This grand Victorian era house that once sat out over Lake Pontchartrain at West End in New Orleans was not some grand fishing camp or restaurant. It was the Southern Yacht Club’s first of four clubhouses. Perhaps not known to many, the Southern Yacht Club has been an important social fixture in New Orleans for almost 175 years. And according to club history, it is the second oldest yacht club in the nation, second only to the New York Yacht Club.
Although founded by New Orleanians, the Southern Yacht Club had its beginnings not in New Orleans but in the nearby resort town of Pass Christian on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Organizers held their first meeting on July 21, 1849, at the Pass Christian Hotel. “The Pass,” as it was then and is still called, had long been a popular retreat for New Orleanians, escaping summer heat, cholera and yellow fever epidemics that plagued the city during summer months. And during those warm, breezy days, sailing regattas ranked among their favorite pastimes. A year following the club’s creation, it launched what became its traditional race from the New Orleans lakefront to The Pass by way of the Rigolets, Lake Borgne and the Mississippi Sound. It is still a major club event, and, according to club history, it “is one of the very oldest regattas still regularly contested in the Western Hemisphere.”
In 1857 the Southern Yacht Club moved from Pass Christian to New Orleans, where club members met in private homes until 1879 when – for the sum of $3,355 – they built their first clubhouse seen here in about 1895 at West End, then a growing resort area with hotels, dancehalls and restaurants. In 1899, an engineer hired by the club inspected the wooden building and recommended it be demolished. In its place, a new and larger clubhouse went up on the nearby shoreline at the mouth of the New Basin Canal.
To serve a growing membership in the 1920s, the club greatly expanded the building, adding a grand ballroom that, again according to club history, “hosted many gala events which, notably, featured many of the emerging jazz pioneers of the day.” Darker days followed during World War II when the clubhouse served as a base for the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. After the war, the building was demolished and in 1949 up went the third clubhouse. Remodeled and expanded in the 1960s and 1980s, this third building had an expansive ballroom and dining room with a magnificent panoramic view of Lake Pontchartrain.
Then Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005. Although the building survived wind and floods, a fire caused by the storm completely destroyed the building along with historical artifacts dating back to the club’s earliest years. The present and now fourth clubhouse rose from the ruins in 2009. Over the years, the Southern Yacht Club has produced first-rate sailors who have won recognition throughout the world of sailing, including four Olympic medals.
