Crumpacker Boathouse
St. Paul's School, Concord, NH

For many years, the St. Paul’s School crews rowed out of two nearly identical boathouses located 60’ apart in the woods on the shore of Little Turkey Pond. Peterson Architects has designed a new structure that ties the two existing buildings together into a unified structure. At the same time, the layout still acknowledges the identity of the two St. Paul’s School clubs, with red doors on the Halcyon side of the building and blue on the Shattuck side.

The new structure contains a central passageway that widens as you approach the pond, which compresses the perspective and seems to pull the water closer. On the lower level, the facility provides coaches’ offices and changing areas, and improved and expanded toilet facilities. A new boat bay, dedicated for the storage of single and double sculls, pairs and four-man shells, was added to the north side of the facility, maintaining the symmetry of the two original boathouse structures.

Upstairs a grand new multipurpose room, with exposed timber trusses and a deck, looks out to the pond. This club room includes a fireplace and a trophy case. It also provides a great place to display over a century’s worth of plaques memorializing the winners of the Shattuck/Halcyon races.

The project also includes the installation of a new dry-pipe sprinkler system that will be supplied with water stored in a cistern under the new boat bay added to the northern end of the building. This system will help protect the School’s investment in the very expensive rowing shells, as well as its priceless memorabilia from 135 years of rowing.

The Crumpacker boathouse provides St. Paul’s with a state-of-the-art facility that manages to unify the program while still acknowledging its unique history.

Photograph by Edua Wilde