260 beautiful color photographs capture the beauty and charm of historic
and recently designed boathouses at private residences, rowing clubs,
preparatory schools, and colleges. Together they provide an historical
appreciation and architectural inspiration of this classic building
form. In the United States, boathouses belonged with straw hats,
parasols, and lovely picnic lunches as part of the Gilded Age, when some
people had the wherewithal to build housing for their boats and time to
enjoy the rivers and lakes. Many of the boathouses shown are unique,
using local resources and materials in their construction. For
vacationers in rural New England or upstate New York, boathouses were a
part of their summer vacation. Today, many old ones are disappearing
through weather, neglect, fire, and vandalism. However, increasingly,
schools are building and restoring boathouses on their campuses. Jeff
Peterson, a rower and an award-winning architect, wrote the foreword.
His Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm has designed boathouses and rowing
tanks from Florida to Washington state, and in several foreign
countries.