattas. Over the years, a 1919 8-foot Old Town model and two 1915 Carleton models have hung from the ceiling.

There was also a men’s room and galley built between the ballroom and the clubroom, so the cook could serve burgers or fried bologna via small pass-throughs to the veranda or ballroom. The members advertised the club-house as being finely furnished with a piano, a Victrola, a cigar-dispensing machine, and cuspidors for those who

didn’t smoke. According to club lore, the senior potentates of the day sat in wicker chairs smoking their cigars while discouraging the pesky younger members from disturbing their peace.

Top. The jousting competition in 19??Above. The crowd watching the first DCC regatta in 1913.

Issue 177 June 2013 15

The walls of the stairway to the lower level were covered in bent bead board providing a striking nauti-cal touch. Under the main support timber, which was 7 inches thick by 20 inches high and 80 feet long and ran the length of the building ], was a wall of lockers for storing the members watercraft. Many vintage Old Towns and other wooden delights still inhabit the lockers. With the new addition, members had room to store 140 canoes indoors in the stacked lockers (see cover). (Today, because of those on the fourth tier are only half depth; the building of a bike path in front of the club required the change.)

The design of the locker room and the dock was well planned. The space between the exterior doors and lockers was slightly short of a full-length canoe. There were wooden rollers at edge of each locker and at the top step of each open-ing to the river. By tipping a canoe up, it could be rolled right out of the locker into the river. A single paddler could handle his canoe all the way in and out of the river without a carry.

When women became eligible for membership in 1985, the kitchen and veranda were remodeled to provide a ladies locker room. The men’s locker room opened onto the club’s private patio, which was bordered on the north by the Stillwater Canoe Club. The patio was a gathering place for all manner of activities; small fortunes were won and lost at the round table in there. From the locker room, members could walk out to the patio area and sit just a couple feet from the river under the trumpet vine growing on the pergola.

A tiny central room downstairs was the Caretaker Room (and it still bears that name today, long after there has been a live-in caretaker). The legendary Whitey John-son lived there and fed coal to the boiler in the winter. He was a mean cook but otherwise worked re-canvasing boats, made club repairs, and most importantly, helped to raise the younger wilder members.

During construction of the original section of the building, with the foundation and framing nearly com-plete, came the great flood of March 1913. It was the greatest natural disaster in Ohio history. After 11 inches of rain, the levees failed. More than 360 people perished and about 20,000 homes were destroyed by waters reaching 20 feet in the downtown. The Stillwater Canoe Club was washed from its foundation. The flood overran the DCC construction; mud remains came up about 10 inches high inside the walls upstairs. But DCC was durable, suffering little damage. The work was finished by June 11, 1913.

The final bill was about $15,000, and it was paid off free and clear in a couple of years.

Regattas

The Dayton Canoe Club hosted its first regatta July 12, 1913. Despite morning rains and threatening clouds, hundreds of

spectators arrived on foot and by car to watch the spectacle. In preparation for the first race of the new canoe club’s first regatta, competitors in the one-man single paddle race waited

The first DCC-sponsored canoe trips was in 1914 (above) and involved paddling and portage by interurban electric railroad, and a shore-side lunch..

16 Wooden Canoe

a quarter-mile north of the finish line. Edward Light fired the starter’s pistol, the band began to play, and the race was on. R. J. LaRose was first to cross the line, with a time of 3:09. Between events, tilting matches were held, which was a favorite with the crowd. Subsequent events included the two-man single paddle, the one-man free-for-all, the two-man double-paddle, and the lady-and-gent single-paddle. The “upset canoe” race began with competitors deliberately flipping their canoes; the winner was the first to recover and paddle to the finish line.

“Flags waved in the breeze from canoe and motorboat and clubhouse, while fair maidens cheered their favorites on to greater energy with black and orange pennants, bearing the D.C.C. of the club in charge,” wrote the Dayton Journal. “It was a gala day for the lovers of the water and water sports, and was a striking illustration of how soon the people of a Greater Dayton can forget (and overcome) … the ravages of the water which, less than four months ago, broke their way through and over the levees at exactly this same spot, sweep-ing homes before them and leaving devastation behind.”

Later that evening a reception and dance was held for the DCC members and their friends.

The club’s races in 1914 drew about 20,000 spectators. The White City Amusement Park was located on the island in the Miami across from the club, and the bridge to it had been destroyed by the flood and not rebuilt. The City of Dayton, seeing the popular turnout for the club’s regatta, took over the property and rebuilt the bridge connecting it to the shore, making it simpler for people to get from the mainland to the island where they would have a bird’s-eye view of the club’s events. The new city park was named “Island Park” at the suggestion of DCC. The city-owned canoe lockers that

were built there at the time are gone, but it remains a favorite park in Dayton.

