The Milwaukee Rowing Club

The Milwaukee Rowing Club was established in 1894 and has been continuously incorporated since 1914 as a non-profit Wisconsin membership corporation. It is a registered 501(c)(3).

Its founding principle is to give the community the broadest possible access to rowing as both a recreational and a competitive sport, and it does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, religion, colour, gender, age, sexual orientation or residence.

Members range in age from 11 to over 70. The youth side runs a nationally competitive high school team and a middle school team; the adult side takes members from college age upward at all levels of experience. The club is also home to the Milwaukee School of Engineering crew team, which started in 2007.

Members race widely, from the San Diego Crew Classic in April to the Head of the Charles in Boston in October, and the club counts athletes who went on to the Olympic teams of 2000 in Sydney and 2004 in Athens.

The club's boathouse history is eventful. For nearly a century members rowed on the Milwaukee River above the North Avenue dam, then the city's main recreational water. The clubhouse at the east end of the dam burned in 1961; the club moved to the former Downer College boathouse in Hubbard Park, which burned in 1989; it then moved below the dam to its present site on North Commerce Street, less than a mile from where it started.

The club is run by a board of nine directors elected by the adult membership for three-year terms.