Schuylkill Navy, Oldest Amateur Athletics Governing Body

Boathouse Row on Kelly Drive in Philadelphia is one of the most recognizable sporting landscapes in America, and the organization that governs rowing here is the oldest governing body of amateur athletics in the United States. The Schuylkill Navy was established in eighteen fifty-eight to coordinate the rowing clubs that had sprung up along the river in the years before the Civil War.

The Schuylkill has hosted some of the largest regattas in the world, drawing competitors from across the country and overseas. Three-time Olympic gold medalist John B. Kelly Senior, father of Grace Kelly and one of the greatest oarsmen in history, served as commodore from nineteen thirty-five to nineteen forty. The stretch of river behind Boathouse Row remains one of the premier rowing courses on the East Coast, used continuously for competitive racing for more than one hundred sixty years.