DAVE CALDWELL

THE Schuylkill tumbles gently over a rounded dam within a few hundred feet of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, whipping up a bubbly garland before meandering south and emptying into the wider, scruffier Delaware River. The dam, built in the early 1800s, tamed the Schuylkill upriver, making it an ideal place to row a boat.

Philadelphians quickly flocked to the tree-lined Schuylkill to spend free time either rowing leisurely upstream or racing against each other downstream. Rowing clubs formed before the Civil War, and soon afterward, they built the handsome Victorian-era boathouses, trimmed in club colors, of Boathouse Row. By day, the houses, prim and charming, stand alone, reflecting brightly in the shimmering water even when the sky is cloudy. At night they are outlined in lights, and Boathouse Row twinkles, a gingerbread fairyland.

A Philadelphia oarsman named John Brendan Kelly, the son of an Irish-American immigrant (and eventually the father of Grace Kelly), became the Tiger Woods of his sport in the 1920s, helping to make the Schuylkill the largest center of American rowing. Boathouse Row is still that, but it has become much more. This rowing epicenter is also Philadelphia’s favorite springtime promenade.

“There are more people out here now than there ever were,” said Robert Rasmussen, a vendor who was selling refreshments one day late last month out of his red Dodge Caravan near the wide brick sidewalk behind the boathouses. “They get more bikers and walkers and joggers — and rowers — than they’ve ever had.”

Mr. Rasmussen, a Philadelphia resident known to his customers as Chief, is 81 years old and said he has sold drinks and snacks — now mostly bottled water and Philadelphia-style soft pretzels — for 65 years. A few feet away from a table filled with snacks, he placed a dog bowl, which he fills with fresh water. Chief stays busy.

A parade of dogs, attached by leashes to their owners, amble past on spring and summer weekends, but they’re not alone. Boathouse Row is part of Fairmount Park, and the sidewalk is usually filled from dawn to dusk — with walkers, runners, bicyclists, joggers, in-line skaters and mothers and fathers pushing baby carriages.

When the boats aren’t racing, there’s still much to do along this part of the Schuylkill. The art museum is on one side of the river, the zoo on the other side. An azalea garden is adjacent to Boathouse Row, as is the Fairmount Water Works, a collection of buildings near the dam that includes a museum about — yes, water. Perched on hills farther upriver, past the rowing course itself, are regentrified neighborhoods. One of them, Manayunk, has more than 50 boutiques and 30 restaurants that invite a leisurely stroll. A professional bicycle race, scheduled this year for June 8, courses through the nearby streets annually, with cyclists conquering “the Wall,” a stretch of Levering Street in Manayunk that seems to go straight up.

On days when the boats do race, Boathouse Row presents a tense and exciting spectacle. The racing course — a mile and a quarter long, about six lanes wide and edged by short gray stone walls — is a straight and placid stretch of river where breezes kick up only tiny ripples, calm as a pond in the woods. Admission to every regatta is free, and spectators, often tens of thousands of them, watch from both sides, sitting or standing on grassy riverbanks.

Six boats usually line up abreast at the starting line, and when the “ready, all, row” command comes from a starter on shore, the race begins. Crews of men or women move inexorably downriver, side by side, as the rowers, working together, pull their long oars through the brownish water. There is a lot of time for tension to build because these boats lurch more than glide. A typical college varsity-eight crew, for example, often takes more than five and a half minutes to reach the finish line. When one race ends, a crew and their fans celebrate, and the next race soon begins.

There are two forms of racing: sweeps, in which each rower pulls one oar, and sculls, in which each rower pulls two. Sculls have one, two or four rowers, with no coxswain; and sweeps have two, four or eight rowers. The majestic eight-rower crews have coxswains, who face the rowers and monitor their cadence and navigation.

The schedule is packed from March through October. The premier regattas are on back-to-back weekends in May: the Dad Vail Regatta, on May 9 and 10 this year, which was founded in 1934 and draws 3,500 collegiate rowers, and the Stotesbury Cup, May 16 and 17, the largest high school regatta in the world.

A statue of a stern-looking, square-jawed young rower, hands on his oars and headed downriver, sits near an old grandstand at the finish line on the course, luring pedestrians to snap photos. It’s an image of John Brendan Kelly, better known as Jack, who made his fortune as a brick contractor but was a rower first, and perhaps foremost.

“His love was rowing, and he used his position as a prominent Philadelphia figure to promote rowing in Philadelphia,” said Joe Sweeney, an unofficial Boathouse Row historian.

Though eventually outshone (at least outside Philadelphia) by his famous daughter, Jack Kelly was a celebrity in his own right, winning three Olympic gold medals in rowing. His son, John Jr., was also an Olympic rower. East River Drive was renamed Kelly Drive in his honor after John Jr.’s death in 1985. Now John B. Kelly III, known as J. B., is the president of Vesper Boat Club, at the midpoint on Boathouse Row.

