Rowing at MIT - Pre-Cambridge Campus

Athletics at M.I.T. has from its beginning been a permitted and encouraged activity for its students, but never sponsored as one of it goals as an educational institution. In it founding days in temporary quarters in downtown Boston there was no time or opportunity for even the most rudimentary of athletic programs, except for the accompanying class and travel routines. But once the temporary quarters were vacated and the long planned new campus established on Boylston Street in the expansion of the growing City of Boston into the reclaimed tidal marshes of Back Bay, "Boston Tech" as M.I.T. was then called soon gained its reputation for difficult studies and long classes. To counteract this condition the administration stimulated by the advocacy of President.... expressed the belief that exercise and a healthy atmosphere was a vital necessity for good learning.

When construction of the Boylston Street campus of it two buildings was started, Back Bay was a vast wasteland of barren earth recently created from the tidal waters of the Charles River with city refuse and the spoil from the three hills that had made up the "Tri-Mount" of colonial Boston, leaving only Beacon Hill for the elite of Boston with their long established mansions. While there was plenty of vacant land in the vicinity, there was no enclosed space for athletics or athletes until a drill hall was but for the Light Artillery unit assigned to M.I.T. as a Land Grant College under the Morrill Act that provided Federal support to institutions of higher learning. In this drill hall, on a time sharing basis, sports were limited to the swinging of Indian Clubs and routines for Dumbbells until groups were organized for Baseball, Track and Football.

With the barrenness of reclaimed Back Bay broken only by newly planted trees on unpaved Boylston and Beacon Street and Commonwealth Avenue, with a few multi-storied town houses along the Beacon Street river front, the full extent of the Charles River was in view of M.I.T.. This perhaps helped expand sports to include rowing, instigated by students who had come to Tech from rowing colleges, and in 1902 eight freshmen of the class of 1905 borrowed a shell from the Union Boat Club to venture on the Charles for a practice row. Others did likewise and there was discussion of class competition, but the combination of their destitution of any equipment of their own and no supervision, coupled with the problems of tidal planning, channels and mud-flats aborted the laudable attempt. Though that could be called a "first" it was not until 1910 that something really tangible occurred.

After Richard Cockburn Maclaurin became president in 1909, his vision to the west from Boylston Street was important for both M.I.T and rowing. Needing space for expansions and faced with possible absorption by other institutions, particularly Harvard, he saw in vacant land on the opposite side of the Charles an ideal site for a new M.I.T.. And when he looked at the river he is reported to have commented, "All this water and no crew". Pres. Maclaurin had been introduced to rowing while studying at Cambridge in England and had a deep feeling for athletics and rowing in particular. At the Field Day festivities that Fall he expressed his wish that rowing could be included where the facilities were so close at hand. The concurrence of others prompted him to bring up the matter at an Alumni event in Chicago that resulted in the collection $560 for equipment and operations and crew at M.I.T. was, "off and rowing".

With the purchase of a much used eight for $50 and the borrowed facilities of the Union Boat Club, rowing started in earnest in the spring of 1910. The dam creating the basin had been complete and the gates closed in the fall of 1908, the flat-water elevation had been established in the spring of 1909 so that a new Union Boat boathouse could be built on the near shoreline. William O'Leary, a local oarsman, was engaged as coach and a rigorous program of exercise and training were inaugurated. Coach O'Leary was a Boston postal worker with rowing experience and firm thoughts regarding his undertaking. He stressed conditioning and the necessity that a crew work together for best performance. Also that because a man had rowed somewhere else he was not sure of a seat in a Tech shell. All to the good, but he also stated that a shell was safe and stable and that there was no need of knowing how to swim.

Without wasting any time this crew had five races that spring with victories in four of them, including one against a Harvard crew. With the Charles River changed from a messy estuary into a flat-water basin by the construction of the dam below the Longfellow or West Boston Bridge to separate the river from Boston Harbor, a lock in the dam provided the passage of commercial ship and barge traffic that became a lesser hazard with the elimination of the tidal problems. This project, initiated and fought for by James Storrow, member if an old Boston family and graduate of Harvard with a vision of benefits to both his home city and his Alma Mater. It is also of interest to us that when Henry S. Pritchett was president of M.I.T. he headed the commission that brought about the alterations of the Charles. All oarsmen who have traveled the Charles should be able to visualize the benefits to rowing, not only in the basin but all the way to Waltham that was within the tidal range.

This entry of Tech into the college rowing fraternity needed the interest and efforts of many people and sources. A. Griswold Herreshoff, a student with connections in the yacht designing and building family whom both rowed and managed at the same time, contacted the owner of the America Class contender "Avenger" and ex-Harvard oarsman who persuaded Harvard to loan an eight to the Tech oarsmen and eased their acquisition of use of the Union Boat Club facilities.

