GPYC FEATURE
Drawbridge
continued
Notes on the Passing of the Drawbridge By Past Commodore James L. Ramsey
The towering, creaking and groaning mass of steel beams and cables that boaters and pedestrians have loved and hated for decades is headed for the scrapyard. It will soon be replaced by a single-span swing bridge that will link the East Wall docks with the rest of the Club’s Harbor.
didn’t exist, and the walkway going past today’s Grog Shop and leading to the Drawbridge marked the southernmost boundary of the Harbor. That same walkway passes over the remains of the old Shores Pier, built in 1915, that was used by GPYC boaters before the Clubhouse and Harbor existed.
The growth of the membership after WWII, combined with the rising popularity of pleasure boating, created unprecedented demand for more boat wells. A dramatically larger Harbor was clearly needed, but a tight budget in the 1950s delayed The Drawbridge was built in 1959 under Com. Harbor expansion until the early 1960s, when an Robert Weber, father of Past Com. Mark Weber. It expansion plan was presented to, and approved by was created to access a major new addition to the the membership. The cost of the new Harbor was Harbor that had been on the minds of Club leaders lower than originally estimated, and loan money since the 1950s. Negotiations with the state of Michigan to utilize the bottomland south of the Club was more readily available. Loans were obtained; the necessary eight acres of bottomland were acquired had begun earlier that decade. Prior to this, GPYC members could only reach the east end of the Harbor from the state and the Shores through purchase and through the Shores Park, using a small swing bridge lease agreements; and the go-ahead was given. that connected their property and ours. William “Bill” Plante, who became our Commodore in 1977, was in charge of the Harbor Committee With Harbor expansion clearly on the horizon, then. It was his committee that oversaw construction Com. Weber oversaw the purchase of several Lake of the expanded Harbor. Once the new South Wall Shore homes west of the Club with footage on Lake of the Harbor was in place, dredging commenced, St. Clair. Those homes had riparian rights allowing and the excavated spoils were used to form the new the owners to build on the lake bottom. Weber immediately sold off the homes, but kept the riparian southwest corner of the Club property, where the tennis courts, Family Recreation Center and parking rights for the Club in anticipation of a larger GPYC lot are today. The expansion not only increased the Harbor. The Drawbridge was the precursor of a project that would nearly double the size of the Club’s size of the Harbor, it nearly doubled the footprint of the Club. Harbor. The Harbor footprint in the 1950s was virtually unchanged from when the Club was first built in 1929. What we now think of as the south harbor
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It all began with the Drawbridge, a structure that we have both loved and cursed, and has defined our Harbor for more than 60 years.
Crews from EC Korneffel work to remove the Drawbridge on a chilly day in December
