The Riverside Yacht Club, Connecticut is a private, recreational

yacht club A yacht club is a sports club specifically related to yachting. Description Yacht clubs are mostly located by the sea, although there some that have been established at a lake or riverside locations. Yacht or sailing clubs have either a mari ...

located in the

Riverside Riverside may refer to: Places Australia * Riverside, Tasmania, a suburb of Launceston, Tasmania Canada * Riverside (electoral district), in the Yukon * Riverside, Calgary, a neighbourhood in Alberta * Riverside, Manitoba, a former rural m ...

neighborhood of

Greenwich, Connecticut Greenwich (, ) is a New England town, town in southwestern Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. At the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the town had a total population of 63,518. The largest town on Connecticut's Gold Coast (Conne ...

, with access to

Long Island Sound Long Island Sound is a marine sound and tidal estuary of the Atlantic Ocean. It lies predominantly between the U.S. state of Connecticut to the north and Long Island in New York to the south. From west to east, the sound stretches from the Eas ...

. The majority of its members are residents of the surrounding

Greenwich Greenwich ( , ,) is a town in south-east London, England, within the ceremonial county of Greater London. It is situated east-southeast of Charing Cross. Greenwich is notable for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich ...

neighborhoods of

Old Greenwich Old Greenwich is an affluent coastal village in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 6,611. The town of Greenwich is one political and taxing body, but consists of several distinct section ...

, and

Cos Cob Cos Cob is a neighborhood and census-designated place in the town of Greenwich, Connecticut. It is located on the Connecticut shoreline in southern Fairfield County. It had a population of 6,770 at the 2010 census. Cos Cob is located on the west ...

. It is the second oldest yacht club in

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...

and one of the oldest in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

History

The Riverside Yacht Club was founded in 1888 by George I. Tyson, a prominent and wealthy summer resident of Riverside, CT, and the owner of the yacht ''Nirvana''. Using his own money and waterfront property, Tyson built the original Victorian-style clubhouse in 1889 on the eastern shore of

Harbor near the entrance of the

Mianus River The Mianus River is a river in Westchester County, New York, and Fairfield County, Connecticut, in the United States. It begins in the town of North Castle, New York (east of Armonk) in a series of ponds at about altitude. Flowing northeast i ...

. Tyson became the first Commodore, a post he held for eight years. The original clubhouse contained a kitchen, ballroom, reading rooms, card rooms, bedrooms, locker rooms, and an expansive wrap-around porch. In 1893, a new addition was constructed, containing a billiard room,

shuffleboard Shuffleboard (more precisely deck shuffleboard, and also known as floor shuffleboard) is a game in which players use cues to push weighted discs, sending them gliding down a narrow court, with the purpose of having them come to rest within a ma ...

area,

bowling Bowling is a target sport and recreational activity in which a player rolls a ball toward pins (in pin bowling) or another target (in target bowling). The term ''bowling'' usually refers to pin bowling (most commonly ten-pin bowling), though ...

area, staff housing, and horse sheds. For a short period during the early 1890s, the club met in winter quarters in New York City, and by the late 1920s, the club membership had purchased the property from the Tyson estate. In 1929, construction of the current clubhouse was completed. On September 21, 1938, the

1938 New England hurricane The 1938 New England Hurricane (also referred to as the Great New England Hurricane and the Long Island Express Hurricane) was one of the deadliest and most destructive tropical cyclones to strike Long Island, New York, and New England. The stor ...

caused the main and junior clubhouses to flood, with no damage to sailing vessels. Some vessels, but not the clubhouse, were damaged as a result of the 1944 Great Atlantic hurricane. In 1978 and 2013, the clubhouse underwent major renovations.

Cultural references

The Riverside Yacht Club was the subject of ''Low Tide, Riverside Yacht Club'' (1894) by American

Impressionist Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

painter

Theodore Robinson Theodore Robinson (June 3, 1852April 2, 1896) was an American painter best known for his Impressionist landscapes. He was one of the first American artists to take up Impressionism in the late 1880s, visiting Giverny and developing a close frie ...

References

1888 establishments in Connecticut Buildings and structures in Greenwich, Connecticut Clubhouses in Connecticut Sailing in Connecticut Sports clubs and teams established in 1888 Sailing clubs in Connecticut {{Connecticut-sport-team-stub