A recent ceiling collapse has raised doubts about the future of the Belle Isle Boat House — and its current condition is a reflection of nearly 30 years of uncertainty and forgotten proposals.

The 1902 building was designed by local architect Alpheus Chittenden and is his finest and best-known work.

The Venetian-style building features abundant verandas and balconies, a ballroom that in my humble opinion is one of the most beautiful such spaces in the city, and decorative spindles on the stairway made to look like seahorses. (The Detroit Free Press reported in 2018 that the spindles had been restored with the help of a local Eagle Scout troop.)

It was built as the clubhouse of the Detroit Boat Club, which dates back much farther, to 1839, making it one of the oldest boat clubs in the country — and one of Michigan's oldest social clubs, according to the Detroit Historical Society.

"Men became canoeists just to get the privileges of the organization," Leonidas Hubbard Jr. wrote in 1904, in an essay about the DBC in "Outing."

The club house on Belle Isle was at least the sixth DBC club house and its third on the Belle Isle site. The first two burned down. The current club house is made from concrete — it's one of the oldest concrete structures in the country — and was fire-proofed to avoid another disaster.

And it worked — at least for 120 years. Ironically, it may be water itself that ultimately dooms the building; the ceiling collapse that could be its downfall was the result of water damage.

But the Detroit Boat Club itself has long since left Belle Isle, which precipitated the clubhouse's decline. The club went bankrupt in 1992, but reorganized and stayed at the Belle Isle club until 1996, when the City of Detroit evicted it for two years of nonpayment of rent. The club was down to about 150 members from its peak of 1,000 in the late 1970s, and the city had tried to raise its rent to $110,000 annually from its long-standing rate of $1 a year. DBC moved to St. Clair Shores, where it still is today.

It wasn't the first time the city had tried to evict the Detroit Boat Club from the island park.

Twenty years earlier, the city was entangled in a protracted dispute with the DBC and the Detroit Yacht Club over racially integrating the clubs.

In January 1969, Mayor Jerome Cavanaugh's administration, following the leadership of Black organizers, said the clubs' discriminatory membership policies were in violation of the terms of their leases, and would have to take steps toward integration or else risk eviction by March.

(The Free Press noted that Assistant Corporation Counsel John McKinlay's sons were Detroit Boat Club members and had been part of the 1956 U.S. Olympic rowing team that won a silver medal at the games in Melbourne, Australia.)

The move began a seven-year stalemate between the city and the clubs, in which the clubs pursued a multi-pronged legal strategy that involved arguments that their policies were not discriminatory; that the city had no authority over the membership policies of private clubs; and that the clubs were built on pilings in the water and thus not technically located on city land. The DBC, saying the impasse had become "uncomfortable," also offered to sell the club house to the city so they could relocate. The city did not agree.

In May 1969, a federal court issued an injunction that prevented the city from taking action to evict the clubs. Though the Detroit Yacht Club admitted its first Black member in 1971, the issue was not formally settled until Mayor Coleman Young's administration struck a deal with the clubs in 1974. The settlement gave the clubs 90 days to bring on enough Black members to meet sponsorship requirements for prospective new members and to put Black members on their membership committees. The city agreed to recognize the two clubs as "private clubs with the rights of private clubs to choose their own members."

Mayor Young, satisfied with the settlement, was still not happy with the clubs' leases, foreshadowing changes to come.

"I have personal problems with both the Boat and Yacht Clubs occupying prime beautiful public property for the ridiculously low lease fee of one dollar a year in perpetuity," Young told the press at the time. "That bothers me."

The nonprofit Friends of Detroit Rowing, which sponsors the Detroit Boat Club Crew and was organized in 1972, remained at the Boat Club and took over its long-term lease.

For the last quarter-century it has stewarded the historic building through city ownership and now state ownership of Belle Isle, making repairs and improvements to the building and hosting events as a revenue stream. It runs learn-to-row youth programs and, until the roof collapsed, held indoor adult rowing classes. It also keeps alive a 180-odd-year New Year's Day tradition and hosts a champagne toast at the Boat House.

Many ideas have been floated over the years for the Boat House's future. In 2005, the late former state Senator John F. Kelly proposed a $20 million renovation of the Boat House into a "maritime academy" using revenue bonds to be issued by the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority. The proposal would have transferred ownership of the building to the Port Authority. The city said it would review the proposal, of which nothing ever came.

Nearly a decade later, Ontario-based Vintage Hotels proposed a $40 million renovation that would transform the club house into a boutique hotel, though it was unclear to what extent, if at all, the original building would be preserved. That proposal also went nowhere.

The building's history, beauty and incredible location should make it a treasured amenity, but its current condition is a common example of the way much of Detroit's history has been neglected and ill-maintained over the years. Despite the steep cost, one hopes the MDNR, in partnership with the Friends of Detroit Rowing, will find a way to revere course and bring the Boat House back. 

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