Crescent Boat Club is a Philadelphia rowing club at #5 Boathouse Row, 5 Kelly Drive, Philadelphia, PA 19130. Founded in 1867 and a member of the Schuylkill Navy of Philadelphia, we occupy a Victorian boathouse in the middle of the Row. Boathouse Row is a National Historic Landmark: fifteen nineteenth-century clubhouses along Kelly Drive on the east bank of the Schuylkill River, outlined in lights after dark. The clubhouses are private, but the riverfront path in front of them is public, free, and open year-round.

Here to row? See Rowing Links. Planning a wedding, party, or meeting? See Event Space Rentals. Scouting a shoot? See Film and Photography Location Inquiry.

On this page: Getting Here · The Fifteen Boathouses · Water Works and Art Museum · Upriver Along Kelly Drive · West Fairmount Park · Downriver to Bartram’s Garden · Boat Tours and Trails · Weddings and Events · Planning a Trip

Getting to Boathouse Row

The Row runs about half a mile north from Lloyd Hall along Kelly Drive, and the whole stretch is walkable in fifteen minutes. The best view of the boathouses is from the west bank, on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, or from the Girard Avenue Bridge.

  • SEPTA – Regional rail, subway, trolley, and bus. Several bus routes stop at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a ten-minute walk from the Row.
  • Philly PHLASH – The seasonal downtown loop bus. Stop 9, at Pennsylvania and Fairmount Avenues, was added in 2026 to serve Boathouse Row and Lemon Hill; the loop runs daily from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
  • Indego Bike Share – Stations near the Art Museum and along the river trail.
  • Wheel Fun Rentals – Bike, tandem, and surrey rentals beside Lloyd Hall, at the start of the Kelly Drive trail.
  • Lloyd Hall – The only public building on the Row: restrooms, drinking water, an information desk, and the Waterworks Drive lot. Parking there is limited and time-restricted.
  • Schuylkill River Schedule – Regatta dates and Kelly Drive road closures. Worth checking before you drive: the road closes for major races, most weekends from March through November.
  • Getting Around Philadelphia – Visit Philadelphia’s guide to transit, parking, walking, and bike routes.

Seeing Boathouse Row: the Fifteen Boathouses

Walking north from Lloyd Hall, this is what you are looking at. The clubs are private and not open for drop-in tours, but several rent their halls for events, and all of them race on the river in front of you. Numbers 3 and 8 adjoin their neighbors at 2 and 7 rather than housing separate clubs.

  • #1 Lloyd Hall – The only public boathouse: gym, restrooms, café, and bike rentals. Home to Philadelphia City Rowing, a free program for city public school students.
  • #2 Fairmount Rowing Association – Founded 1877 by workingmen from the Fairmount neighborhood, after decades of being refused entry to the Schuylkill Navy.
  • #4 Pennsylvania Barge Club – Founded 1861. Its house also hosts the Pennsylvania Center for Adapted Sports, which runs adaptive rowing on the Schuylkill.
  • #5 Crescent Boat Club – Our house. Crescent formed in 1867 from the merger of the Pickwick and Iona barge clubs and completed the boathouse in 1868, sharing one roof with Pennsylvania Barge. The 1871 expansion added the third bay and the street-side tower to a design by Davis Supplee, a rower and club member; Charles Balderston revised the exterior in 1891.
  • #6 Bachelors Barge Club – Founded 1853, the oldest continuously operating rowing club in the United States. Its original constitution required every member to be a bachelor.
  • #7 University Barge Club – Founded 1851, a founding member of the Schuylkill Navy and organizer of the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta.
  • #9 Malta Boat Club – Founded 1860. The Thanksgiving morning Turkey Trot has started from its steps since 1899.
  • #10 Vesper Boat Club – Founded 1865 as the Washington Barge Club, and the club John B. Kelly Sr. rowed for before the schism that sent him to Penn AC.
  • #11 College Boat Club – The Burk-Bergman Boathouse, owned by the University of Pennsylvania; the only all-collegiate house on the Row.
  • #12 Penn AC Rowing Association – Founded 1871 as the West Philadelphia Boat Club, and a long-standing pipeline to the US national team.
  • #13 Undine Barge Club – Founded 1856. Frank Furness designed its 1883 boathouse, the building that set off the architectural competition shaping the rest of the Row.
  • #14 Philadelphia Girls’ Rowing Club – The oldest women’s rowing club in existence, in the oldest building on the Row, built in 1860.
  • #15 The Sedgeley Club – A women’s social club built in 1902 around the Turtle Rock Lighthouse at the north end of the Row.

