Johnson Boatworks B Class Stern steerer model c 1930
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Last week, Jim Gluek shared some family history about his grandfather who raced a Johnson Boatworks-built B Class Stern-Steerer in Minneapolis. Jim has found the perfect place to display the trophy, right next to the model of the stern-steerer that likely dates from around the 1920s.
Jim’s grandfather’s model is a good excuse to take another look at the world of iceboat models which have become highly prized collector pieces. Below are photos of William Bernard and son Carl’s models. (The Bernard Boathouse on Lake Mendota is where iceboat racing began in Madison.) The Wisconsin State Historical Society has a Bernard model iceboat in its collection that Bill Mattison has restored twice. Let us know if you have a model iceboat!
Iceboat models from the William & Carl Bernard family collection
Iceboat models from the William & Carl Bernard family collection
Let’s watch an old sail being repaired at the Hardanger fartøyvernsenter in Western Norway for MATHILDE, a fishing boat, built in 1884. The same techniques were probably used to make and repair the sails on the stern-steerers pictured below. William Bernard kept a rental fleet of iceboats on Lake Mendota. Imagine that! Tip of the Helmet: Ann Gratton
William Bernard’s fleet of rental stern steerer iceboats on Lake Mendota c.1895
The recent “Garage Find” post inspired a morning of research on RED ARROW, a Madison-style stern-steerer built by William Bernard in the 1920s.
Peter Fauerbach mentioned that after years of being stored in an Madison apartment building owned by Warren Tetzlaff, RED ARROW was sold in the mid 1990s and shipped to Montana.What happened in between covers some interesting Madison history.
RED ARROW was originally owned by Joe Dean Jr., son of prominent Madison doctor Joseph Dean who founded the Dean Clinic. Joe’s brother, Frank, raced it as well. The Deans lived next door to the Bernard Boat House on Gorham Street on Lake Mendota.
The boat was named after the 32nd Infantry Division, a World War One Army National Guard Division made up of units from Wisconsin and Michigan. RED ARROW won the C Class at the 1922 Northwest sailed on Lake Winnebago in Oshkosh, WI.
RED ARROW has a slight link to the famous aviator, Charles Lindbergh, who briefly attended the University of Wisconsin in 1921. When Lindbergh visited Madison in 1929, Dr. Joseph Dean Sr. told his son, Frank, that if he could get a ride in Lindbergh’s plane, he would buy him an airplane. Frank was successful and his father bought him that airplane.
Ran across this photo on the Historic Madison, WI Photo Group’s Facebook page over the weekend. The photo was part of a collection that a group member found in her dad’s garage. It’s titled “Boat House U.W. Dec. 97” (as in 1897). In it we see a Madison style stern-steerer, designed and built by William Bernard on Lake Mendota near the University of Wisconsin boat house (which was torn down in the 1950s). The Bernard Boat House was just a quick sail down the lake from the university. Back then, university fraternities owned iceboats and iceboats could also be rented by the day from the Bernard Boat House. Below is a photo dated 2 years previous to the UW Boat House photo with an impressive line up of stern-steerers at Bernard’s Boat House.
“Dean’s RED ARROW” looks similar to the stern-steerer in the 1897 photo.
The Charles Bernard Boathouse Stern Steerer iceboat fleet on Lake Mendota. Frank Lloyd Wright’s elementary school is in the background. Though the photo dates from 1895, Wright would have seen the same boats on Lake Mendota back in the 1880s. Photo from the Bernard scrapbook collection.Notation by Carl Bernard.
On the anniversary of the great architect, Frank Lloyd Wright’s 150th birthday, the Madison Children’s Museum is hosting a 3 day event that will include an exhibit dedicated to the iceboat models he made as a boy. The exhibit dates are June 7 – 10. Learn more about it at their website.
Wright moved to Madison when he was 12 years old in 1879 and lived near the Bernard Boathouse, the center of ice sailing on Lake Mendota. He attended Lincoln School which was also on Lake Mendota, a few doors east of the Boathouse, where stern steerers gliding across the lake would have been a common sight. What a distraction and inspiration that must have been for the students!
Model iceboats made by William and Carl Bernard.
One of Wright’s biographies mentions that he made model iceboats as a boy. Though none of Wright’s boyhood iceboat models exist, a sophisticated model made by William Bernard (and restored by Bill Mattison) is in the collection of the Wisconsin State Historical Society. Read about that on the WSH website.
I suspect that Wright, along with many boys in the neighborhood, would have spent time at the Bernard Boathouse watching Charles and William build boats. It would have been an exciting place for a boy with an inclination to become an architect.
The roof of the Unitarian Meeting House.
We know from a recording of Carl Bernard in the Wisconsin State Historical Society archives that when he was in Madison, Wright continued to drop in on the “boys at the Boathouse”. It could have been at the Boathouse where learned of master carpenter and iceboat builder, Frank Tetzlaff, famous for his part in building the MARY B stern steerer. In the early 1950s, Wright’s complicated roof design for Madison’s Unitarian Meeting House was proving difficult to build. It was Frank Tetzlaff who “helped translate” Wright’s plans.
Frank Lloyd Wright, much like the aviator Charles Lindbergh during his brief stay here, was drawn to the sport of iceboating and the people in Madison who were obsessed with building and sailing them.
