Rowing in Pelham Bay

During the past fortnight, I have been learning to row on the lagoon in Pelham Bay Park, a body of water with which I had no previous aquaintance. “Learning to row?” you ask. “But weren’t you in the University of St Andrews Boat Club during your bejant year?” Yes, dear reader, I was a full paid-up member of said body, but I was too busy avoiding lectures, failing courses, and other such frivolities of one’s first year at university to actually row, and only went to circuit training when Ezra Pierce irritated me enough that I felt obliged to give in and head on over. Nonetheless, at the suggestion of a good friend I decided to enroll in this program and have not regretted it at all. Rowing, in short, is addictive, and it is a grand shame that I shall have to wait until at least September in Scotland to get back on the water. (Above, the Travers Island clubhouse of the A.C. can be seen from the far end of the lagoon).

The lagoon (a word of which I am not fond) is a long marine strip flanked by the verdant shores of Pelham Bay Park, the largest park within the City of New York. The two-thousand-meter-long rowing course there seems surprisingly underused being as it sits on the eastern edge of the Bronx, but I suppose it is all the better for it, as there was no one to crash into when the rudder of our vessel broke except a sculling double from Fordham Prep.

An aerial view of the lagoon.

A satellite view, courtesy of Google.

At the southerly tip of the rowing course is a judging tower which, viewed from the water, I found somewhat ugly and dull yet intriguing. I made a closer investigation of it this afternoon and think it has rather grown on me.

White with black railings, it has the air of the Russian constructivists about it, a style of architecture I’ve never been particularly keen on but this small-scale execution seems to have worked. It is both functional and attractive. The tower was fenced off but, lacking any direct prohibition, I took advantage of a gap in the fence to enter and climb the tower.

The first floor of the judging tower, looking towards one end of the rowing course.

At the top of the tower there is the leaf emblem of the New York City Parks Department. In my youthful ignorance, I had always assumed it to be a maple leaf, though in later years I was enlightened as to it actually being a sycamore leaf.

The view north from the top of the tower.

The view south.

For more photos of Pelham Bay Park, please continue.

The red roof of the A.C. can be seen again in this photo.

You’d never think you were in the Bronx.