Above the Row, BLJ Community Rowing operates a “boathouse without walls” at 2200 Kelly Drive — the only Black-owned and operated rowing club in the country. For club contacts, membership, and the racing calendar, see Rowing Links.

  • Boathouse Row visitor guide – Visit Philadelphia’s overview of the Row and where to stand to photograph it.
  • Boathouse Row Lights – The story of the lights that outline each boathouse after dark, and the colors they take on for city events.
  • Cosmic Cafe at Lloyd Hall – Riverfront café at the foot of the Row, serving all-day breakfast, sandwiches, and coffee.

The Water Works, the Art Museum, and Eakins Oval

Five minutes downriver from the Row, at the head of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

  • Fairmount Water Works – The 1815 waterworks below the Art Museum, now a free interpretive center. Its 1821 dam is what turned this stretch of the Schuylkill into rowable flat water.
  • Fairmount Fish Ladder – The passage that lets shad, herring, and striped bass climb past the dam each spring, seen from the overlook on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
  • The Water Works boardwalk – How the designers lit the new riverfront walkway without washing out the view of the Row.
  • Philadelphia Museum of Art – Directly above the Water Works, and home to Thomas Eakins’s paintings of Schuylkill scullers.
  • Azalea Garden – The fan-shaped 1952 garden between the museum and the Row, planted with more than 150 species of azaleas and rhododendrons.
  • The Oval at Eakins Oval – The eight-acre summer pop-up park in front of the museum, with mini golf, a beer garden, movie nights, and free programming.

Upriver Along Kelly Drive

Everything below sits on or just off the river path heading north from the Row, listed by distance.

  • Lemon Hill Mansion – The 1800 Federal mansion on the bluff directly behind the Row, and the first property the city bought to create Fairmount Park. Its lawn hosted the FIFA Fan Festival through the summer of 2026. A five-minute walk up the hill.
  • Sculpture along Kelly Drive – A guide to the statues and memorials lining the river path, including the Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial and a tablet honoring John J. Carlin, a Schuylkill Navy commodore. Spread over the first two miles.
  • John Coltrane House – 1511 North 33rd Street, the National Historic Landmark where Coltrane lived from 1952 to 1958. Under restoration toward a museum and cultural center; not yet open to visitors. Under a mile inland.
  • Sedgley Woods Disc Golf Course – A free 27-hole course in East Fairmount Park, in continuous play since 1975. About a mile up.
  • Smith Memorial Playground – Six and a half acres of free play, including the 1905 wooden slide. About a mile up.
  • The Discovery Center – A free birding and education center on the restored Strawberry Mansion Reservoir, run by Audubon Mid-Atlantic and Philadelphia Outward Bound. Just over a mile up, at 3401 Reservoir Drive.
  • The Boxers’ Trail – The wooded East Fairmount Park loop where Joe Frazier trained. Trailhead about a mile and a half up.
  • Historic houses of Fairmount Park – Tours, hours, and tickets for the six surviving park mansions: Lemon Hill, Laurel Hill Mansion, Mount Pleasant, Woodford, Strawberry Mansion, and Cedar Grove. Several also rent for weddings.
  • Woodford Mansion – A 1756 Georgian house holding the Naomi Wood collection of colonial household antiques. A mile and a half up.
  • Historic Strawberry Mansion – The largest of the park houses, across the road from Woodford.
  • Ormiston Mansion – A 1798 Georgian house on Reservoir Drive, maintained by the Royal Heritage Society of the Delaware Valley.
  • Laurel Hill Cemetery and Arboretum – An 1836 National Historic Landmark cemetery on the bluff above the river, with tours, trails, and skyline views. Two miles up. Not to be confused with Laurel Hill Mansion, one of the park houses.
  • Philadelphia Canoe Club – 4900 Ridge Avenue, at the mouth of the Wissahickon. About three and a half miles up.
  • Wissahickon Valley Park – Trail maps and conservation news from Friends of the Wissahickon for the gorge and Forbidden Drive, at the top of the river corridor.

