Houston Yacht Club

Its first commodore, Dan E. Kennedy, was a former Texas Ranger and the son of John Kennedy, who built the Kennedy Bakery Building on Market Square in 1861, and in 1898 he offered the club's fleet to Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt for the war with Spain. Lumberman John Henry Kirby gave the club his steamboat Lawrence. The club was a founding member of the Gulf Yachting Association in 1920, its youth sailing program, the Ragnots, began in 1957, and in World War II the Coast Guard occupied its clubhouse and grounds.

What the plaque says

Houston Yacht Club The Houston Yacht Club was organized in 1897 by a group of prominent citizens. Members met in the Binz Building in downtown Houston and were led by the first Commodore, Dan E. Kennedy. After Kennedy's death in 1904, the boatmen reorganized as the Houston Yacht and Power Boat Club, receiving a charter from the State of Texas in 1905. Financial difficulties forced the group to reorganize, and the Houston Launch Club was formed in 1906. A clubhouse designed by architect R. D. Steele, was completed on Buffalo Bayou in 1910. The members moved to a new Spanish mission clubhouse designed by architect Wyatt Hedrick in 1927, and retained the Houston Yacht Club name. The club began hosting regattas in the early 1900s and has hosted local, regional, national and world championships. Members have raced in all levels of competition, including the Olympics. Although primarily a private boating club, the organization has supported community activities and was active in the development of the ship channel. During time of war, members have offered their crafts for service, and have helped patrol the ship channel, bay and Gulf. The clubhouse has served as a refuge for area residents during natural disasters. (1997)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Space Center Houston — 7.3 mi
  The visitor center of NASA's Johnson Space Center at Clear Lake, with flown capsules, a shuttle replica riding a 747, and tram tours to Mission Control and a Saturn V.
• San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site — 10 mi
  The 1,200 acres of coastal prairie and marsh where the Texas Revolution ended in eighteen minutes, and the 567-foot shaft of fossil-studded limestone that has stood over them since 1939.
• Emancipation Park — 23 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 24 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.

More markers nearby

• Captain William Plunkett Harris — 1.6 mi
• Prehistoric Indian Campsite — 1.8 mi
• Saint Mary's Seminary — 2.7 mi
• La Porte — 2.8 mi