TheSan Francisco Model Yacht Club (SFMYC) is dedicated to the hobby, arts and sport of building and racing working model boats of all descriptions. A California-incorporated 501(c)(7) non-profit, social/recreational corporation, it is anchored by the Spreckels Lake Model Yacht Facility in Golden Gate Park which includes the lake itself and the SFMYC's WPA-era Clubhouse. The club draws its membership which varies annually between 120 and 160 from throughout northern and central-coastal California as well as nationally and overseas.
The Spreckels Lake Model Yacht Facility, commonly referred to as "Spreckels Lake", is an artificial reservoir behind an earthen dam and adjoining clubhouse situated on the northern side of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Completed in mid-March 1904, the reservoir was built for the use of model boaters of all ages, interests, and skill levels, designed specifically for racing model sail and power boats and to propagate the skills and crafts necessary to build and sail competitive model boats of all types. The Spreckels Lake Model Yacht Facility is considered one of the finest examples and one of the most beautiful of the naturalistically styled, man-made model boating facilities in the world and is always open to anyone wishing to sail its waters with few restrictions. The facility is also the permanent home to the San Francisco Model Yacht Club (SFMYC), the organization at whose request Spreckels Lake and the adjoining clubhouses were built and whose history is and always will be irrevocably intertwined with the history of the facility.
Golden Gate Park, located in San Francisco, California, United States, is a large urban park consisting of 1,017 acres (412 ha) of public grounds. It is administered by the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department, which began in 1871 to oversee the development of Golden Gate Park. Configured as a rectangle, it is similar in shape to but 20 percent larger than Central Park in New York City, to which it is often compared. It is over three miles (4.8 km) long east to west, and about half a mile (0.8 km) north to south. With 24 million visitors annually, Golden Gate is the third most-visited city park in the United States after Central Park and the Lincoln Memorial.
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The San Francisco Model Yacht Club is a historically significant club as it was at the request of this group that Spreckels Lake was created, [1] by the San Francisco Parks Commission between 1902 and 1904 as a lake dedicated specifically for model boat sailing and competition. The Parks Commission built the club's first clubhouse in 1909 from the remnants of the ‘little’ St. Francis Hotel near the Polo Fields and assisted when the SFMYC raised the funds via private subscription for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to build the current clubhouse closer to Spreckels Lake at the 'corner' of JFK Drive and 36th Ave in the late 1930s, using funds raised by the model yacht club itself with some additional funding from San Francisco. After completion in 1938, the federal government, via charter, deeded the clubhouse in perpetuity to the Model Yacht Club.
The Works Progress Administration was an American New Deal agency, employing millions of job-seekers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads. It was established on May 6, 1935, by Executive Order 7034. In one project, Federal Project Number One, the WPA employed musicians, artists, writers, actors and directors in large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects. The five projects dedicated to these were: the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP), the Historical Records Survey (HRS), the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), the Federal Music Project (FMP), and the Federal Art Project (FAP). In the Historical Records Survey, for instance, many former slaves in the South were interviewed; these documents are of great importance for American history. Theater and music groups toured throughout America, and gave more than 225,000 performances. Archaeological investigations under the WPA were influential in the rediscovery of pre-Columbian Native American cultures, and the development of professional archaeology in the US.
The San Francisco Model Yacht Club has always been part of the history of the lake and model yacht facility, and it can be said that neither could exist without the other.
Founded in 1898, the club coalesced from a group of affiliated model boating enthusiasts, including a number of socially-prominent and wealthy San Franciscans. Originally home-ported at Golden Gate Park's Stow Lake, it is now the oldest, continuously operating model boating organization in the western hemisphere. Although other model boat clubs were formed prior to the SFMYC, such as the seminal Prospect Park Model Yacht Club in Brooklyn, New York, founded in 1872, [2] none survived continuously to the present.