Across the River in West Fairmount Park

  • Philadelphia Zoo – America’s first zoo, on the west bank at 3400 West Girard Avenue. Half a mile across the river, with public parking that is often the easiest option on busy Kelly Drive days.
  • Please Touch Museum – The children’s museum inside Memorial Hall, the surviving building of the 1876 Centennial Exposition. About a mile and a half.
  • Shofuso Japanese Cultural Center – A traditional Japanese house, tea garden, and koi pond, with cherry blossoms each spring. Beside the Horticulture Center.
  • Belmont Mansion and Underground Railroad Museum – On Belmont Plateau, with the widest skyline view in the city. Under two miles.
  • A guide to Fairmount Park – Visit Philadelphia’s overview of the park on both banks, its attractions, and its history.

Downriver: the Boardwalk and Bartram’s Garden

South of the Fairmount Dam the Schuylkill turns tidal, and the trail runs through the middle of the city before opening into the old industrial river. Since May 2025 it has been continuous off-road from the dam down to Grays Ferry.

  • Schuylkill Banks Boardwalk – The quarter-mile walkway built out over the water between Locust and South Streets, with the best low-angle skyline view in Philadelphia. About a mile and a half downriver.
  • Christian to Crescent connector – Opened May 2025: 2,800 feet of new trail including a 650-foot cable-stayed pedestrian bridge, the first of its kind in Pennsylvania. It closed the last gap in the city trail.
  • Grays Ferry Crescent – A three-quarter-mile trail segment around a bend of the tidal river, with twelve acres of meadow, three fishing spots, and a skate park under the Grays Ferry Avenue bridge. Entrances at Wharton Street and at 34th Street beside Pennovation Works.
  • Schuylkill Crossing swing bridge – The bridge that will link the Grays Ferry Crescent to Bartram’s Mile on the west bank; the project page carries its current status.
  • Bartram’s Garden – America’s oldest surviving botanic garden, three miles downriver in Southwest Philadelphia. Free to enter, with a public dock, free kayaking and boating in season, and a working farm.
  • Bartram’s Mile – The riverfront trail along the garden’s edge, part of the same Schuylkill River Trail that runs past Boathouse Row.
  • Schuylkill Banks trail map – Segment-by-segment map of the whole city trail, north and south.

Boat Tours, Trails, and Bike Routes

  • Schuylkill riverboat tours – Secrets of the Schuylkill and Boat to Bartram’s Garden cruises from the Walnut Street Dock. Check the page for the current season’s operator and schedule.
  • Tours, rentals, and aerial adventures – The city’s list of guided kayak tours, riverboat cruises, bike and surrey rentals, and the Treetop Quest course.
  • Schuylkill River Trail – Maps and trailheads for the full trail, from Boathouse Row up the valley toward Pottsville.
  • The Circuit Trails – The Greater Philadelphia trail network, more than 800 miles of connected paths.
  • East Coast Greenway – Maine to Florida, routed straight along Kelly Drive past the boathouses.
  • Schuylkill Banks – Trails, docks, kayak tours, and river programming from the Schuylkill River Development Corporation.

Weddings and Events on Boathouse Row

A Boathouse Row wedding is one of the few ways to get inside these buildings. Several clubs rent their halls, and the appeal is the same in each: a nineteenth-century room, a deck over the water, the Schuylkill and the skyline behind your photographs, and the lights coming on as the evening goes.

Crescent’s reception room is on the second floor, air conditioned, and holds up to 140 people, with an outdoor deck over the river. See Event Space Rentals for availability, pricing, and a walk-through, or email Rentals@CrescentBoatClub.org.

Planning a Trip to Philadelphia

  • Visit Philadelphia – The regional tourism site: events, restaurants, neighborhoods, and itineraries.
  • DiscoverPHL – The Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau, with hotel and event planning information.
  • Philadelphia Parks & Recreation – The city department that manages Fairmount Park, including event permits and Kelly Drive closures.

Visit, Row, or Celebrate with Crescent

Crescent Boat Club has rowed from #5 Boathouse Row since 1867 and has been a member club of the Schuylkill Navy of Philadelphia, the oldest amateur athletic governing body in the United States, since 1868. Club history · Rowing links · Event rentals · Links reviewed August 2026.