Downriver trips

Along with the regattas, members organized canoe trips, which required considerable planning and resources. The

first was in the spring of 1914 when couples from the DCC paddled to Troy, Ohio. Fifteen canoes were launched from the clubhouse at 6:30 a.m., and paddled up the Miami River to the Troy Pike Bridge. There the canoes were loaded onto two freight cars on the Dayton & Troy interurban electric railroad. Club members boarded the luxuriously furnished private car “Muriel” and proceeded to Troy, Ohio,—some 20 miles to the north. The Dayton Journal described the scene:

“…quite a large crowd of citizens of that city, who cheered merrily and waved their kerchiefs as the canoes glided out from shore into the middle of the stream for the start down the river to Dayton. The bridge above was lined with enthusiastic people who sent up cheer after cheer as the canoeists lined up for a photograph and then dipped their paddles for a shoot down the current. It was an inspiring sight to the hundreds who gathered upon the banks all along the route, the red, green and blue of the canoes, the flashing of the paddles and the outing costumes of the young women and men of the party.

The water was clear and just deep enough to make the “shooting of the riffles and dams possible, yet exciting, and many a merry shout of exultation went up from the young women as a dash was made through a swirling eddy.

About one o’clock they stopped near Tadmor to pre-pare a lunch, “…with frying pans, kettles and coffee pots,

War canoes--can you tell me which canoes are being paddled in each of the photos and when they were taken.

Left. The war canoes are still used today. Each year members of the club paddle the Muskingum River and meet up with mem-bers of the Marietta Boat Club.

Issue 177 June 2013 17

and for a time the aroma of boiling coffee and and frying ham and eggs filled the nostrils of the voyagers…” The canoeists returned the club by 6 p.m., where plans began for the next trip.

War Canoes

The DCC obtained the first in its fleet of three Old Town wood-and-canvas war canoes in 1917.

The early history of the connection between the club and the war canoes is unclear, but it seems to indicate that local canoe dealers purchased the canoes, which were stored at the club. In 1924 and 1927 two more war canoes were added to the club’s fleet. Each held ten paddlers and a coxswain. All three canoes are still owned by the club.

In the heyday of the club’s “War Boat” com-petition the rivalries were fierce. Team racing takes practice. Long-gone teams around Dayton in-cluded the feared Koors 29 and MI-AH-MI Tribes.

Women were not admitted as members until 1985, and earlier in club history, female participation

A women’s war canoe team circa 1950.

Captions with dates for these sailing photos.18 Wooden Canoe

appears to have been predominately social—card game nights and dances were weekly events. The DCC, however, did sponsor a female War Boat team. The ladies “Watonga Tribe” couldn’t be beaten despite the fact that the paddlers were attired in woolen swimsuits.

Today, the war canoes are used in regattas and for an annual trip to the Muskingum River where a crew of six or more meets with our friends at the Marietta Boat Club, and together the members of the two clubs camp, tavern hop, and paddle through the historic 1840 hand-operated locks.

Canoe Sailing

Club members’ interest in sailing seems to have begun in the early 1930s, culminating in a group of sailors

traveling to Cincinnati to compete with the Queen City Yacht Club. During World War II many members entered

the service, and participation in many club activities, in-cluding sailing, diminished. Until the late 1950s there was little serious interest in sailing, but then members caught the sailing bug. Members competed in ACA Nationals, bringing home many trophies in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, canoe sail racing is still featured in the annual DCC Regatta’s, but sailors are more interested in a relaxing sail in light air than hiking out over the gunwales.

Centennial Regatta

The Dayton Canoe Club will hold its one hundredth regatta on June 15, 2013. Participation in all events will be free

to the public (equipment will not be provided). Races will start with the traditional sailing race, followed by a series of 1000-meter sprints. “Around the Island” time trials will take place throughout the day. An “upset canoe” race will precede the finale of war boat races. Teams representing paddling and community organizations will compete for the city war boat title. DCC hopes to reclaim the title from last year’s champion, the Greater Dayton Rowing Association.

The weekend of August 23-25, the club will host an informal assembly of wooden canoes at Lake Hope State Park, 70 miles southwest of Columbus, Ohio.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Curt Dalton for research and assistance in this article as well as Dayton history for use of the Mayfield

photographs. Curt’s book The Dayton Canoe Club: An Il-lustrated History 1912-1996 is available at the DCC.

Visit the DCC Web site www.daytoncanoeclub.org or on Facebook to learn more, or come and stop by for a visit. For more information email, commodore@dayton-canoeclub.org