Pennsylvania Athletic Club

The Pennsylvania Athletic Club appears in the book as part of the Eastern rowing establishment and, in 1936, as a point of leverage in the dispute over whether Washington’s winning crew could reach the Berlin Olympics. Its chairman and a major fundraiser, Henry Penn Burke, delivered the demand that Washington pay its own way or make room for the University of Pennsylvania. The club’s significance lies in this overlap between elite sporting institutions, fundraising power, and the unequal resources that determined who could compete.

Position in American rowing

Collegiate rowing in the 1920s and 1930s drew large crowds and national press coverage, but its institutional center remained in the East. The most prestigious universities and private rowing clubs operated within a sporting culture shaped by elite schools such as Eton College and universities including Harvard University, Yale University, and Princeton University. By contrast, western programs had struggled for recognition and funding, and their coaches earned a fraction of Eastern coaches’ salaries. The Pennsylvania Athletic Club belonged to the private-club world that could contend for a place among the leading crews: Al Ulbrickson anticipated that both it and the New York Athletic Club might be in the field at the 1936 Olympic trials.

The contrast was not simply geographic. Western crews had few wealthy patrons and no recruitment budgets, while the established Eastern institutions possessed longstanding prestige and access to resources. Washington’s history at the Poughkeepsie regatta showed how slowly that imbalance was changing: its 1913 crew surprised Eastern spectators by placing third, but Western teams made the costly journey only occasionally and encountered condescension as well as curiosity. Washington’s 1923 victory brought the West its first Intercollegiate Rowing Association championship, yet the center of rowing influence remained difficult to move.

The Berlin funding ultimatum

After Washington won the right to represent the United States, the boys and their coaches celebrated at the Loyal Shoudy banquet in Princeton. That evening, Burke summoned Ulbrickson, boatbuilder George Pocock, and Washington athletic director Ray Eckman to a private room. He told them Washington would have to pay its own way to Berlin, or the University of Pennsylvania, as the second-place finisher, would take its place. Burke’s demand was for $5,000 by the end of the week.

The demand came as a shock because neither the American Olympic Committee nor the Olympic Rowing Committee had previously indicated that the winning crew might not be sent. Washington had already scraped together the money needed to travel east for the regattas, and its working-class rowers could not personally cover the new cost. Burke pointed to earlier precedents: California had paid its own way in 1928 and 1932, and Yale had raised private funds in 1924. Ulbrickson understood the difference between those cases and Washington’s circumstances, including the Depression and the much longer journey from Seattle. He asked how much was needed and how soon; the answer made the crew’s Olympic place contingent on raising the money immediately.

Seattle’s response and the club’s role

The demand set off a rapid public campaign in Seattle. Students sold fifty-cent tags, local officials and alumni solicited contributions, and civic organizations were contacted across the state. Donations ranged from a dollar given anonymously to $500 from the Seattle Times. The hometowns of the rowers also contributed: Sequim, Joe Rantz’s hometown, sent $75, while Don Hume’s Olympia sent $299.25. Volunteers sold $1,523 worth of tags on the first day; by the second, the Seattle Chamber of Commerce chairman had sent Ulbrickson a certified check for $5,000.

Ulbrickson had already told the Olympic officials that Washington could pay and secured training facilities from the New York Athletic Club at Travers Island. The money raised at home made that assertion true. The episode does not establish that the Pennsylvania Athletic Club itself organized the demand or controlled its financing. Rather, it shows Burke using the threat of the University of Pennsylvania’s substitution while acting in his separate capacity as chairman and major fundraiser of the club. Washington’s supporters, in turn, answered a private institutional ultimatum with a broad civic collection.

Class, access, and significance

The club’s appearance belongs to a wider history in which rowing prestige and the ability to compete were closely tied to money and social standing. Eastern rowing drew on elite schools and well-supported institutions; Western crews, often made up of farmers’ and working families’ sons, faced both the expense of travel and the burden of proving that they belonged. The Berlin funding crisis made that resource gap immediate: the victorious crew’s place was not secure until its city raised the required sum.

The book also sets elite rowing traditions against explicit occupational exclusions elsewhere in the sport. At the Henley Royal Regatta, Australian policemen were barred under a rule excluding men who worked for wages as mechanics, artisans, or laborers. That rule is not attributed to the Pennsylvania Athletic Club, but it illuminates the class boundaries surrounding prestigious amateur rowing. Against this background, the club’s role in the Berlin episode marks the power of established institutions to shape access, while Seattle’s successful appeal demonstrates how collective local support could counter a financial barrier.