Edgewood Yacht Club

As the oldest extant yacht clubhouse in this boat-oriented state, the Edgewood Yacht Club is also the only remaining example of a type common around 1900, but decimated by fires, hurricanes, and updatings—all of which it fortuitously survived (although its nearby rivals did not). It epitomizes the classic type of its vintage. Lifted on pilings from the water, it is clad in shingles, with two levels of circumferential porches (random portions of which seem to have been enclosed from the beginning). A gable-on-hip roof crowns the club. From the hipped portion of the roof, gabled dormers project port and starboard, flagpoled minidecks fore and aft, all topped at the center by yet another parapeted mini-platform on which the culminating cupola sits, capped by a high, broad-brimmed dome which slicing at the four corners modulates to a semipolygon. Alternately wide and narrow intervals in the porch supports take their measure from events on the roof. The imagery is of wharf shacks, launch decks, and pilothouses and, for good measure (with the cupola in mind), lighthouses, all bluntly and crudely assembled, but with connotations of elegance. An ancient anchor at the entrance anticipates the clutter of sailing and yachting memorabilia spread over the match-boarded partitioning of the thoroughly functional interior.