Brief History of LCYC
The club was founded in 1887 on the busy Burlington waterfront. At that time the waterfront was totally commercial - trainloads of logs were brought there to be milled into lumber that was then carried by barges to the Hudson River to be shipped worldwide. There was no available land on the waterfront, so in 1888 the first two-story clubhouse was built close to shore on pilings. When it burned in 1901, another was built in its place. The second one burned in 1911 and was replaced by a third. The club's membership reached a high of 334 in 1922. In 1936 that third clubhouse was declared unsafe and too expensive for the club to fix, so it was sold to the ferry company who refurbished it and turned it into a ferry station.
The present day Burlington Community Boat House, the centerpiece of the city's waterfront renovation project, is on a barge that floats on the spot where the early clubhouses once stood on pilings (the shoreline was further back in those times; access was by a wooden walkway on pilings). The Community Boat House was designed by LCYC member Marcel Beaudin emulating features of those early LCYC buildings. Marcel's was the winning design from among eight submitted. He was told that what convinced the officials was his inclusion of a photo of the 1888 clubhouse so they could see the historical link.
In 1936 the club purchased property on the upper east shore of Shelburne Bay; a renovated cottage became the fourth clubhouse. Effects of the Great Depression and pre-WWII conditions made sustaining the club difficult: in 1938 "Dawson Camp" in Mallets Bay (later Marble Island Club) was rented; in 1939 the steamboat Chateaugay, moored at the foot of College St in Burlington, was rented; in 1940, with war imminent, the members voted to go without a clubhouse; in 1941 the club gave up title to the Shelburne property, sold everything, and became inactive. During the ensuing period the corporation was kept alive by a few devoted members, most notably Milo C. Reynolds. In 1958 a group led by John Dinse began to rejuvenate the club; in 1961 they found the present site; in 1962 they purchased the property; in 1963 they built a modest clubhouse, installed some docks, and our historic Lake Champlain Yacht Club was underway once again. In 1998 the present clubhouse was built, incorporating design features of earlier clubhouses and more than doubling the multi-use space.
