A Beacon of Tradition: The Building of the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club by James P. Gallagher In this article James P. Gallagher tells the story of the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club and the building of its magnificent 187-foot tower. INCE 1929, SAILORS on Lake St. Clair and the Milk River connected with the Fox Creek, which ran motorists on Lakeshore Drive have used the 187- southwest until it eventually brought the canoes back into foot tower of the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club as a the safety of the Detroit River at today’s Alter Road. navigation point. On clear days, it is visible from Not that the intersection of Vernier Road and Lake St. half way out into the lake and from Anchor Bay Clair was uncharted wilderness. Since the early 1800s, the Sdown to the mouth of the Detroit River. It was not always land there had been part of the 400-acre Vernier farm, Private thus. An Indian, or a French voyageur, paddling a canoe Claim 156, granted and confirmed by the United States north or south on the lake before the latter decades of the Commissioners to Jean Baptiste La Douceur, dit Vernier. It nineteenth century would have seen an essentially featureless was one of numerous ribbon farms settled by French families shoreline from Gaukler Point all the way to Grosse Pointe. after the United States won its independence from England. The shoreline was broken by no rivers or creeks or bays; it To provide each farmer with access to the river, the fastest had only the most modest hills rising from the flat waterline; and best highway to and from markets, the grants were nar- the only buildings were small farmhouses of French families row (from 162 feet to 600 feet wide), but deep (about three who owned the strip farms that ran from the lake to a line miles). Along the shore was a well-worn Indian trail used for approximately where Harper Avenue is today. A clump of centuries for movement between a famous salt spring near tall trees or (after 1899) the belfry of St. Paul’s Church would the mouth of the Clinton River and the various villages along have been the only clues to location between the Detroit the Detroit River. The Huron Indians’ name for this beauti- River and the St. Clair flats and Anchor Bay. ful lake of fresh water and abundant fish was Oksiketa, mean- These early travelers were well respectful of the power of ing sugar or salt, probably a reference to the salt springs at the Lake St. Clair to kick up winds and waves that would be cata- lake’s northwest corner. strophic to their heavily-laden canoes. When weather threat- Homestead farming was evidently not much more profit- ened, they often used a safer short-cut near Gaukler Point able or exciting than it is today, and in 1888, John Vernier through the Milk River, a shallow stream that made its way opened a roadhouse along the shore road on his property, into a swamp well back from the lake. Through this swamp, catering to travelers moving north or south along the lake, 124 Tonnancour Volume 2 THE BUILDING OF THE GROSSE POINTE YACHT CLUB or to venturesome Detroiters out for a day in the country. Yacht Club.” Since this date coincided almost exactly with He was noted for serving chicken, fish, and frog leg dinners. the passage of the 18th Amendment (prohibition of liquor In 1895, John Vernier sold the roadhouse to his cousin, sales), the reader can draw whatever conclusion he or she Edmund C. Vernier, who was born on the family property wishes about the demise of the ice boating club and the rise on February 16, 1867, and lived there until his death in of the yachting club! 1934. Edmund was one of the best-known pillars of the com- The early 1920s are very murky concerning the GPYC, but munity, serving as township clerk, treasurer and supervisor we do know that the first emphasis remained on ice boating, for many years. rather than sailing, because the earliest minutes of the Club Shortly after he bought the business, Ed Vernier built a are devoted to acknowledging the winners of the ice boating more pretentious place on the inland (west) side of Lake- races, and the prizes that they won. Rewards were not exactly shore, just south (toward Detroit) of Vernier Road. A history generous by today’s standards of athletic recompense. They of the time says that the inn was celebrated for the hospital- included such items as a pair of leather gloves, or buckskin ity of host Edmund Vernier, mittens, and a fancy sweater and was one of the most popu- coat. lar summer resorts of the Gay During the early 1920s, the Nineties. This roadhouse, pop- Club membership was grow- ular with both Detroiters and ing. The Grosse Pointes were with the growing number of slowly changing from a sum- Grosse Pointe’s summer resort mer resort for wealthy Detroit community, lasted until 1915, businessmen and professionals when the Verniers built still and their families to a commu- another place, farther west of nity of permanent year-round Lakeshore. homes of the leading families Fish, chicken and frog leg of Detroit’s booming auto- dinners were not to be the mobile industry, plus many only claim to popularity or bankers and mercantile lead- recreation for the Vernier/ ers. With that growth came Lakeshore site. In the 1800s, an interest in the construction none of the relatively warm of a permanent clubhouse, a wastewater poured into the venture that fortunately was lake from thousands of homes wholeheartedly supported and businesses that today by the municipal fathers of stretch back from the lake, Grosse Pointe Shores, who had and there was none of the jurisdiction over the site. This chemical outflow from the St. support has continued until Clair River and the industrial today. The building commit- An architectural rendering of the club from the complexes near Port Huron tee hoped for, and got, a lease firm of architect Guy Lowell. and Sarnia. As a result, the of the outer end of the munici- lake froze almost from shore pal pier, and Grosse Pointe to shore during normal winters. This huge sheet of ice was Shores Supervisor George Osius welcomed the club and its used for the popular sport of ice-boating, and about 1910, plans. Not coincidentally, he was later honored by the nam- Frank Verheyden organized the Grosse Pointe Ice Boat Club, ing of the lakeshore park after him. The boulder that bears which held regular races throughout the winter, on a course the park’s bronze plaque was taken from the shore where the as long as seven miles in one direction. A long pier was built GPYC now stands. out into the lake at the Vernier intersection, and the ice boat By 1926, the building committee was ready for serious crews would come in from their races, tie up to the pier, and planning, and one of its first happy duties was the accep- indulge in food and refreshments at the roadhouse. tance of an offer by member Clarence L. Ayres of a parcel of According to the Works Projects Administration-spon- land at the southwest comer of Lakeshore Road and Vernier, sored history of the Grosse Pointes, written in the 1930s, including the lake frontage and the associated riparian rights, by 1918, the original Grosse Pointe Ice Boat Club was taken for a total price of $28,000, to be paid as the Club found it over by about two dozen men, who formed another organi- possible to do so. Ayres realized that the Club did not have zation that “was to form the nucleus of the Grosse Pointe the means to buy the property, so when the land came on the Volume 2 Tonnancour 125 THE BUILDING OF THE GROSSE POINTE YACHT CLUB Ice-boating on Lake St. Clair. Ice-boating was the real origin of the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club, as pictured here in this early 1900s photograph on Lake St. Clair. market, he bought it with a clubhouse in mind, and trans- Liberty Construction Company for the fill and grading of ferred it to the Club at exactly his purchase price. At the same the Club site. Unfortunately, the Liberty firm was unable or time, after negotiations with the Village, the Club leased the unwilling to do the work as contracted for the agreed price adjoining land, consisting of 90 feet along the lake, and 325 and schedule, so the contract was forfeited in July of 1927, feet back from the shoreline. and awarded to another firm, Dunbar-Sullivan Company, for Edsel B. Ford was named Commodore of the rapidly grow- the price of 90¢ per cubic yard of fill. No record is available ing Club, and the Village granted the lease for 30 years (it was as to where this huge amount of earth came from, but it is renewed in 1956, and again in 1986). In accepting the lease, safe to guess that the bulk of it was provided by the enor- the Club agreed to build a seawall on three sides of the prop- mous amount of excavation carried out from major down- erty and to construct a clubhouse within the next two years, town Detroit buildings that were being constructed during at a cost “not less than $50,000,” a schedule and a budget these years, like the Union Guardian and the Penobscot that were to prove woefully inadequate.