With the impressive 1910 accomplishments Tech moved into the big time with an invitation to race the midshipmen at Annapolis in the spring of 1911, again in borrowed equipment and without adequate practice. But there was satisfaction and stimulation for the future by being even with Navy until the last quarter mile. Without rowing tradition or roster of available oarsmen there had to be dependence in transfers from rowing colleges who were eager to continue in the sport. Also there was the influence and support of Prof. Robert H. Richards of the Department of Mining and Metallurgy, a member of the first class to graduate from M.I.T. in 1868, who had once stroked a Union Boat Club crew and who later in 1922 donated the "Richards' Cup" for the winning class crew, in memory of his brother George H. Richards who had been an oarsman while a student at.......in England.

By 1912, Tech was boating two crews, which gave them some training competition when there were two shells available at the same time in condition for use. New oarsmen were appearing but with few carryovers due to graduations and the dependence on transfers, who in themselves contributed to the problem by perhaps being at Tech only for a year or two as graduate students, there were never enough for a good selection. Though the basin was flat-water and the Union boathouse within easy walking distance there would have been many problems.

Then came harder times for crew as well as other activities due to the pending move to still another campus for which buildings were under construction across the river in Cambridge and scheduled to be occupied in 1916. Also there were uncertainties brought about by the brewing war in Europe. Rowing was reduced to class crews in fours and the earlier enthusiasm was held together mainly by the glow of coming better times not only across the river but to a campus directly on the river, or more accurately called a basin or lake.

In 1916, the first full year of operations in Cambridge, a call was sent out for a hundred oarsmen. The M.I.T. Boat Club was organized as a sponsor for the rejuvenated rowing activity. Arrangements were made by Dr. Allan Rowe 'Ol for the use of the BAA (Boston Athletic Association) boathouse a mile upstream where there were machines for rowing instructions of novices and exercise for all, as well as a small assortment of shells of various types and conditions. Arthur Stevens, a dedicated former Harvard oarsmen, came as a volunteer coach and in May 1916 class crews held a regatta in 4's from what they could call a home boathouse on home waters even though Tech had not yet acquired the property. This led to the formation spontaneously of a Tech 8 that met in competition with Tufts, Harvard, Noble & Greenbough and Brown & Nichols. In fall of 1916 there were Freshman and Sophomore Field Day crews and rowing at Tech was rapidly becoming firmly established. For winter practice rowing machines were moved to the Walker Memorial gymnasium (there was no winter heat or warm water facilities a the BAA boathouse) and oarsmen willingly trained in anticipation of expanded activity and success in the spring.

With rowing now firmly established in the minds of the students and supporter, a boat house from which to row on water right at their front door, the beginning stage of rowing and crew at M.I.T. was over and the future had arrived. All that was missing was recognition as an official sport of M.I.T.

Unofficially functioning as the Technology Boat Club in 1917, wit one eight oared shell, one eight oared barge and two fours, supplemented by borrowed Harvard equipment on occasions, there was practice rowing and potential for both spontaneous brushes and races. The use of the BAA boathouse was a rental shared with eight preparatory schools who were coached by Patrick (Pat) Manning who soon became the official coach and rigger for Tech rowing as well.

The Boston Athletic Association was in financial and rowing difficulties due to separation from their main club house in Boston and lack of rowing interest, and while trying to sell their boathouse property were drastically raising their boathouse rental fees. Dr. Rowe and others wanted to follow President Maclauren's goal of a boathouse in front of Walker Memorial but water conditions there were worse than now due to the hard walls on both sides of the Charles and the Union Boathouse Club had to transfer much of their rowing activity to an auxiliary boat house across the river from the Weld Boathouse at Harvard. Financial support for rowing at Tech was inadequate and there was attention being given to President Maclauren's advocacy of multiple clubs open to student and general membership as at Oxford and Cambridge in England. Bill Haines, then head coach at Harvard, recommended that if Tech should build a boat house it should be as far upstream as possible. The BAA boat house was in a compromise situation in many ways.

Under the threat if closing by BAA if the rental fee increase was denied, an offer of sale for $20,00 for the purchase of the boathouse, built in 1913 at a cost of $30,000 was agreed to and Dr. Rowe undertook the raising of the necessary funding. A new lease if the land was arranged with Cambridge Park Commission (a member of which was fortunately and M.I.T. professor). It was then inevitable the Crew be accepted by the Advisory Council for Athletics and the Athletics Association as an official sport of M.I.T.