Newell Boathouse
Newell Boathouse, named for a popular Harvard athlete killed just a few years after graduation, is the primary boathouse used by Harvard University's varsity men's rowing teams. It stands on land subject to an unusual peppercorn lease agreement between Harvard and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. History Called "the elder statesman among Charles River boathouses," Newell Boathouse is named for 1894 Harvard College graduate Marshall Newell, a varsity rower and All-American football player in all four of his undergraduate years, "beloved by all those who knew him" and nicknamed "Ma" for the guidance he gave younger athletes. After Newell was killed in 1897, $2,000 was raised for a boathouse in his memory. Built in 1900 on the south side of the Charles to a design by Peabody and Stearns (architect Robert Peabody having been rowing captain as a Harvard undergraduate), Newell Boathouse is constructed of concrete, with a slate façade and roof. It was Harvard's first permanent boathouse, replacing a series of wooden boathouses in the area. In addition to storage for racing shells, the building provides locker rooms, meeting and training rooms, and rowing tanks and other practice equipment. Architectural historian Bainbridge Bunting wrote that its "complex profile... closely resembling