For the rowers, competing here is memorable. “It’s idyllic — the water is smooth and flat there,” said Bob Morro, who as a student at LaSalle University in Philadelphia in the 1950s was on three winning varsity-eight Dad Vail crews. He is now the secretary for the Dad Vail Regatta.

Rowers also come back after graduation. “It’s something you can do until you die, so to speak,” said Renee Hykel, who started rowing as a freshman in 1997 at St. Joseph’s University, also in Philadelphia, and is now in training to qualify for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Many women, like the men, stick with the sport after college; it is not uncommon for a group of mothers to meet after work to row on the Schuylkill.

The clubs on Boathouse Row, whose members are of many ages and both genders, remain rivals, competing as members of the Schuylkill Navy, the oldest athletic amateur governing body in the United States, established in 1858. The clubs are private, and membership usually costs under $500 a year; while some clubs have waiting lists, others do not.

According to Mr. Sweeney, the first boathouses were ramshackle, and the next generation no sturdier. In 1868, the new Fairmount Park Commission declared that all but three boathouses be razed, and new houses be built that would last. To this day, they have. All are different, handsome in their own ways. The Sedgeley Club, now more of a social organization, is in a building that encases a brick lighthouse. The Undine Barge Club, which has a German heritage, is a sandstone building with dark green trim and leaded glass windows. Bachelors, founded by firemen, is brick with red and blue trim.

At each house, the boats are stored on the ground floor, close to the water and visible through wooden garage doors. Upstairs are locker rooms, workout rooms with rowing machines, and reception rooms with bars and lounges. At some houses, like Vesper, it is possible for nonmenbers to rent the reception rooms. Open houses have been scheduled for Sept. 20 this year in conjunction with the 150th anniversary of the Schuylkill Navy.

Boathouse Row is also the launching point for a public art walk, two and a half miles long, that goes up Kelly Drive and ventures over to the west side of the river before coming back. Besides Jack Kelly’s statue, there are about 30 other works of art, including statues of Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and a figure called “The Pilgrim,” with a Bible in his left hand, peering out onto a water as if catching a glimpse of everything that is happening on a busy river.

VISITOR INFORMATION

BOATHOUSE ROW is in Fairmount Park, along the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. Kelly Drive, which winds along the shoreline in the park, is off Exit 340A (Kelly Drive/Lincoln Drive) of Interstate 76, the Schuylkill Expressway. Free curbside parking is available along Kelly Drive when boats are not racing. On days of large regattas like the Dad Vail and Stotesbury Cup, when access is more restricted, follow Kelly Drive to the police barricades and then follow signs to remote parking. Shuttles are provided, but the course is within walking distance of the parking lots.

The Embassy Suites Hotel at 1776 Benjamin Franklin Parkway (215-561-1776; www.embassysuites.com; rates from $170 is about a mile walk to Boathouse Row. Other major hotels are two miles away from the boathouses in Center City, near City Hall. Some hotels offer packages in conjunction with the Dad Vail regatta (www.dadvail.org).

The Web site of the Schuylkill Navy, www.boathouserow.org, posts a full schedule of rowing events on the Schuylkill River race course and provides information about the rich history of rowing in Philadelphia.

The Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center (640 Waterworks Drive; 215-685-0723; www.fairmountwaterworks.org) is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday and from 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free.

An exhibit of work by the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is to run through May 18 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th Street; 215-763-8100; www.philamuseum.org). Exhibition hours are from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Thursday, 11 a.m. to 8:45 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $20 and include general admission to the museum..

The Philadelphia Zoo (3400 West Girard Avenue; 215-243-1100; www.philadelphiazoo.org) is on the western banks of the Schuylkill and is open from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Included are a rare-animal conservation center and a primate reserve. Admission is $17.95; parking is $12.

The Manayunk neighborhood (www.manayunk.com) holds family-friendly outdoor events every second Saturday from April through December. The Philadelphia International Championship (610-676-0390; www.procyclingtour.com), part of the Commerce Bank Triple Crown of Cycling, will be held June 8 on a street course that includes Manayunk.

Winnie’s Le Bus (215-487-2663; www.lebusmanayunk.com), a bistro at 4266 Main Street, Manayunk, has a scull hanging upside down from the wood beams above the bar. A pear salad with bleu cheese and walnuts is $8.75, and grilled salmon fillet with a soy-ginger glaze is $17.

More information about the Kelly Drive art walk can be found at www.philart.net/tour.php?id=9.

 A good source of general tour information about Philadelphia is the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation Web site, www.gophila.com. The Independence Visitors’ Center (Sixth and Market Streets; 800-537-7676) is open daily from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.